tap tap tap

Have been having a face-off with sleep for a while. Lids don’t ache, eyes just blink at their normal pace, not one dragged moment where I'm lulled by some passing whiff that's remotely like my warm bed, musty sheets, rubbed in with my own unique smell. Well, I’ve tried reading the most slow paced book but nevertheless lovely -Far from the madding crowd. I don’t believe in torturing myself to sleep by those maniacal babbles…have a few of those. Was part of syllabus…what ta do?

What better company than the worldwide web for an insomniac who’s quite happy with the affliction. Read blogs, surfed, discovered how much I don’t know, made comparisons, put me under a magnifying glass, scrutinized my recesses, knocked on them, some of them half filled and most of them don’t exist even and then there are the larvae of dreams, of numerous DIYs discarded, blooming and stagnating in the fetid tropical heat of marsh. Sweet smell of stink. Hey that’s fodder. That’s good. Fuchsia sprout from the crevices. A wreath. Hemmed in by cranium.

I know I know what I know and I happen to be staring at a two-way mirror…also. Well, right now I feel like I do know ‘my’ music. So been skimming through modern poets…Bob Dylan, Gil Scott Heron. And well, here’s a poem by Langston Hughes. Avronea, you or I could have written this ya know. Bloody brilliant! Similar strains make me believe that it could have been you or me. Well, this is not pompous assertion. Just another way of saying the poem connects.


Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes

I love you gray!

Versatility, multi-tasking superfluous waxy batty vain fantasizing phantasmagoric marshland, orchestrator of meandering hopes, bends lit with possibilities with high improbability neon signs blinking rapidly, stutter down another curve oozing a sordid waste of time, internal marijuana, nerve ends twitch in anticipation, collector of broken, ancient, and sometimes in tact memories of the darnedest things showcased on either sides of the glass tunnel, then you shrug off this and take on one of an inconspicuous spy as though that was you of those beatnik days…tattoo on shoulder and Woodstock, now more sober, assimilate, then break down distortion to create your way of noise, twitch as a small facial muscle ticks to an unseen threat, contain excitement in a fragile canister when something is discovered, rotate 360 as though turning over a colourful sea worn shell like a kid would with awe, exhilaration…quizzical. There’s more to you than just this…you go on…vain aren’t ya describing your own self…and good plan! State your twisted way with a pomposity that’s bound to make you a cult and then balance yourself out with more discerning faculties (?)

And since I’m on this tentacled monster here are a few things it reveled in the recent past.

I was meant to see it. Breathe in orange fruitella of a fog. I’m a crabby morning person but day before yesterday I followed my mom out like a mute puppy… at 4:30 in the morning! Was yet to recover from my space journey but my new setting felt like I whirled into another one…fog! Fog! Fog! Of a very pretty kind…tungsten fog! A never-ending marmalade passage. Seemed like you had to slurp through it all to look beyond next door. Scrumptious!

One of the many discoveries made in hostel on days when wrangling with tubes squirted 'pops' of nothingness...Dabur Red. Tis such an awesome tooth paste! It’s got a tingly viru viru flavaa...like this leaf called Karpaga Valli (karpaga valli is a thick juicy ridged leaf good for cold and stuff and smells remotely like eucalyptus) :-D I’m hooked alright.

I’m a fucked up individual as it is. What makes me fucked up in a not so nice way is PMS!!! R knows I’ve been feeling like I’ve been wound around the grooves of a foundation iron rod. Thing about foundation iron rods are that they go through the center of a pillar. It’s pinned me down through my core and my core not like a contortionist twirling around a bar but more like a psycho who’s wrung me out like a piece of wet cloth on a bar. Well, at least I got my foundation right.

Burp!

I’ve been staring at this jus-a-few-secs-ago-blank page since 5. Am going through that familiar state where you’ve hogged so much and you’re so stuffed you don’t want to barf but squish a satisfied fart cause then all that tummy ache’s been worthwhile, but the fart plays hard to get. It’s an eno, a soda, or a lil ginger that does the trick…that too after much manual pulsation. Well, it’s the same thing. I’ve had a perfect weekday-weekend. So perfect that, every faculty and sense organ has earned the spot light. And a lil while ago the words weren’t coming out…Phew!

A Greek tragedy cum Beckettian Q marks and Kesselring’s morbidity doused with insane laughter – perfecto!

Two lives enmeshed with what communication theories state as similar fields of experience…lived a sort of finality. Meandered over the good, the pleasant and went glassy eyed (am talking about the far off look…yeah ok there were a few tears too). What’s amazing about the huge big kind heaving heart and thankfully lousy memory is that that’s all that remains. The Qs, the lolling from an ‘ok’ to an ‘I’m good’ to ‘FUCK!’ and then a ‘what the heck’, the doldrums…none of it has really made much of a dent. Proof - we sang along with Corey Taylor’s bother! A real optimist thrives even on pain and makes the best of it. Hey R where’s that book!?! ;-)

Aside: Blanched. Stumped. Clueless. Floundering. Never knew the right things to do to say to erase to change…nothing. Got stuck in the recess of Y. Got salts that can absorb the pain of transition? Guess there is…it comes as a package deal with any human.

Figured out why pigs orgasm for 90 minutes. Pigged out on a kenzos burger n caaaaaame! Digested it all with a winkless night. Narcissism is a proven bouncing back technique. R was so obsessed with her blog and I was pretty much fascinated with the screen. Glued we peeked at loads of people’s profiles…cursed them, laughed our arses off (literally cause only our halves had the chair) and basically went insane with tanglish (that’s what tamizh+English is no?)

Well, there’s always a catch. We paid attention to our lead lids. Mom kept pounding on the door…and yeah we (g)ro(u)se(d). Think cummings would be proud of me?

Marghazhi and its pani had me in thermal wear of sorts however much I refused to believe that Madras could never ever get me into musty winter bundles. Smelling like an old dusty room I lumbered out and squinted under a bulb to check the petrol in the bike. Poked my ear instead and happy with the sploshing, rolled it out. Silence is a petulant kindergarten bully who’d give you away at the slightest whine. And today silence had a nice huge smirk. My bike spliced through it like a kid with hot fresh tears trying to get away.

Once out on the main roads I snuggled into smugness. Well, you see I wasn’t the only one. But really Madras is a real kick-starter like its filter coffee! The place dozes only for a few hours it seems. The paperboys edged out almost onto the center of the road. ‘twas a whole community out there! Joggers, sloppers, walkers under the street light…tungsten and smudged over.

We droned on beautiful fresh roads breathing morning. And at 6 we were there to wish a happy pongal to surya bhagavan bang outside his doors...beasant nagar beach pavement. Anniyan would’ve thumped as proudly on our backs…we strolled up and down the pavement to find the right spot to spot the sun (duh! but hey we were looking for panorama); found it and plonked our bags down and not us cause in gravely grimy white was written ‘do not sit here’. Why didn’t anyone tell us that no one cares at 6 am when they’re busy pumping iron or burning their lungs?! Not even the cop! (DUH!) Yaaa…we like this wonly!

While the sun went about getting ready for its big day behind mauve curtains the dogs took a liking to us and so much so that some growled to get to us. But we stood on…obstinate, wanting to be the first to wish the sun. With a train to catch and mom who’s bound to holler if I don’t get back in time to help with the palagaaram we decided to leave a note…whispered to the air ‘oh well…happy pongal alright…catch you later in the day.’

Hey lawyers here’s a tip – if anyone knows how to defend a case, their case, it’s namma auto drivers. Man! That man charged 100 bucks…freaking emotional fuckwit! Pandiga naalaan…dude it’s Central freaking station! That place brims with people 24/7…ooruku pudhusa?!!!

Decided to dorn the garb of a tamizh ponnu and plucked flowers for pujai though I went about it in the most unfeminine way – scrambled under the bush on all fours sniffing at pavazha mallis and nimbly picked them flowers with my long dainty fingers (why do I try?)

She made it on time with 20 minutes to spare! Square 1- a mini session of last night…ponderings, wonderings, travellings, cursings, laughter rings, and confirming that we aren’t flounderlings but in fact strong, aware, weird and in love with us ;-) Finito!

Surfing the seams

Dreams and parallel worlds are textured by anxiety, ribbed with lil chunks dimunitive and eaten spelling hope of a kind...that there is an element of possibilty as there is an element of reality even if it slinks towards the sordid. Well, aren't iron rich spinach grown by gutters? Opposites quell. When you read blurbs that go ‘lessons on how to live everyday to its fullest’, which instead of pushing forth suck you into a vortex of contrasts, of incomplete purposes like half-built freshly-cemented yet abandoned or absconded from one-floor one rooms with iron rods like the polypods of a dead cockroach sticking right up through air in the middle of a patchy land, the kinds one passes on a train journey, the ones that lie on the outskirts, the ones planned by new money.

The anarchist sniffs the air; the air turns summery with hay shine. Warm and expanding air; wanting to lie on a beach a lil away from a coconut tree glazed over by silver-blue glinting sea, boadacious curves courtesy nuzzling sand, rhythmically breathing to the rolling froth. Every sense converging on one plot and from it arise options – a drive on ECR, a stroll through crocodile farm, mango pulp juicing down in veins on my forearm, and nothing and no one…all of them diaphanous meanderings. This is the point of no return cause when it is possible I give up. Scary…involves relinquishing the known, lack of aggression, and litmus tests whether it is escapism or in fact meant to be. Turning your back and walking on is the hardest thing… walking away on the other hand is an easier, flawed assurance of a braindead reality.

Well, Pooh said don’t underestimate the power of doing nothing. I say don't think nothing of the power of nothing. Anarchists are dysfunctional.

A saturday like any other...

Woke up when a second more would’ve made my brains with a low shudder expand and eke out of my ears. Sleep and dreams are tred on with Air Jordans methinks cause the first step out of bed is like lead! I trundle to the switchboard. Turning on the loo lights I step into peach land. No, really…I had just cleaned it with Pril the previous night (apart from that my bathroom is all pink!) S-tumped, T-orpid, U-nnerved, P-athetic, O-bnoxious, R-ancid and in its throes the next one hour flits as I trail on the marble getting ready for a bath. Nope, not hot water, tis mint that knocks me up the good way.

A rumble in my mid-section ushers in my dawn. A satisfied senseless grin and a spurt of a burp complete my ablutions. Sated I wind my brain for the next few hours. It tick tocks its way into last night. The torture I went through unveils page by page. There are some books which are in fact evil genies who subvert power and have the reader in their grip till the task is completed. The Circle of reason…sounds like one too doesn’t it? The utter madness with which the story unfolds has got me whining as it's got me in a half nelson. The trick is to treat it like a cramp. Wait for it to let go by itself, which in other words means finish the godamn book!

But then there’s the will, there’s the strength in us human beings to repel. But sadly in my case it isn’t any great victory but mere escapism. I decided to buy more books! And with a teeny pocket what better place than Moore Market?! Galvanized by mom’s tea I hopped on to a bus. Here’s the subplot…

Bus journeys are a world of their own. In the clamour and in the grating gearbox are stories heard and stories created, questions unfolded and answered. It growls and prowls its way around the ‘current’ museum outside the periphery of the Tate. A billboard artist’s shop with the usual cherubic, toothless, splotchy, smile plastered-baby (which does anything but to advertise ones skills) has got me crawling back through the navel. With my waist down stuck as in a bottle and neck dunked in psychedelic pink and truly inverted as I once was germinated, my bottom half sprouts ears and to the grumbling roll and out of key ‘world’ music I wonder, aren’t I actually at any given point of time 9 months older?

Having removed my red-tinted U(uterus)V glasses I go-a-belonging. I see a man panting and puffing for 20 meters to the bus stop, I see a man hunched on his haunches…waiting, and I see a woman rapping loudly on the bus to stop. The power of choice…its amazing! The feeling of empowerment to know you have an option is mind-blowing! I wonder how it is to not have the option of knowing there are other means of travel, that this 10 rupees counts different for different people, that I can afford to avoid rush hour and hail an auto, that I don’t have to walk that much more from the bus stop to home cause I can always hail an auto, that missing a stop doesn’t mean fleshing out my pocket, that walks aren’t momentary whims but the only way. Well, Sartre said choices are our bane (he probably wasn’t referring to the mundane but these are just as essential), but I’d rather have them than not knowing.

Central Station looms before me. It thwacks my blinkers away as I take in its expanse, its aura. As I get off I can’t but stop and gaze stupidly at this immense entity that has lived so many goodbyes and greetings, mirrored so many faces, eroded by so many farewells and yet it thrives and bustles non-stop. Heartless it seems but it is the closest to the cosmic heart, ever-pumping in and out. I do a rewind in chip & dale voices. I’m one of the caricatures it swallowed and chomped out for nearly 2 years. But this time I respectfully gaze away in a different direction.

As I brush past all sorts of faces all sorts of sounds all sorts of smells, the one thing that streams out like a festoon from my nostrils is the sticky sweet smell of pineapples from vendors mashed with the tang of the sea and coated with pungent urine.

I stride into the maze of the once glorious flea market of bygones of mom and dad’s times. Now it's just shambles…lil knick-knacks here and there - old dingy costumes, broken and pasted gadgets, but there is treasure in such places. And like all treasures it is to be unearthed... from dusty-musty-fish tank smelling piles...Books! Used, second-hand books…assimilated, disseminated, recycled - Phoenix! (Oh by the way there are also gramophones that work!)

But, this one time I was disappointed. The stacks have begun to echo us. We have impinged upon them. Engineering books, Mills & Boons, and popular fiction (the bleah kinds) dominate. The only ones left behind are the Classics because they are the Classics. All those brilliant inbetweeners who surpassed the title ‘Classics’ and chose their own have grown invisible and almost vanished. Or maybe it’s a good sign. There have been many who’ve beaten me to the racks.

Disgruntled, I roved through the passages, doing many shops twice as I got lost at right angles. A pacifier I needed and I got - a termite drilled, battered ‘Lord of the flies’. I usually skip around bargaining but I had to get it out on something and so I did. Did quite a successful job too. 20 bucks! Uhh the dude quoted 30…

I slithered down the subway (thanks to chipped stairs) and after scrutinizing bus boards got into one on an impulse, one I knew would take me all over the city. And it did! With nothing left to do as I saw shorter routes glide past me, I began to marvel as to how well I know the city. And before it could take me a fourth time away, I wobbled off at a signal and flexed my legs a bit.

Got home to a second round of tea and plonked down in front of my shrink – my computer. And been here ever since…almost.

Falooda!

Time machine, after life, crystal ball gazing, alter ego and more…all through a single medium – Music. Lilting tunes or ones with percussion and bass give a feel of vast expanse and the likes of riding the wind. But of course it doesn’t always have to be subtle. Landscapes ranging from cold, green to arid and inbetweens; callused feet, horny nails, dust spotted cheeks to trundling wagons, leather boots, a cigar; mid-eastern turns cowboy and a whole gamut of unnamed unplayed roles. Music is the conductor and our senses the orchestra of drama. Languages are known...we don’t need to disseminate the words…the essence morphs us into whatever it wants us to be. Ethereal to thrillers…music is a spring of the a priori.

Some of the songs I’ve been living lives to…

Maybe tomorrow by the Stereophonics…Am the girl in the bubble. Tis autumn. I stride down the pavement. Time is mine. It moves with me…the only person who counts. My blue Reebok sneakers streamlined with silver skitter…I’m running and this time in my head through time. I ram though the places I’ve been…the ones that have moulded me, made me be. They stand undeterred, content and composed in the knowledge they had to do what they had to to formulate another vat of bubbling, boiling, frothing experiences. This one’s a little red turning purple. Fermentation? Can’t do the composition otherwise now can I? Do I go looking for another salt? Or do I explore this vat and nestle in its spinning nucleus? “So maybe tomorrow I’ll find my way home…”

I pause to catch a wisp out of The Magic Numbers. Slowing down I spot a bench and burrow into tunnel vision. They all open up before me. The night at UTC on a cold, ridged stone bench swapping family problems with vanilla coke and a brownie…the drive down chitoor road with purple-yellow canopy …the first night we stayed up with vodka and noodles…the first time I sneaked out of home to another city…but above all that the love, the care, the affection, the fun, the thrill of indulgence, the fights, the kadis, the waiting, the longing, and the looming end (?)…maybe I would've been happy a lotos eater or maybe not… “maybe I’m a fool for walking in line. Maybe I should try to leave this time… Love is just a game broken all the same…”

Am snowed in by great blazing balls of lights and my legs go rubber. Jive baby! Mint green halter, knit cream skirt, transparent pumps, silver hoops…hey I’m not my designer! There’s an oracle of fashion for music. Patrick Swayze look alikes swirl around but I kinda like guiding. Hmmm so guess it will be one of my girlfriends. “ Work work…shake it shake it baby…I can mash potatoes. I can do the twist…. tell me…do you love me” Yeah do the aaatha!

Yeah we all do the ho…the ho who’s got her sex toys in control ;-) “Cause your filthy and ooh your gorgeous!” Scissor Sisters…orgasmic clubbing! Wine red raw silk skirt slit upto my thighs, black tube top, and orbit lights...gyrate, grate, chew gum loudly and flash them! Oh but I'm not just any ho...I got a colt strapped to my garter ;-) Mission - get de pimp who takes the 'e' out of the aesthetic out of sex and instead misplaces a 'p' upfront. Yeah yeah am the righteous ho after the gonads of those who trade the unwilling.

Change the sets for the disco hustle…two groupsters doing the groove. Am competing with this terribly cute dude from office in my capris, stilts, and sailor cap… “do that thing on the floor…shut up and dance!” A mumbling Shaggy calls the shots…

Seen that Levis ad, where this boy and girl blast through alabaster walls to jump off a giant red wood? Well, I’m gathering that pace now to Eddie Brickell’s What I am. Gone anime now in a blaze of lights…rushing freestyle through harsh lit walls over transparent hurdles - cosmic vision. Now pointing my hand to receive your words and jumping over all those stepping-stones that failure sprouted in my wake to pave my way to wherever. “I'm not aware of too many things, but I know what I know if you know what I mean…What I am is what I am. Are you what you are - or what?”

Contemporaries of be-bop got me now…well, not exactly…just Marvin Gaye. If there’s a man I so wanna make love to it is Marvin ma man. Can anyone else sing the rhythms of sex so sensually?! Pant pant! Bliss…am doing it in my head and doing the grind with moulding, soft, silken air…what else? Don’t need no man…just the song and me…escalating. “If the spirit moves you let me groove…let your love come down…ohhh…get it on babe…lets get it on...”

I could go on…Janus just had two. But dammit! I love every single one I dorn…here’s a wee bit of stuff on a lil mo so that the tunes don’t as revenge go out of key on me.

Floyd’s Wish you were…yep, all psychedelic and am doing my own mer song on land...brackish sky, wheezing ageing and now whimpering wind, dreads whipping around my neck and choking my retorts. The existentialism, the choices that make you walk the plank either way…yeah it’s just supersonic pain -numbness, gobsmacked helplessness in a Dover Beach atmosphere.
“...And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change? And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?”

Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald’s Dream a little dream…this is one Vyjanthi Mala and Gemini Ganesan black and white sequence ;-) Hide and seek, back to back on pillars, hand grappling and teasing, full moon, and bougainvilleas.

Elton John’s Tiny Dancer…there’s only one night and one person I dream of…always soft filtered lighting in this one.

#41 by Dave Mathew’s Band. This has got me doing a road trip in a red convertible. Uhh am really bad with car brands, but it’s a lot like Ramarajan’s in Karagata kaaran only much faster :-p Beatnik attire…yellow, kaadhula poo, white rimmed googles…sometimes my friends, sometimes a Dalmatian, sometimes a banjo, sometimes tender coconut water and a happy angler.

Am a lot like those playwrights who fall in love with their roles…actually am one of those heroines who trip on their talented, goateed, older directors…mine is music.