When the hunger's gone

are you in or are you out?

2009-07-11T21:36:00.001+05:30

Among the events of the past six months -- Fortunetellers, a man and a parrot, told me to never get my fortune told.

I think this is to be believed as it is rather self-defeating for a man and a parrot who make their living telling fortunes.

Fortunes have changed in the last six months. Life has changed. People have left. Places are over. Cords have been severed, to the extent that when I whizz past places at way-too-late-for-girl-to-be-out-on-Delhi-roads I scream FUCK YOU! to all that they represent, secure in the knowledge that it'll be swallowed in the 80 kmph wind a motorbike creates.

I haven't written here, but I have otherwise. In my journal, in my exams, papers and essays, emails that I once composed in my mind, stories I giggled over on the phone. I found myself writing and writing, with just one person in mind -- who, no surprise, has left; I've no idea what to do with it now.

What boggles is that easy assumption which lasted nearly 20 years, which has now crumbled, like it was meant to all along. Cords will be severed all through life.

I thought, atleast family will hold together forever. Now to reconcile to the fact that it will, it will hold, but over ISD calls and postcards from Indonesia and an aching love that struggles over pride and gnawing absence. And that some family loves me only for my blood, and not for what I think or feel or believe in.

Hills are therapeutic, but being on top of one is isolating. There's no words to say, frequently; for all flowery sentimental words that pour out embarrasingly easy, I've frequently got nothing to say. It's fucking scary.

I tried hibernating. I emerged out of it with relatively clear skin. Yay bloody hey.

And now life for the next two years is decided.

And the thought that I won't live it like it should be is crippling.a

music tag

2008-12-13T19:58:00.000+05:30

Put iTunes on shuffle, take the first line from the first 20 songs and use them to make a poem. Use the first line of the 21st song as the title.

I know I stand in line until you think you have the time to spend an evening with me

How long before I get in
Where is a moment when needed the most
When you’re on a holiday

Mama, take this badge from me
When he took the three disciples
Expelled oh from love
Don’t hold yourself like that

Now that I’ve met you
In the days of my youth
If you’ll be my star

Desmond has his barrow in the marketplace
Shot through the heart

There's a song that's inside of my soul
After one whole quart of brandy
Every day is so wonderful

Don’t be so quick to walk away
Back in black

I thought love was only true in fairy tales

A little less conversation
How many special people change.

**

Doesn't it make sense in some twisted way? *tilts head* Do this tag, everyone!!

erase and rewind

2008-12-02T19:17:00.003+05:30

So this is how it ends,

with a backstory

a confidence

a kiss to the shoulder

while pondering the soulsucking vagaries of life

and love and girlie friendship

with cigarettes and adrakwali chai

and khayali pulao.

Oh, to think what I gained on that machan

by losing what I never really had

in the first place.

To A. - beautiful, edgy, sexily smart - I wish you courage and conviction

and the best of luck. Men are scum.

these broken arms won't hold you down

2008-11-28T21:34:00.003+05:30

Are you a generally an angry person?

Am I? Not really. No I'm not.

Then why is your blog full of suppressed anger?

Well, fuck. I don't know. My nails are blunt and worn, they can't draw blood. The higher my voice goes the shriekier and more ridiculous it gets. Fight or flight - flight wins. I stumble for the cutting words that won't come.

When did they last come? I can't remember. I can't remember the last time I was able to discharge my anger. Or even use it in that ugly way, to unload it on someone unwitting and make them cry.

There are people around me who're angry. They're angry that hotels have been bombed and terrorists are running amok and whatthefuck idontcareanymore bombthembombthemallfuckers. There are people who sit watching the news with orgiastic fascination and call me unpatriotic when I don't come and join them. I can't do anything about it, anymore. I'm not angry, in that sense.

So, I have nowhere else to go.

But there's nothing to talk about.

*shrugs* okay then.

and then it took it back from me

2008-11-23T10:37:00.003+05:30

You'll never win. You know that, right?

You know how you'll end? With your mind shattered to bits. With your heart ripped out, lying on ground leaking from the stilleto stab wound. That's how you'll end. Shaking and crying yourself hoarse for help that will not come.

Look at you. You're disgusting. Embrace the world, go ahead. Bullshit. Leave yourself open. Sit and listen to them, patient and understanding. Sponge up the world's suffering. Fucking bleedingheart. Do you think it makes you a better person? What exactly are you compensating for, then? Is it penance for some deep dark secret, is it murder? rape? robbery?

You're wasting your time. You're wasting yourself. Your do-gooding will only have you laughed at. People will use you, people like you aren't of any other use, anyway. You are a loser. You will lose. You will have nothing left at the end of the day. You've given it all away. And when you go begging to get some of it back, they'll kick you and spit at you and jeer at you and throw you away, used.

Just as long as you know what you're doing. That just makes it a million times worse, and really, there's no fun without that, is there?

nothing... else matters. ?

2008-11-12T21:34:00.002+05:30

With a to-do list YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY long
With a head still blurry from the afternoon nap
With fingers that cramp up from the mere thought of writing an assignment

With the certain conviction that comes from knowing I'm forgetting something

... I sit here whinging about how there's nothing to do, and nothing to say and I wait for the phone to ring.

to be the ones who've seen

2008-10-30T20:41:00.005+05:30

The blackness behind your eyelids, as you spasmed and retched on to your side, spilling slime over borrowed floors and yourself; does that feel good now?

That look on your face as you begged and grovelled, snotted all over his feet and his shiny black shoes, flushed face and fevered eyes and then - then, for that one moment of a tired piece of paper going up in fragrant smoke.

That feeling of breath whistling in your nostrils, blood pounding in your head; and the sudden plummeting in your stomach, the inevitable crunch as you meet the ground and lie there in your own wreckage.

You're incurable.

Have you seen it all now?

Good. We can get down to the real business then.

Oh my love, it was a funny funny little thing...

but ships are fallible, I say

2008-10-17T21:55:00.001+05:30

There have been nights when I have felt completely alone in the universe.

But never before now have I been lonelier in my alone-ness, until tonight.

with fate as malleable as clay

2008-10-17T17:18:00.002+05:30

Yesterday, I almost wrote you a letter. About what I was surrounded by, and felt so disconnected from. How I don't think I will ever. How can it possibly come to me? Where would I find it? But that I hope that sometime in the future I will. How that idealist bit in me will hope forever.

That maybe it isn't time yet and when the time comes - and it will come - it will be perfect; with music that burns a slow path through my veins, better than any alcoholic rush you describe, and words uttered with bursts of warm breath that will be better than all kinds of french kisses.

It was going to be a long, pouring-out-angst-and-woe kinda letter, with a little funny thrown in for good measure. I knew you wouldn't have minded. I thought, you know, so it's okay.

Now I feel like I have nowhere to go. It's not your fault.

Just goes to show how assumptions make me a donkey.

drowning in this tidal wave

2008-10-10T22:19:00.003+05:30

Like a thundercloud, rumbling in, with music oddly quiet like the fading pink of the sky, piecing itself together after being split by a bolt of lightning.

Like having to break it down, into small, deal-able pieces: fingertips, eyes, favourite eyelashes, sleep-creased skin under the moonlight - so that, its not too overwhelming. The wholeness of something so extraordinary that it can't beheld all at once.

Like driving down a road at night, blind to everything but the glow of the dashboard on your profile, the rhythm of our breathing, the purr of the road under our feet; blind to the pinpricks of light flashing by, blown away by the force of the cool wind.

Its tightening something in my chest, having something in my grasp almost but not quite.
Like watching someone walk away, through blurry eyes. Knowing that my final memory is going to be fogged up and unclear, softly out of focus.

Even if I wanted to/How could I explain?
Coming through my head now/This tidal wave

you left me your stardust

2008-08-27T23:43:00.002+05:30

I loves YOU!
But you will never know.
Why?
I will never TELL you
thats why.

I'll hide it inside
with inkstained fingers
like a little girl's secret
locked in a diary
behind a false drawer,
and you will never find it
and it never mattered
because you never cared.

But I will giggle and
float around giddy headed.
Distraction is pleasant
a chocolatey taste melting on my tongue.
No no, my love. Don't you get it?
I want nothing to do with you.

In this lonely moment,
I am happy.
Thank you for all you've done.

*

Inspired from here.

as long as you love me baybee

2008-08-14T21:07:00.005+05:30

So there's a bunch of things on my brain. Here goes.

*

I'm having a totally insane conversation on gtalk.

Nabila: cant believe uve heard this song

Harshita: can't believe you have!

Nabila: i heard it when i was like... 9

Harshita: hahaha same here

it was one of the first 'english' songs i heard

Nabila: we both werent 9 at the same time dood

Harshita: so you heard it a year later :P

or earlier

Nabila: I was 9 in .... 1998 i think

Harshita: or

are you 1989 born?! can't be. cuz AIYYAM 1989 born

Nabila: 1988!

eightyeighteightyeight

Harshita: so you would be TEN in 1998

Nabila: i would have my first birthday in 1989

so my ninth in 1998

right?

Harshita: noooooooooooo

count on your FINGERSSSSSSSS

Nabila: yesssss

YEA

fingers say 10

:")

Harshita: BELEEEVE THE FINGERSS
Nabila: now i know why i studied politics

Incidentally, the song we're talking about is Calcutta (taxi, taxi, taxi) because Nab has a very very wonderful blog here

*

Today was a beautiful Delhi rainy day and I was very antisocial. I watched Before Sunrise and liked it vary much. It is pretty movie. It is in Vienna and has two people who are travelling with each other and look like it and use words like 'transitory' while talking about Seurat's paintings. Lyk, srsly. Since the movie is EXACTLY the kind I would LOVE - with real, imperfect, not all good looking characters, a beautiful city, art and music and poetry and brilliant neverending conversations about everything and nothing and palm reading and a night beneath the stars - in the sense I would TOTALLY want this to happen in my life, today I will hate it. Today I will hate the world and moviemakers who get it absolutely right. And movies because they aren't real. I will hate everything that wants to make everything wrong with the real world right.

*

Today I will hate the world. But tomorrow I will beg, grovel, and submit to it, because I can never have what I want. I can only have what the world can give. Tomorrow, I won't even think of it in these terms. Tomorrow I will be in denial and tell myself to embrace the world.

*

You threw up and fell
next to your pool of disgust;
and weren't even drunk.

Does that mean something?

*

I read a disgusting story. I think I'll write one, too.

*

Hello, pretty little bird. Bring sunshine with you the next time you come.

can anybaady find mee, somebaady to loove?

2008-06-23T21:59:00.002+05:30

About six months ago, I felt myself disappearing.

I ate less, drank less, and breathed lesser. I shrank, my body was shrinking, and didn't occupy too much space.

I tried to occupy space differently. I danced in a room full of people. I got on to my tippy-toe and tried a pirouette, only to fall hard to the floor. When I opened my eyes, I was all alone.

I got a new haircut, I talked more and loudly and smiled too much for my own good. Some people saw through me. But I didn't let the ones who really mattered see. I wanted to not exist. I tried folding my limbs into myself, curling into the smallest ball I could - it was pretty small. I slept in a fetal position every night, and occupied barely one-fourth of a double bed.

It wasn't just that, though. It was more of - invisibility. I thought I spoke out loud to deaf ears, and smiled and waved my hands around infront of eyes which weren't caught by anything I did. So it just got worse, I shrank further, into myself. It became a period of questioning - do I matter? how much space do I really occupy in this universe? I'm 19. I'm a woman. I'm 5 feet barely 1 inch. I'm dark. I weigh 46 kilograms. I look like a schoolgirl rather than the undergrad student that I am. What significance could I possibly have?

Worst of all - Has my entire life been an exercise in getting the attention that someone like me could never get otherwise?

I pulled out of it, though. I don't think I've ever been fully happy again, but atleast I stopped questioning.

Then I saw this today,

(from here.)
[I don't mind being heavy.
People are far more willing to listen to me at a size 14
than at a size 6]

and I'm left wondering, is this what I need?

haiku

2008-06-21T22:48:00.003+05:30

cuz Nimmy insists I post, and I should. Mojo come baaack.
~

I traced worry lines
across your forehead. You smiled,
at me, but they stayed.

reconcile

2008-05-15T15:21:00.000+05:30

You -
(it's just easier to address blogposts to you.)
I'm tired of living in a parallel world.

It gives me nothing but
a choked throat in the dark in front of a late night medical show.

It gives me no strength
when on the left side of a bus
and a stinking man leans in
and I flinch.

It teaches me no restraint
to be passive and blank faced
and not be affected while walking on the road
and eyes undress me
or children beg at streetlights selling
'Monk who sold a Ferrari'
for their living.

My parallel world,
maybe not yours,
is made of happy people.
It's in the future, so it's easier.
Phone bills are negligible.
Earthquakes don't happen.
Everyone is friends with everyone else.
People die, but that becomes
a cause of beauty and dignity.
There is Love All Around.
But they're fashionably Messed Up.
They're rich, oh yes.
They have cool jobs.
They have great sex and produce beautiful babies.

And it's not utopia.
It doesn't exist.
And it never will.
So does it make sense to write stories about them, including 'gritty'
and 'everyday, boring, nonprosaic' details
about a world
that is,
essentially,
escapist?

I don't know if I want escape anymore.

I live in a world that is racist,
sexist, casteist, communal.
A famous sportsman can't be gay.
A gay man can't possibly be Muslim.
Not the closest of family friends will embrace heartily
when their children, of different faiths,
marry each other
after having gotten pregnant
before marriage.
Maybe when the consequent babies
are outstandingly cherubic.

Not every man will have read Ayn Rand-type books
and understood them. And cook. Well.
Not every woman will be um, a little plump
and be beautiful, still.

This is not a rant against you, phonebuddy.
Not about any of the ideas we share.

There's a person inside me, crying out to be written
And I can't. I can't.
I don't know the world he existed in.
I don't know if the world we created for him was
even basically adherent
to the rules of world making.
(We could ask the capitalist pigs.)

But, to my fellow parallel-world dweller,
This isn't a poem,
Even if it was, it would never be any good
For nobody except one knows what I'm talking about.

And I could write this story, and they'd think it's lovely.
And my suffocation, oh that would be pseudo-arty-anguish.
(Just like Marxism will remain just an ideology.)
It would remain just that, a story.
Words on screen or paper.

I could let go, but then I'd be hollow.
Hollow persons scare me,
I won't be one of them.
Sitting in a tedious job where my back hurts- wait, that's where I am right now.

I'm sorry for everything I've said.
I'm sorry for having forced my dreams on you.
I didn't know what I was talking about.

one fine day

2008-05-01T12:53:00.000+05:30

You,

I grow antsy without you. The days are empty and graceless like rolling plains, and I miss you and your words and your virtual laughter. For we don't talk with our voices, but with our words, with our fingers. Through letters, scraps of 'paper'. On screens, multiple. And sometimes, through the things we don't say, for an essential components of our souls are one, they come from the same place.

I hope to plug the voids in the day with books and writing, since you're not around. There's an aching hunger that a story doesn't quite fill, so I seal the cracks with haiku and poetry and conversations that seem to be going nowhere. Writing is a lonely job, do you know who said that? Ask me. I'm trapped in a solitary room and suffocate with the thoughts of more than one person in my mind. They ache, my characters, they weep and I want to go out and find them, put my arms around them and rest a while.

I read epic romances, paragraphs that create entire worlds with brushstrokes so feather-light, and put down the book for I can't breathe for the richness of the mind's eye. I watch travel shows, and see the places we dream about. (We might not have ever talked about Paris, but I know your longing for the poetic, the romantic, the unknown, the faraway. Because it is mine too.) I hear the cocky words of the cowboyboot-clad host and giggle, and think of you and how your snarky mind would reflect them. I see him down shots of absinthe and hallucinate, and wonder, what would I go on a trip about? How would it be if I let me lose myself, for once, just once?

Friends tell me to come drinking with them. I'm afraid I'll become an addict. Do I overthink it? Do I push them away, telling them sorry, no, can't and then waiting for them to call? Is someone out there overtaking everything dear to me?

Maybe this letter is more to myself than to you. But I miss you, you're my... soulmate? mirror? Our conversations are blurring, and I'm sinking into an abyss. I want the smoky oblivion of jazz, piano and sax and a high, sparing voice. You're the only one who understands.

I hate depending on you, this way. Wondering how you feel as you read these words, what you think of me and my stalker proclivity levels, am I pushing too far? Do we have boundaries that are fragile, afterall? Because I've never felt the abandon that I have with you, ever before.

I hate Depending on others, unable to reach me and understand me, wrapped in their grief, prejudice, anger, illness. I hate needing to share every shiny thing that comes my way with someone, and this stupid juvenile childlike wonder I take too far. I want to learn to be content in my aloofness. I've lived in the same place for too long- I want your life, changing constantly and bringing to you a brand of wisdom I've never known before.

I miss you, and it's redundant talking of how we met so recently when it feels like I've known you forever. Re-reading this letter, I think I'm just thankful that you are, a real person. Who will probably read this.

I may be losing my mind, and soon you'll be in the same city as me. Do you want to meet up? Or do you think we connect better over a physical distance?

I don't know, anymore. My throat aches with all the noises I'm not making. Come back come back come back sanity. My eyes are blurring with the print, and I'm tired of the songs on loop. I want to cry but it feels useless.

Come back.

2008-04-12T22:08:00.001+05:30

i never wanted
to live blistering, angered.
but what use, this peace?

someone to bruise and leave behind

2008-04-06T12:28:00.001+05:30

How do you cope with loss?

Loss of innocence, loss of love, loss of a memory, of a fairytale that still blur your eyes; two days, two years, fifteen years ago; still you hear the laughter that chased you weaving through the fat stone pillars, the bells that tinkled in the vibration filled peace, the hiss of frying brinjal and turmeric, the rhythmic grating of vegetables in the steamy kitchen and laughter, love, advice, togetherness in the bright sunshine of the courtyard as the wet flour dries into crackles to be fried. How do you cope with the loss of belongingness?

How do you hold on to a smile that is lost? A smile that reassures your childish fears, one you thought was your constant, your come-home-to; beaming happily at seeing you again, so long it has been, the big bad city that had snatched you away from them. Mischief at being alone in the house, time for crazy adventures and stories and experiments and smiling in exasperation when the house is a mess, afterwards. Smiling to reminisce, the stories that are fresh and still alive in your hearts, flashing vividly as you recount them, sitting around cups of steaming tea and creating yet more memories. How can you bear to think those smiles won't be yours to see anymore?

It's gone, all gone; your father is gone, your mother is gone, your house and your childhood and your history, your past and your family and your traditions, they are all gone - the paintings and murals and lampshades that proudly hung from the stone-strong walls and pillars, dusty bookshelves of assorted debris, huge vats that stored spicy mango pickles to feed a family of ten and assorted guests through six seasons, the stained glass panels that threw rainbows on the floor you stepped in while the scorching sun burnt itself up outside.

Your kin is scattered across the world now, they all live in bubble wrapped microcosms of self that they create around themselves to protect themselves from the huge gaping chasm of loss that the holes of their past lives are.

And you too, until a Sunday afternoon at the hissing kitchen stove and the laughter of your children punches a hole and you struggle to hold back the flood as you smile and look out at your drab flat lit up by the sun. You've lost a castle of your own. You must learn to tell stories here, now.

at night i trip without you, and hope that i don't wake up

2008-03-30T16:08:00.001+05:30

I haven't let go of my anger, sadly. I'm just balling it up, smaller and tighter and harder, and pushing it inside a dark shelf that I only know by touch, one I've never seen the back of. It's full of things like those, anyway.

It's just no use to be angry. Why have standards, or expectations? It's stupid to have those from people you know too well, anyway. It maybe love or resignation or acceptance, but why bother getting worked up over an incident or reaction or situation that was anticipated really, one that you knew was coming. Indeed. It saves you those moments of gut bursting anger, annoyance and disappointment - illnevergetwhatiwantaslongasyourearoundyoudontunderstandWHATTHEHELLyounevercaredwhatithoughtanyway. It's probably good for your health in the long run. I know it's been good for mine, and my interpersonal relationships too.

Maybe it won't do me any good to try and fight back. There is relief at the end of this surrender. I'd ball myself up too, curl up and tuck myself into a dusty corner where no one would notice or care, but on my good days, I embrace life. I'd embrace, but not fight back, which is rather overrated. Where and who says that I need to scream and yell and kick and scratch to get what I need? I'm tired of fortifying myself and holding it up and letting imaginary cares lean on me. Maybe I wasn't strong enough to fight in the first place, and it is a losing battle. I want to give in and surrender so badly.

It's almost a hellhole sometimes. Sometimes, I don't know what I really need.

Just another year, and then I'll be out of here. Then I'll take a week off to let it all out, let it all go to hell, and then get back and stitch myself back together.

i keep a close watch on this heart of mine

2008-03-04T20:58:00.002+05:30

I can't believe I'd never heard Johnny Cash before. To be more specific, I walk the line

~

Today was the birthday of a dear friend, and she puts up too many walls around her heart. Keeps a close watch, indeed. She says it's because she's not sure she can give back the love she receives from her friend. I disagree- I think it's because she's not sure she can take the love we give her.

Read this, and come to think of it, how many people go through life thinking they don't deserve all that they have? What could be more debilitating than such self-doubt, I wonder. Its worse because the people I have in mind are good people, the kind that send out goodness into the world from a genuine sense of comes-from-within. It takes guts to be nice to people, and think well of people and things before making judgements. It takes guts to be an optimist, because it's so easy to not be one. In some senses, the nice people I know are the ones who are either very, very comfortable with who they are; or desperately grasping from some meaning in their life; or sometimes they're both.

I don't mean this to be an everyone-open-your-heart-let's-live-life-full-of-love post. Maybe its a plea for good people to breathe more freely. It's not fair that its they who live with a stone on their back.

~

I walk the line. I've never taken country music seriously. The song in question starts out with these honky-tonk strains that I think, seriously? And then he hums, and then he sings, and I think oh shit I KNOW what he's talking about. Simple words and simple rhymes and he spells out, what sounds to me, something far more deep and convoluted than a long-distance love.

Love was never as simple as a Backstreet Boys song, was it? Or as twisted and hurty as a Damien Rice song? On the double planed spectrum of puppy to tragic, how will love come to me? Maybe quietly and sweetly like a Jack Johnson song. Or psychedelic-ly like a Beatles song. Or lush and aching like an Aqualung song. I wonder.

As sure as night is dark and the day is light...

~

A birthday wish for my beautiful friend of fluttery hand gestures and long eyelashes and short truncated laughs. Don't be afraid to claim your due, ever. I hope we made you so happy today that its made up for all the shit of the past few months.

~

And happiness I've known proves that it's right
Because you're mine,
I walk the line

change

2008-02-14T21:52:00.002+05:30

It was a cold and gloomy week, with winds that stung and a chill that crept in under the hems of my jeans and stayed.

And today the weather broke. It was an unhazy day and the skies were clear, and the sun shone golden, sunshine that crisped the back of my neck as I unwound the scarf, bright light that dazzled the eyes after standing too long in no-longer elusive patches of sunlight. And as we walked, sweaters came off and moving back into the shade meant a pleasant, drenched, drugged state, and shivered as a breeze blew against sun-heated skin.

Shine on, you crazy diamond.

silver linings

2008-01-26T17:04:00.000+05:30

So, everytime the world starts seeming like to depressing a place to live in, it turns around and shines back at me.

We seem to be talking about religion a lot nowadays. How much do you practice? Do you follow religion? Do you think this is OK? Does God exist? Do you believe in Him? Is it a Him or a Her?

Then there are debates on fundamentalism. Religion taken too far. Wars and killing and intolerance. Morality and standards. Hurting moral sentiments. Licences and liberties once so freely taken are constrained now. People die for preaching what they believe in. People preach hate. A Muslim can't walk down alone down a Hindu street. Indira Gandhi's killers are declared martyrs. I really don't want to go on.

But then, there are days like today. Watch the Republic Day parade, and feel float-y. Maybe at least in symbols and decorations and uniform, our country is united. Maybe at least for a day, the concept of my country united in diversity has some meaning, some pride, some 'patriotism' left.

Grand gestures, and grand achievements and performances and showoffs. How far we have come. Divide and Rule to, well... whatever kind of divisions there are today. Maybe they've always been there. Maybe it's just me, I realise these divisions now that I have lenses to look at them with.

But then, today, a peaceful holiday with weak sunlight in my sleepy residential colony. A Sikh family has organised a reading of the Guru Granth Sahib for a deceased relative, so the strains of the chants float around the streets on the cold afternoon. At 12 30, the nearby mosque starts up the afternoon namaaz prayers. I can't quite capture it in words, I wish there was a way to capture the sound of it, the two voices, the two calls to a faceless formless God, almighty and all powerful.

And then a mobile ringtone outside our window, perhaps a driver or a watchman, starts up, 'Om bhur bhuvasvaha, tatsah viturvarenyam!...'

My world. There is freedom to exist in it, still. And our strengths are such that we do, we keep existing, side by side, ignoring each other, tolerating each other, whatever. There are killings and murders and hate all around us, but sometimes, our voices mingle and we pray together in our different tongues to the different names we worship. On a sleepy afternoon in my suburban colony, maybe there is hope for religion still, in the lives of ordinary people who pray in the morning before going to work and come home in the evening as their children play in the park nearby, laughing and unmindful.

New photos

2008-01-20T12:48:00.000+05:30

My third set of photos for 100 Snapshots up

HERE
:D

This time with photos of my trip to Sharjah/Dubai. Go see!

photographeee

2007-11-20T21:37:00.000+05:30

There's this project over at Livejournal, called 100 snapshots, where there's a list of 100 themes and you have to take photographs on each theme.

I have about 14 photos up already, here and here. Here's my table of contents, links to photos taken already.

1. Safety	2. Stale	3. Feathered	4. Hot	5. Open	6. Forever	7. Love	8. Touch	9. Colorless	10. Blue
11. Smell	12. Growth	13. Irony	14. Wrong	15. More	16. Feel	17. Muse	18. Child	19. Within	20. Pale
21. Earth	22. Torn	23. Scars	24. Stray	25. Drops	26. Against	27. Dry	28. Fresh	29. Covered	30. Bold
31. High	32. Shadow	33. Concrete	34. Vein	35. Rush	36. Yellow	37. Empty	38. Cliché	39. Central	40. Loss
41. Wonder	42. Sweet	43. Poetry	44. Heavy	45. Fall	46. Chair	47. Statue	48. Kool-Aid	49. Dark	50. Breath
51. Garbage	52. Silk	53. Teacher	54. Cream	55. Wash	56. Corner	57. Rose	58. Field	59. Two	60. Red
61. Music	62. Rope	63. Decrepit	64. Chase	65. Dream	66. Dance	67. Smile	68. Smirk	69. Reflection	70. Soul
71. Lock	72. Key	73. Rust	74. Find	75. Lose	76. Drag	77. Wind	78. Rest	79. Swing	80. Meeting
81. Vacant	82. Hazy	83. Release	84. Gather	85. Swarm	86. Road	87. Wait	88. Stand	89. Distance	90. Trapped
91. Desk	92. Detach	93. Shatter	94. Home	95. Shy	96. Tackle	97. Begin	98. End	99. Time	100. Life

tagged

2007-10-28T10:46:00.000+05:30

by Dhruv and Indrani. Sorry this is a lil late ;)

List five things that you want to say to people but never will. Don't say who they are.

1. Now that I know you a little better, I'm glad you never knew when I was in love with you.
2. I fail to understand how the fuck can you mess things up for yourself like this.
3. Get off your high pedestal, bitch.
4. Um, ok. My life's not really all that. Stop fantasising?
5. CAN YOU GIVE ME YOUR PHONE NUMBER???????????????????????

Seven things I’d love to do before I die.

1. Wear 6-inch stilletos. Walk around in them, and feel like I own the world.
2. Live in five different places, and pick up five different languages in their marketplaces.
3. Travel around Delhi for a week with my camera.
4. Publish a book of short stories or poems. Or chick-lit.
5. Watch U2 and Coldplay and Jamie Cullum (and more) in concert. Open air. In somewhere cool like that castle that U2 performed in.
6. Research on something really really kickass, and write an analysis of that something that will change the world.
7. Drive a car, really really fast.

Five things I will not do even if it kills me.

1. Go out of my way to do something that I know will hurt someone.
2. Borrow money and not return it.
3. Quit a job without a backup source of income lined up.
4. Let go of my notions of faith and God.
5. Betray my friends.

Five things I do when I'm away from the public.

1. Have imaginary conversations with real or imaginary people.
2. Dance instead of walking.
3. Act out scenes from books or TV shows.
4. Play air-guitar and headbang.
5. Try to trace my thoughts backwards.

Five fave sentences/quotes.

1. 'Zip is left and zap is right. Uffo. Zip is the hand you eat with, and zap is your potty hand. Clear now?'
2. 'This too shall pass.'
3. 'Can I put my arm around you? Its like the crook of my elbow needs necks.'
4. 'You have a beautiful soul.' 'That's not my soul you're looking at.'
5. 'We have to put them to a new train of thought. It doesn't matter which station they get off on, but to be on the train is what matters.'

Five things I'll make you wish you didn't do if you did.

1. Badmouth my friends. If not to me, atleast infront of me.
2. Tell me how empty and boring your life seems.
3. Ask me about my issues.
4. Hurt my little brother, in any which way imaginable.
5. Express fundamentalist views.

Is there anyone left to tag?

Hide

2007-10-28T10:26:00.000+05:30

discussing space and size and shelves, height depth and width, makes me wonder-

in a world of growing gulfs and shrinking distances
sprouting buildings and widening roads
flowering trees and raging seas
big smiles and bigger handshakes
bigger voices and bigger laughter wit and sarcasm
and knowing-it-all-genuinely

walking tall, pinstripes and stiletto heels
walking everywhere, windswept hair and kajal eyed
with a reason, in a direction, with confidence

in a world with more and more corners
more walls, glitter and sparkle
more things to bury faces in
more things to say out loud - instead
a lump in your throat as a fashionable cough
where time is at a premium
where company is abundant
but nothing can really shake away that feeling
that at the end of the day, end of it all, really,
you are, you know,
like, yeah, you're
alone

yeah

in that feeling, here and now,
short and slim and small and stubby
a solitary nondescript being

how much space do i really occupy in the world?

An Ode to a ‘A Suitable Boy’

2007-10-07T17:19:00.000+05:30

A Suitable Boy, how I fell for thee!
You have come to mean the world to me.
For the past three days, I have been numb
to the world outside - been deaf and dumb.

A bewitching universe contained within your pages,
1379 leaves that would normally take ages -
captured me in a way I could not resist,
and I breathlessly gulped with every turn and twist.

Delightfully enchanted by all the poetry in the words,
poems, couplets, ghazals, bhajans, and 'The fever bird'-
I am stirred to write a rhyming ode to you-
The book that has consumed me, through and through.

Every character, I recognise; every family- I adore,
even the politics and law courts were not a bore!
You had something for all my esoteric tastes!
and every small detail, I wished for to haste.

The travails of the suitors too, I read with pain and joy,
for sometimes I too wonder of my own suitable boy.
I recognise on me too, the same familial bonds and bounds,
and the compromises made for what there is no getting around.

How many times did I fall in love throughout the yarn?
Kabir the dashing cricketer! Lovable, wastrel Maan!
Malati of the green eyes! Kuku Kakoli! Though my heart's ultimate repose
would be the gorgeous, sensitive, achingly lovely lawyer Firoz...

The parts in the last left me gasping and weeping,
and in suspense, there was no question of sleeping!
Till 3 am, I sat up with you. A lump in my throat rose
with the ache in my heart, as the last page came close.

I suppose I must thank for your loan, xania88
And of course, the great inimitable Mr Vikram Seth!
If I do turn out a novel someday, as is my heart's wish,
I hope it is as breathtaking and life-overtaking as this.

effects of a giggly group of girls

2007-10-03T20:33:00.000+05:30

When in a jaded, cynical, disillusioned state of mind:

Step 1: Find yourself giggly group of girls. Better if they are usually giggly out of choice and happiness at being together, not as a general state of being due to avian qualities of their brains.

Step 1.5: Make friends with such a group. Lifelong commitment only.

Step 2: Meet up with them. Preferably in the night.

WARNING: No sleep allowed. Penalty will be giggly girls falling on you.

Step 3: Gracefully submit to the involuntary laughter due to perverted humour/limit-pushing slapstick/knowing these girls as well as yourself/pure happiness at being with them.

Step 4: Forget jaded, cynical, disillusioned state of mind completely and utterly. Throw yourself into the slapstick.

NOTE: Slapstick includes:
-Music videos with beautifully expressive unrestrained acting to songs like 'Made in India', 'O meri munni' and 'Temperature'.
-Modeling sessions with bedsheets and chunnis.
-Multiple rounds of pictionary involving pins drawn like sausages, squiggly lines to show hurricanes, boobs drawn on stick figures, chillis that look like bananas in order to show Chile.
-Generally dancing impromptu steps in sync to odd songs such as Alarma. Including role playing sometimes.
-Plenty of reference to lesbian sex and marriage.
-WEIRD self photography sessions.
-Discussions threatening to be serious turning into someone imitating everyone else's style of sneezing.
-Watching horror movies, screaming, clutching each other and later accusing each other of groping.
- is this not enough dammit.

Step 5: Fall asleep at 5, only to have someone's phone ring to the tune of 'Show me the meaning'. Have a half-awake yet melodious jam session of Backstreet Boys songs.

Step 6: Wake up at 10 and whine about not wanting to go home. Be force-fed yummy breakfast.

Step 7: Depart for home and spend the rest of the day sleep deprived, yet rejuvenated and refreshed and healthy from the copious amount of laughter. Alternatively, fall asleep and wake up rejuvenated etc etc.

And all shall be well with the world. :)

to the days whiled away

2007-10-02T11:58:00.000+05:30

listening to emo songs and intermittently playing freecell, all feeling sorry for myself, skin under my eyes stretched and jaded heaviness sitting on my head.

Begone! No more of you, I say!

*swats at metaphorical mosquitoes*

2007-09-30T22:56:00.000+05:30

Benevolent Creator

visualizations: bars and waves

2007-09-29T20:45:00.000+05:30

How
do you
describe in words
the beauty of the
dramatic melody
of a strumming
guitar?

How
do you
describe in words?
The feeling of -
a hand gently eased under yours and -
warmly held as if to reassure
this beauty is real all this is real

and here I am
I'm here
I am
sharing it
with you

And then
how
do you explain
the strange overwhelming impulse that
made you
swat
that hand
away?

this time, this moment, this spot, this place

2007-09-27T20:21:00.000+05:30

The eye of a storm is a region of mostly calm weather.

What an oxymoron; like sweet sadness and glorious madness.

And yet, as the rabble lifts around me and starts to swirl, dust threatening my eyes and mouth and ears, a constant ringing noise - like my cellphone's ringtone in fact - and a vague troubling feeling, i've forgotten something what what what is it oh shit - I can stand right in the middle, and I feel calm.

For the first time in almost a year, more perhaps, I feel peaceful. Taking stock of my life in its entirety at this point in time, for the first time in too long, I can smile - to be commemorated by a new blog. And this point comes just at the brink of everything about to go crazy.

You know what? Bring it on.