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.

Sadness, Look how She dances.

I know, I know - no blog post for awhile and then of all the painful things in the world, a poem. All I want from you though is a> Uff, I can't be bothered to read, skim, scroll, close window. b> Eyes swim but actually read and realise it's a weak, fuck all piece with no backbone.

Just one over the other would suffice, just so I know. Please. Because it has been so long I can't understand my words anymore. Also, any title suggestions?




They all talk of it, Borges, Kundera, my heart,
The yearning for other places; mountain monasteries, riversides cafes
It fills up the day, inventing companions, travels, homes, children, interviews.

Sadness is bookmarked all over;
In polite waiters and Late Night Radio
People in uniform waiting at the bus stop with their tiffins.

In a disappointing subject, oh how the prospectus lied.
This city doesn’t enchant anymore, doesn’t inspire poems or elegies.
I’m tired of its universities and tombs, its markets and roads, its police and parking lots.

Sadness is in evening garb bought during the day,
In changing rooms with loud sexual music, thick drapes and flimsy party wear
I don't want to corset my jelly belly, I’d pick pajamas and my audioslave t-shirt for you to fall in love with.

I want to retreat from life for awhile
Go back to perfect pictures of European streets in National Geographic
Longing can be sustained more than hotel towels and air sickness and disappointment.

Sadness is in matching earrings, in sleeveless sari blouses
Summer smells in the midst of synthetic woolens, AC vents in a crowded place
No one to notice everyday secrets, Shampoo smells, timetables made and Band-Aid cuts.

Restlessness; I keep asking obvious questions
They answer in baroque, in hard bound bookshelf glory
But its never the one I’m looking for, I’m back to square one o one.

Sadness is in protesters lined up, tired, excited; not unlike a picnic
Weathered flags and sweaty headbands, couldn’t quite catch what the banners read
I looked in the papers the next day, why all that energy, that production, all it said was Traffic Jam.

And I pass by, I pass by. Never knowing exactly what,
Only vague noises at the back of my head, What could be important enough?
How could I not be?

Another Chapter in the book of Cell phone Drafts.

(This is not writing, it’s learning how to write but mostly I just want to tell you these things)


To go above and beyond what he could ever expect, to make a grand gesture, to dramatise the surroundings, to make a point of it. The gravity of the thought stayed with her, and excited her so much that she stopped her work and sat down to explore its depth, Where would she stay? How would be look? What would she say? When will he ask her? and so on. It takes off then, this galloping, all encompassing, deliriously colourful and hopeful world, it fills up her day, and when she pauses to trace back the cause of this vague contentedness, it’s only too obvious. Dreams tend to be that way. Cause she has already done so much and had been so many people, how’s she ever going to top it? The feeling that nothing will be the same again, in a lucky, positive flourish that changes the realities of existence, the practicalities of a routine, and builds in its place a fondness, a nostalgia for what is lost.

On a unimaginable scale, that’ll require numbers not yet discovered to tabulate it, lens powerful enough to capture it lie yet undiscovered, hidden in chemical codes of silver evaporating, aluminium, bromide and we haven’t made it just yet - a canvas big enough, to hold that pulsating growing hideous mass of thoughts continuously extracted that make up the parallel worlds in our heads.

If only things were that easy, to break them up into seasons, into terms and when one is desperate before exams, sick with worry, with guilt and self loathing, our writers disappoint us, glossing over, pushing all that tension into one flippant sentence. For as long as I can remember I’ve been reading novel after novel before the most crucial, supposedly paramount, exams of my life. I want long in-depth discourses into this distraction, this preoccupation, this inability to focus, yet they all seem to have just a page or two on it, I want to read a whole book about just the last twenty four hours before a test, so that I can viscously, sickeningly, put my teeth into in, and hold on desperately while my own deadline approaches closer.

As for those people that authors thank on the first and last pages of their books - my heart wells up with jealousy; possessiveness creeps in as the tale gets going, I want to be there, by his side, for him to consider me beautiful, to inspire the writing, the greatness, the most wonderful literary-ness, which so many have rediscovered time and again, and it forms an exclusiveness which is far from elite, it is the very pulse of our temples, of our language, or the vast filing cabinets in our heads. To be there while she writes, talking things out, dreaming things up, sorting out erased memories and engineered ones; and it overtakes me, this urge to know them, to be near them, and I think, how can they not know? How can they not feel this power, that seems to have consumed every facility of my being? And I can’t bear it anymore.

If the voice is not given any air, no gentle flap to encourage the cinder, it dies suffocating on its insecurity, on its unsteady beginnings, and I find myself utterly unable to write. Let that never happen, let there always be an avalanche of words - however unworthy, however cringe worthy, and may I never settle, never fully understand, but always try and try and try. If only you spare five minutes, to make a genuine recommendation, or a heartfelt critique, dismiss with style my inaptitude, with significance; I could travel far, very far. For the people I want most to be read by, I can’t let them, because they’re all over these pages. It would come glaring into light how much under my skin they are, exposing the very stitches that hold together my tacky faux velvet costume dress, and it would be a betrayal of sorts, but a wonderful coming out as well, and I wish nothing more, little darling, sugar chicken, blue honey bun for you to have your eyes on me, right now, quite like this.

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.

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 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.

Suitcase of memories

I believe familiarity is a sign of wealth. Wealth when it comes to life, to living.

A fine lady, would have a regular tailor who knows the exact shape of her body, her trickiest measurements, and doesn’t need to take them over and over. Who notices she shrinks as she grows older, and makes the blouses smaller. To whom she brings her daughter for her first sari blouse.

And a jeweller, from where they make their big buys, once every year or so. Through the latest trends they keep pieces waiting for her but when her son wants to pick out an engagement ring for his girlfriend; she takes him there for the classic diamond knock out.

A man then, will have a banker, who does all the tedious paper work, efficiently, happily. A mechanic, who knocks a couple hundred off the bill after the regular servicing. When his daughter has her first bang-up learning how to drive, he gets angry with her, but they have a little chortle, the mechanic and him, there were many jokes on that one oh there were.

And the other family who's been with them for years and who knows when to get the hot water bottle and the right temperature of tea, who are well looked after and their children seen through school and onto bigger better things. Who’ll mow the garden and plant the flower seeds and take care of the dogs when they go out of town.

As they grow older, this fine lady and gentleman, they’ll need their old doctor of course. Who’ll listen with gentle patience to them, who’s delivered their kids and is now old himself. So he refers them to better, younger doctors but they go back to him for a last and final opinion.

They walk into Blue Diamond. He nods at the tabla player, a namastey; the next song is his favourite ghazal. Somewhere else in the city, at a nightclub, their son nods at the DJ and shakes hands with the bartender. A bartender who knows his drink and in the thickest crowd will get to him first.

A bookstore then for me, a perfect one which I’ll love with all my heart. Placed somewhere to bring in minimum of tourist traffic, a place where you can sit and read and not pay. I know there’s a store out there that’s just waiting for me to walk into it.

You can say familiarity is a step away from boredom, from the same old same old, but I’ll take it any day.

There are other things to experiment with, newer things to try out - like brand of cigarettes, and shampoos maybe but not hairstyles. Everything art related. Every place in the world. For that I have my muddy travelling boots under the armchair, but everything else I like in its own place.

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.

For Shane and Silis.

She sits with her legs crossed in yogic postition, tablets of cannbis in her jeweled box, beaded curtains around her. Horrible sickly incense clouds the red floor lamps and loud strains of Metallica float around, I bow, almost kneel as I enter.

"Blog Goddess?" I timidly beseech.

"I've been expecting you," her voice quietly booms.

"Err, umm.., it's just that I've come to collect my blogpost, there seems to be a problem, but I have been waiting and waiting for some kind of update to materialise and so far I have received nothing."

She stares into the distance passively, "Let's start with the most mundane, what did you do with your puny existence today?"

"Saw Hancock and went for a swim. Should I blog about the empty theatre and how these bloody popcorn movies are insulting us, squeezing our brain cells untill they're mere single cells."

"Who wants to know about that bugger, its not like you made a movie did you? You think anyone gives a shit about the one line you write about some one movie which everyone has already seen."

"Possibly, but there was this girl at the pool whom I totally recognised as a junior from my school but while I was busy avoiding her and averting my eyes elsewhere, she approched me and said Are you el and did you go to S. School? and I said yaaaa..really slowly, and she's like oh I'm so and so and I was like get out, no way, even though I knew exactly who she was I pretended to be surprised and oh, I never realised."

"And I care because?.."

"Blogs are so fucking one dimensional you know, text-image-links. Maybe I'll recycle some old pictures, pass em off as new. "

"Oh no you didn't. Blog about blogging, and then you come in my house and insult me?"

Sorry?

Maybe you could write about your college which has reclaimed it's sweaty time consuming place in your life.

Two words, no V.

You're kidding right? Are you honestly that delusional? You didn't even know him till a while back and suddenly everything's seen in context to him. So, same motherfuckers walking the corridors?

Check.

Still clueless about the future?

Check.

Allright then, you, have nothing to say, I'm bumping you off.

No, no, how about the yummilicious momos I'm eating right now, hot hot hot steamed chicken, with red chilli sauce that is all chilli and no sauce.

Girl I've got tablets, I mean huge tablets of this stuff and you're talking to me about food? One last shot, what song you listening to?

Harry and the Potters - Stick it to Dolores

Get the fuck out of my office.

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.

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.

May Angels Lead You In

Car got towed, which was total bullshit, I went to the COLONY market, which is like 5 feet away from home (yea, yea environmentally treacherous etc) stepped out for 2 minutes and when I came out no little zen standing under tree, had to then go to the police station and pay 200 bucks, no challan, what bull. Also upgraded my RAM - all by myself and was smothered by the dust inside the CPU and, best of all learnt the caribbean capitals, so feeling most gangsta.

Some tennis talk now, skip if you're not into it -

*******************************************************************************

Andys match was such rubbish I tell you, I admit now what they've been saying for years, he was no variety in his shots, he moves really poorly on court and simply has nothing to fall back on except his serve. Plus what drama - baazi he was doing on court just becasue he was winning and a certain girlfriend was watching. Like yelling at himself and making faces when he's 2 games way from victory. Poof.

Go Safin! (yaay fly) People are like oh you support him because he's hot, so not true, that guy is the original and last of the mavericks. Honestly he doesn't care about what's proper, about being scoff, consistent. He can come out of nowhere and win. Incidentally, he's not a very good player when he's winning, he's fantastic when he's losing, him and Baghdatis, watch them play when they're 2 sets down. They get this super human strength and gun for every ball though they've been playing for hours and hours. Good Wimbledon it looks like and don't feel too bad about Novak, he's just starting out in his career and you can't be a number one player unless you've been thrashed by Safin, that's just how it goes.

*******************************************************************************

Right, so if life fails us or we fail life or whatever, we have to have a back up job right, like what would you do to get by and be happy doing?

El presents My List of Alternate Job Options

Driver, no kidding, think I can manage this well, esp. to an old couple, take him for golf, her to the parlour, club, whatever and at night for their parties. Park the car, road gaze, do what I wantfor 20 hours a day.

Setup an Illegal Parking Ticket Thing - Start handing out tickets wherever they're cars parked. Take 10 bucks per car, pay off cops if necessary, get protection from street gangs*(lol) if needed and eventually hire my own parking attendents and make money by advertisemets placed on their uniforms.

Bake - Don't know how successful I'll be because my cookies sure are fine but take forever and a lot of effort to make, and think I might get sick of chocloate by the end of it. Which would de disastrous for my happiness and self confidence but overall better fro my waist. So might have to do a pro con list before take this one on.

Word Whore - something like Florentino, write love letters for people who can't "expess themselves", or maybe be a word-on-hire, be a pimp or sorts, write out personal letters, break up messages, threatening notes, stuff like that.

Door to Door Movie CD Lender(or CD walli in short)- and when I was thinking about this, I became so excited that I might just do it. I already have a considerable database and anyway half the time I'm giving movies to people, so it is totally realistic. You want any? I'm only doing distribution don't ask me about my sources, that's confidential. :D

edit - also maybe teach piano, like at a very rudimentary level, my theory is pretty solid and I can fluff a lot if rich kids prents are wiling to dish.

So got myself covered I think.

The Same Streets That I Live

So this is my expermiment, it's very trivial-esque I know, a poor cousin more like, but it's directly inspired by that. It's ok if you hate it.

Why save the kisses for a rainy day?

It starts with a perfect picture like this and before I realise, it turns into a soul mirror. The playlist in my head has Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad on repeat. It’s not even a rainy day song, but it comes out at me, cheekily, as though it knows that it can be the only song that resides in the vinyl of my cerebrum when there’s even a hint of a drizzle.

Eternity is in love with the productions of time.

William Blake is someone I have no connection with, I wasn’t taught his poetry, I didn’t study it and no one around me mentions him in passing, but I picked up that book anyway. I don’t feel intimidated though, by either his poems or the life around me caught up in raindrops. There is no reason why I should turn to his lines, maybe that’s why I do.

God appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night,
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of Day.

The waters wave and twinkle in front of me, rippling across their temporary home; their home can only be where they are. I feel the weariness after my philosophy exam, and the pub crawl after, not sure about my own two homes. After the late night I feel pulpy. I woke up without getting enough sleep but not sleepy or tired enough to go back to bed. The clouds build up in me but no rain comes, for mine is a much longer hibernation, mine is a reassessing of the Big Stuff, which I’ve put off for far too long.
*****

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.

That’s what they told me, and the thing is, the blessed thing is that I know exactly what I want. Live outside the city, somewhere in the plains not far from the mountains, somewhere sunny, maybe near a wooded area, and fall asleep each night to the sound of a fan whirring, to people breathing. One thing I definitely don’t want is to spend time in airports. Really, I have it all planned, it’s just the day job that’s the problem.
*****

But doesn’t it start with the way we live, or has it already begun?

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A Clothing for the Soul divine;
Under every grief & pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

Love seeketh not itself to please
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease
And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.

~

The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.

All those things stick you know, in the afternoons by myself, I am a different me, a pot smoking teacher in a boarding school, a writer in my mountain home, owner of a beach shack frying sausages, baking in a small town with my apron on - all those kid personas don’t go away. I still get to be all that.

When the day’s done though, it’s back to the notebook.
*****

For all those who've slow danced to Strangers in the Night

We came out of the movie hall, with the sun making our eyes crinkle and the warmth tingling the air-conditioned goose bumps on our arms. There’s a sleepy contentment that washes over us, as we make our way out in a community shuffle. He has his arm around me as we walk down the sloping parapet, back into the mall.

It’s hot but not too hot. Not unbearable, not muggy and there’s an ever so slight breeze.

We move past the food court into the open air sitting area. We smoke. We chat lazily. He talks about something in the movie which reminded him of something he did as a kid. He goes to get me a gelato, because usually when I see chocolate I want it. He’s being nice but I don’t really feel like it today. We have a spoon or two and watch it melt between us., forming an icky brown mess.

A person from a nearby table comes over, an old friend apparently, he smiles and shakes my hand, I’ve never met him before but he obviously knows about me, whether through him or common friends I don’t know.

It’s early evening, and a different kind of crowd is thronging the mall, less students, more families who’ll end the evening with dinner in this very food court.

I feel like a chilled drink, not a heavy, milky one and definitely not an areated one. The waiter comes over, I ask for seventy rupees worth of ice, water and strawberry flavouring in a tall glass. He brings it fairly quickly. I sip at it.

We talk some more. He’s restless I can make out, because he doesn’t know where he’s going to be this time next month, he’s wrapping his head around the ideas on his tray, and all of them are just ok. None of them involve me. Because I’m still going to be here. I’m happy though, I’m out with him and the impromptu movie turned out to be much better than we expected.

The ice melts and the drink tastes like water that’s been poured into a used juice carton. I abandon drinking it altogether and play around with the straw. We smoke some more. As the sky darkens, he pays the bill and we head to the parking lot.

I give him the keys, because he likes to drive. He’s a careful driver with no cursing and no sudden braking unlike me. We’re quiet most of the way, because the music on is good, he sings a little, I hum, we listen.

We reach his place, he gets out and I scoot over to the drivers seat, he gives me a quick kiss on the forehead and goes inside, I head back home. The music is awful now.

My parents are throwing a big dinner party tonight and I must get ready, wear something ironed and suitable and talk to some horrifically overdressed women and some debonair, aging men who were once young pilots and tell them, how I spend my time. I don’t mind, because we bargain stories, I get to hear about places like Kalaikunda, obscure Airforce bases where these men spent their youth learning to fly Jaguars and MIGs. Now they’re gentlemen of course who talk of their chicken farms on the Jaipur highway and holiday homes in Mashobra.

“I was at Tezpur and your grandfather was doing reconnaissance,” said a suited elderly man in a dull red turban cradling a whiskey soda in his hand, “he’d come down from Agra and we’d fly down to the China border together and he’d report back the next morning to Agra.” He’d cackle and thump me on the shoulder, carried away by the impishness of it, the merriment of the moment.

He’ll message me soon, to check in, in case I need a lifeboat, how’s the evening going? Should I call?

Fine, I’ll say. Just fine.

Because El feels like writing

How do I put words to this gossamer thing within, permanently stationed and cautiously building; to call it intelligence would be wildly inaccurate though in a boomerang way not off the mark. How can I tell you the rush of life that I feel when a book can sing for you, teach you, inspire writing of its own, how constricting is a novel? How many permutations exist to be able to write on? What will mine be like? How will it read?

I’ll dispense with filial references for the time being, will refrain from stringing together millennia of me in the making, of genes that swam down, of wars that tore them apart, of whatever little of destiny that brought them here and by whatever chance I was born. How can I explain to you my vagina skipping a beat by a stimulated scene, by something that’s not actually happening, that didn’t ever happen but is simply one persons imagining. There’s a cycle, an unhealthy repetition of taking winter clothes out and putting them back in, again and again, and in the night, it’s simple why I lie awake, because it’s alone time, there’s the whoosh, of distant planes landing, of retreating truck horns and I try to think of the driver, what he must be thinking of and I fail miserably exposing my pathetic bourgeois-ness, my lack of adventure, of all creature comforts that have surrounded me and danced along all the way. I try to imagine my own novel, my writerly life and my fame, but what will that get me? Do we become famous when we appear on t-shirts? Will there ever be a night, a time when I won’t have to watch late night television with low volume or tip toe around, will I ever be able to make as much noise as I want? Women who wear sleeveless on a cold new year night, or any other for that matter, what must they be thinking and why do they do that? What are they trying to attract? How do they summon the courage, the attractiveness to spell out their charms? It’s something I couldn’t ever do. I find cold a tawdry partner, an unworthy opponent, it’s best to be tackled with a fireplace or a slightly more modern and utterly unromantic heater. I want nothing to do with writing really, I wish it would get lost.

Crossing continents and two men swing tennis racquets, hitting, hitting, fighting, fighting. What shall I do? Do I need to be there? Do I need to go check? See that those monuments, those castles are for real? Not really. I believe you, and my senses have been humbled, numbed even. I think of another woman, so benign, so banal so toxically boring, but saying it doesn’t mean anything, you have to meet her.

I tread another path in my virgin shoes, talking to boys at night and the intimacy that creates, the possibilities it lays out. We’re all in it for the experience right? In an ‘anything can happen’ mood? Looking for stories to tell and that’s at the back of my mind which has a lot to do with my lack of inhibition. But I keep my eyes firmly on the exit gates - simply because, but I’ve changed though, and I’ve noticed the hysterical edge is off my voice when I talk to him. So it goes I suppose..

It's been such a lovely holiday, there's nothing funny left to say

~Life is a highway, I wanna ride it, all night long~

Everyone knows, a holiday is all about the road, driving through is the best part and stopping for chai on the highway every hour or so.

~ you want it, you got it forever~

People say - mountains or sea? I say anywhere where the waters at. The river is what makes it all happen but I gotta tell ya, the Beas is one tenth of what it used to be. This was the river of my childhood, the first time I saw fast furious water so massive that it was crazy daunting. Now it's a tiny trickle.

~Oh how I long to be, Homeward Bound, Home - where my music's playing~

Man, it is so good to be back home. To know that ok if I put the geyser on for 10 minutes the water will be exactly this hot. To know what your rajma is going to taste like. To have my twice a day glass of milk, which I don't think I'll ever give up no matter how old I get. My homepage and sites signed into, and ofcourse, Buddy who went a bit spastic.

Anyway as far as photography goes, this trip was fail, but since digis make photogos of us all, here's some pics. They're all mostly male, mostly single(hehe) but I swear it wasn't intentional.

Read The Buddha Of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi, jeez watay fantastic book. The cover put me off initially, becasue it's so freaking obvious, black hand, white orchid flower, gah - metaphor or what I dunno. Anyway, its published in 1990 which is ages back and I thought I wouldn't get the humour and references, but it's set in the 70s so in a way it's topical forever. Karim is an awesome person to hang out with, he's funny and very I-am-what-I-am, a drifter and the worst of the lot and everything that happens to him is utterly belivable, you're actually simply travelling with him.


Also finished the famous Bioscope Man..hmm:thoughtful: Didn't really get that one though, have for now put in my must-read-again pile, becasue I'm sure there's something in there..

Tomorrow's Flys birthday so hafta go wrap her gift, plus I'm writing her a story(don't ask) and have been writing this post for ages..and limewire's almost done with a grey's anatomy episode.

Damn, it's good to be back.

The Bioscope Man

Nope, not a song title - tis a book title for a change.

GuesswhatGuesswhatGuesswhat? Generally the other day (Thursday)I was reading the paper, and Indrajit Hazra had reviewed Jack Johnson's new(ish) album and it wasn't a very favourable one. Now I'm not that into the guy(Jack), but as it happens when you have the whole day infront of you and you read the paper first thing in the morning, I got all charged up and wrote him an email.

Now I've been following this guy(Hazra) for years and I always thought he was just so damn cool - and when it came to music, his reviews were actually worth reading. He's funny and wry and also very intelligent. As for his column Red Herring, the tone and languge is totally free falling, I mean you ask anyone about him - they'll be like oh yeah, he's having a ball writing what he wants. Mostly I like his column, occasionally I don't but that's ok. Karan Thapar is aiye aiye aiye - pretentious to the hilt. What with his 'Pertie' and 'Did I start the Rahul Gandhi as PM controversy?' That way Jug Suraiya has no hangups - he's very no-water-in-gurgaon, stray-dogs-folowing-me, Dear ol Bunny etc. etc.

Anyway, he emailed back!!!

Jeez, I was SO excited because you know when you're sitting around and chatting with friends and unexpectedly the conversation goes on to life affirming turf and you talk about really huge stuff like life and what you want and the kind of person you like etc etc - he's exactly the kind of person I would fall for. He was super nice and chatty, replied back the very same day and even recommended a song! AND, he told me his book was out tomorrow(that is yesterday, friday.)

So - so, just because he , himself had told me, I went and bought it - first day first show or something like that. I mean how many times do you get to read a book, that the author himself has told ya to go read it.

As far as the book itself goes, this is going to sound mean, but it's not a bad as I thought it would be. Yes it is very bengali but it's about silent cinema which is pretty specific - so you really need to know what you're talking about. I'm not too far into it right now. He's just laying the ground with the family and pre partition, and taking on an era which already has so much fantastic literature to chronicle it must be a bit unnerving but till now, he's managed quite well.

Also, I like his last acknowledgement - "And everything boils down to Diya. I'm still trying to impress her." Which Diya person?! I thought he was notoriously single? Anyway, that was kinda sweet, and don't see no reason why this lady shouldn't be impressed.

Onto other stuff, I'll be off tomorrow and I'm actually pulling out Jackets and woollens muhahahaha, what was that? 45 degrees in Delhi did you say? I'll maybe write a post from some internet shack in the mountains just for the novelty sake, otherwise I'll see ya all in 1974. Oh we're not on tour with Stillwater? Next week then!

*Hope you never Love in vain and in my heart you'll remain, Forever Young.