Take it, take another little piece of my heart.

My sister's birthday is coming and it's as terrific an opportunity as any other to buy books which I want to read and gift wrap for her. Lucky we more or less read the same stuff or rather I bulldoze her into reading what I recommend. Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, fantastic people, nice little book I stumbled on thanks to fly and I think there's something in its awkwardness that exists in all of us, especially if we dish out a blog post every week or so.

While planning her party, we decided on Chinese food which somehow brought back a memory of this store in Pune from where we'd get Chinese take away frood. I used to be fascinated by this place, it wasn't a restaurant in a market, it was just a take away shop literally in the middle of nowhere. It was so noisy and steamy and small and they'd take your order and pin it up on a rope and it would be ready robotically in minutes. So numbskullsister and me would play 'takeaway' with our puzzle pieces and mix them around in a tokri. The only plausible explanation for a tokri in our house I think could be because we were living in Maharashtra after all. (egad, images of kim sharma as a fisherwoman are coming to me after those 5 horrifying minutes of some random movie which permanently and irrevocably burned some of my brain cells.)

Also donated blood today! Yee haw, did it for the cool red tshirt we all know, and while I was lying there pumping my fist tiredly instead of feeling righteous as I should have, I was like dude, I just have a needle in my arm, someone who needs this is going to have all their bones smashed in . Count your blessings, name them one by one, thank the Lord for what he has done, kept playing in my head.

On a crankier note though, I am being forced to go out to my mothers friends house for dinner. She has this daughter whose a couple of years older than me, looks and dresses like a model, and has had sex several times with several different boys and was caught in school with her bra undone, which is public knowledge to everyone except apparently our mothers and mum dearest insists she's such a nice girl, I should try and be friends with her. Fuck, glad they're all so in sync. I'm sorry, not that there's anything wrong with her but some people I just can't take seriosuly, and she's one of them.

Something I'm really beginning to believe in though is All In Good Time, truly, life eventually calms itself down and things happen in their own time. When I was in middle school, in Bangalore, I always always wanted to become a senior prefect, not head girl becasue that was so passe but house captain, because that meant something, and I loved my house captain, she was so cool man, she'd run the captains relay on sports day, and march with the house flag. She'd sit on the steps of the canteen (for seniors only) with all these boys and I'd always wonder which one she liked. She'd come to my class and ask for me and badger me into taking part in elocution or something which I gladly did for her. It was so cool the way they'd stay back after shcool, and make those charts and practice for house competitions and stuff, and the 11th and 12thies were allowed to come on their bikes and so casually afterwards they'd zip off to some place to eat.

I left though, and I had no idea untill I was away how fucking impressionable I'd been. I got to be house captain of another school though and it meant shite, really it meant nada to me, which is not as awful as it sounds, it just was that way.

*Remember those shiny coloured Add-Gel pens in 1999? They were such a rage and I had a purple one and wrote LP in big bold letters on my arm and walked all over school one day. At band practice after school, Music Captain comes in and after he does his 'duty' and yells at us for not practising hard or long enough, he hangs around to chat and he says, so you're all into heavy rock and metal and all? and I'm like no ya, just Linkin Park, he's like what's the name of their album. FUck! I didnt know, lol, but anyway, Dad took me on a sunday, to music world I think, not the (then) new Planet M on Brigade Road, and I bought Just Push Play (Aerosmith) and Hybrid Theory and on the way back in the car, dad suggested that I play the tapes, and I slowly, delaying it as much as possible, unwrap the flimsy plastic wrapping and Papercut starts up..the sun goes down, I feel the light betray me, I hastily ejected and put aerosmith in which was no better, but thankfully we reached back because then you could actaully drive around in Bangalore and reach places in minutes not hours. Atleast it wasn't Public Service Announcement on the Marshall Mathers LP.

So into Jaded was I that when we came to Delhi on our summer holiday, on the customary annual visit to Dilli Haat, instead of yet another name necklace, I had jaded written with those alphabet beads, and Dad says do you even know what it means? I didn't.

Man, I was quite the emo kid. Today though, I'm somehow very happy to be me.

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.

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

This years love had better last

Sometimes you get goosebumps about just being alive, and I want to love you, Nothing Man.~Caught a bolt of lightning, cursed the day he let it go.~ Isn't it something? It is Eddie. How can it not be..

Hmm, exhausted is the word I'm looking for. So much work, so many things to do, usually life is happiest when I'm busy but I haven't got 8 hours of sleep in a row in about a month now. At the risk of sounding like a CPM politburo member, the "honeymoon" period with my blog is definitely over.

Met aforementioned friend, such a riot I tell you, some people are just funny, and I got lots and lots of american frat movies with naked boobies and lewd jokes off him, Superbad(ha-HA-Ha-ha), Oldschool, Van Wilder, Eurotrip, Girl Next Door, Blow...you get the gist.

Yes, Andy is engaged. Joy, normally I'd be happy but do you know how he met her? He saw her picture in a Sports Illustrated isssue and had his agent track her down. What a fucking cliche, its like boning your secretary. Gah. As fly says, it's like he picked her out of a catalogue. I mean imagine the call she must've got, hi, erm, there's this guy, who's sorta famous and a little rich and he wants to be in your pants. Sure, that's my twenties taken care of.

Also have become friends with that new boy at work place, even though he's a kid and all, we're pals now. Ha, dropped him to his hindi class today, these firangis types I tell you. Laughed about superbad stuff, and duh, Celtics won(heehaw) and he was all Lakers, na huh, there time had come, it was going to be Celtics, everyone knew that all along.

Read Wild Sheep Chase (Haruki Murakami,) and can definitely see why he's so popular. The story is literally about sheep and you're reading along thinking, man, a whole book about sheep, this should be weird, but it so isn't.

Something I've been meaning to put up here, I can't stress the importance of Zeitgeist enough, seriously folks, go watch it. Tis this really radical left wing documentary type thing, and even if you're skeptical and don't believe everything, STILL, it's stuff that we just have to know, and think about.

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.
*****