speckles

a kind of genocide

2008-04-28T12:26:00.005+05:30

The landscape's changed. There's more green. Less colour. Easy on the eyes. No intermittent slants of shade in which to hide as ambers turn to greens. Naked spines slashed brutally, vertebrae hanging in angles, mangled past of a booming outdoor ad industry lying in heaps, marking graves where they fall. Carted in trucks, sticking out in ridged heaps, weeping rust at nonchalant passers by. No more galleries. No more free art. The hoardings have gone. The skyline is empty.

The Few Good Men *'few ' cause tis predominantly an all-woman org.

2008-04-08T15:35:00.013+05:30

These guys are one of the reasons why work's a great place to be in. Apart from the fact that they are integral to several activities, they are also indispensable because of their spirit and the mirth they spread.

'tesh is the handsome, reliable admin person with a leaning towards art direction, willing to give design input on everything from brochures to hoardings at any odd hour. Despite the fact that I'm from an advertising background, I haven't got the hang of measurements entirely. But there's always 'tesh to double-check with. A natural calligrapher, he does the daily notice boards and any written appeal giving it a touch of class. He's also one of the few fittest people here. He used to play district level football. And thanks to where he hails from, a lil village off Arakonam, the lake there turned him out to be an expert fisherman of fresh water catch and a good swimmer. The one grouch I have with him is that like most South Indians, he's obsessed with fair skin! T and I have spent several hours on the beauty of dark complexions. All in vain. The only thing that will see him excusing himself of great conversation and food is a deadline and talk of his girl friend back in his ooru.

S'ed's day involves evicting people from their comps as he gets virus scans going. This bespectacled and at first impression a reserved "boy", is a Tamizh Pullavar, and one of the most interesting conversationalists ever! Never fails to have us clutching our tummy with his one liners and sudden comic bursts in sutha Tamizh. A big contributor to my Tamizh music collection, he always stops by my cabin to say a hello or have tea while swapping songs over the ph.

M'ty is the forever accommodating 'print-out' person. Everything from banners, to vinyls will be dumped on him with not too much time to spare. He does not go uncomplaining into the night armed with a cd and curved files. Yet, it's there in the morning. Many trips to Kovalam have been made with melancholic songs from Azhagi which he's addicted to and croons in a sombre voice while I fret that it doesn't go with my joy on having the sea parallel to me. When I can't take the gray mood effused into the ota Indica anymore, my nagging gets him to yield to cheerful Illayaraja hits that play themselves while we reminiscence over the plot.

S'an is one of the youngest folks here. Nakkal raja is who he is. Perpetually trips on everybody. What sets him apart is his jaunty step and driving skills. He minces time as he floors it on Chennai roads. Calls everyone akka except for T and was throughly broken hearted when she left.

V'an is the philosophic one who carts a lot of us on trips to Kovalam and back everyday. He inspires respect with his no-nonsense approach to a lot of things. For instance, why no radio when you're doing such a long stretch? He says, "contemplate, plan your day, read a book. Why listen to all the cackling on stations. Isn't it distracting?" I don't quite agree cause if one's doing that distance alone, silence is not a very good thing to have around. One's got to have at least music for company. Anyway, getting back to V'an he's got an indomitable spirit. He had the entire Koyambedu Market covered on a fundraising initiative for the Mumbai Marathon. He went to various sections with such unflagging enthusiasm where as I as a coordinator of it all was exhausted by the fag end.

C'nan & Kovalam M'ty are few of the people I would like to call friends from here and two of the best human beings I've met. Inseparable, these two personify 'fun'. They are both incredibly talented community workers aiding the cause through awareness and initiating partnership. Their street theater performances are crowd-magnets in surrounding villages. M is the actor and C a thoroughly brilliant musician. C's 'Thappu' will make anyone who claims to have two left-feet dance like never before. The music he belts out is infectious. And he's got the most mesemerising voice to go with it. His talent as a musician hasn't gone unnoticed. He might be making music for a Tamizh movie soon!

These two guys are a riot! C has an MA in Tamizh Literature and never fails to trip on my kind of Tamizh. M just finds me amusing. And so, I've been subject to several prank calls that has left me feeling both silly and cackling away to glory. One sunday evening, kuku, R, 'idy and I took off to Kovalam to meet these two. A boat ride to where the Dargha's dome bobbed as a distant speck, a rope to prevent us fom bobbing off. 'idy and I jumped into the pretty placid blue in a flash and floated on our backs as purple hints crept across the sky.

Hungry after much time off shore, we were mighty thrilled when a woman from the community stepped out to share her dinner with us. Twas delicious prawn curry. While licking our fingers clean, we got her side of the story on the Buckingham Canal pollution that's been leaving fishermen with no catch. R carried a good story on it. And we both received a compliment from M that I will cherish forever - "neenga rendu perum Outreach program la semmaya fit aavenga"

We went to another part of the beach to chomp into awesome fish fry. M let us on to a secret - the boneless fish we were having wasn't Vanjaram but something akin, called the Parala. That explains why, though it was immensely tasty, it didn't have the juiciness of a Vanjaram. It was a cheap imitation but nevertheless loverly. On our way back C lulled us into a highly gratified smug state of having had a great evening at sea and on shore, with his sonorous folksy voice emoting Shivaji goldies.

And so, these guys make everyday at work an event.

Why can't I buy Time?

2008-04-07T14:46:00.009+05:30

Sleep eluded me last night. Not cause Monday was looming big. But because I kept missing something - the right words to days that choose to stay unidimensional despite many happenings, to contentment that skirts. And then I discovered them after much scouring.

"I said fate plays a game without a score,
and who needs fish if you've got caviar?"

- Joseph Brodsky

Poetry offers reprieve in its malleability of context. And so Time, while ticking incessantly at a chosen pace, I am tempted to ask for occasional preludes on what's to come, to whet me. But I wont. Cause I gave my word to patience and pledged myself to trust. Yet I secretly wish for it to yield. Will sit with twilight purple for company watching many nights yield to several dawns.

I think too much. I miss too much. Days are peppered with excitement-sapper and roll off like drops of water from lotus leaves - never really touching. Never really living. Never present entirely in a moment.

Or maybe I should shut up with this talk, for what if at the end I'm just Time's fool?

Why do you build me up buttercup?

2008-04-07T11:03:00.011+05:30

"So what are you planning to do this long weekend?" asked a few friends of mine from Blore. What long weekend!?! I ask. I work on Saturdays. And yes, today is Ugadhi but neither am I a Kannadiga nor a Telugu and therefore don't feel too right about applying for a festival off. Apart from my mum who's constantly reminding me that I must take off on 14th it is the zinc deficiency presenting itself in a pristine white dash on a nail that says tis time to go shopping for new clothes :-P Signs are good and most of them exist methinks to make a good excuse.

The good times promised by Saturday evening was a no show. The morning was great. Without much of a hassle I managed to figure out something that could fit into work and an evening out with friends. For once I ignored Saturday's condescending streak - the roads are great for driving cause 3/4th of the traffic is off the roads cause that's how many people get Saturdays off! Work moved at a slug-like pace. Vani dropped in and added colour to the blandness of boredom. Soon she enticed my appetite with talk of samosas and bhajjis from down the road.

A call from home however told me that I could quit salivating over lil triangles of crispy joy and thirsting for beer as my dad's root canal pains had kicked in. They were at the dentist's. Nothing serious but I had to get there. And so I left work with Vani. On our way down we stopped by to watch Pattiyal with Kalpana for a lil while. Arya can't emote.

I was tired with the acknowledgment that I looked fantastic but had to go to the dentist's. That and the fact that I was going to miss out on N. This however, made me hungry. So Saturday evening saw Vani and me with the quickest plates of chaat ever to be mixed together from Gangotree. It was made to sound like a place of compulsory pilgrimage for Stella Marians when I had just finished my 12th and waiting for admission. And for the first one week I looked at it in awe as I got off the bus.

With parents worn out by long evening, Dinner presented itself to be made by me. Bindi fry in curd with rotis. This, while trying to figure out the time for the last order in various places for friends who were keen yet late. TDS never lets anyone down methinks. They went on to serve till 12 is what I heard.

I stayed up till 12 to check on medication. And then went to bed as the next door watchman's radio crooned Illayaraja hits.

Laughter with a pinch of sardonicism

2008-04-05T15:27:00.004+05:30

There are quite a few things that make me laugh along with life at its situations contorted out of proportion, its sudden denials, twisted surprises, and the inertia it often tags on. One of them being my fav comic strip :-)

Time Warp

2008-04-04T19:31:00.005+05:30

Today's Friday?!! Feels like I've just stepped out of a Monday :-o Yaay! The weekend's here! I think this total unawareness of days has got something to do with the fact that I count every hour with a dream I have wedged in the midst of me and chart its course through the day.

As I wait for Mayamma's Coffee...

2008-04-04T16:55:00.005+05:30

I prefer the Dentist's to the Hospital any day! Too many times have 'idy and I gone to St. John's in the middle of the night to get her checked. While she blanches on entering Emergency, I visibly stop breathing. These visits happened every month while studying in Blore and were always in the middle of the night. It was either an auto that fleeced us, J's Kinetic or our legs trudging up the slope. As frequent as our visits to the Doc were was the sight of Blood with at least one person having lost a limb in a road accident. Getting back to hostel was a nightmare as well. It was either sidey men or rabid dogs that chased us.

Mercifully there's nothing fatal about getting shots to the gums, the rust-like taste of blood swishing around in the mouth or that overpowering smell of sterilization. But I would definitely like to see if I feel the same way when my Wisdom's kick in. Apparently my jaw's too small (my mom disagrees - "vai kizhiya pesuva") to accomodate them and I've got till 27 or 29 to feel the pain. And do dentist's place have to be green? Yes, tis soothing and all that jazz but just wondering. The only places I hate green in are swimming pools and lakes. I find them phenomenally claustrophobic. There are way too many tangents above - why dentist's better than hospital, my jaw, where I like green.

No, I do not fantasize about Dentists and their green spaces in the day. My dad went into some horrendous pain all of a sudden the other day. Poor man had to have 2 root canals done. But seriously, methinks men have less pain tolerance than women. Really. Some of my friends are wusses. Sid is a Devar. He's a contradiction to the theory of Mimesis - Devar Magan does not mimic any of Sid's bravery cause he's got none. Kuku, one of my closest friends who recently got married is terribly frightened of injections and is capable of fainting at the sight of blood. I have a feeling I might have to be fanning him to consciousness while his wife's in labour.

The next tangent being Kuku - It feels like a warm sunday where every thing's amber and perfectly pleasant by a sea that's easy on the eye and the sand expunging your feet as the happiness seeps in, when a friend acknowledges you as one of his closest and privileged :-) Was very touched that he & K called a few days after their wedding, before they took off and after they got back to the country. Very unexpected and very touched.

Today I've got only the radio for company and not z mp3 player. And all is good as I get to hear Danush give an interview on Yaaradi Nee Mohini on one of the stations. Apparently he's only 24 :-0 Was thinking 26 maybe. But too much scene I say! A smattering of Tamizh doused in English is how his interview went. And then there was realization that he's hot in a very unlikely way. Well, I guess there is something about him. Methinks I started paying attention to him in Kadhal Kondaen, was quite impressed with Pudhu Pettai and found him quite endearing in Polladhavan.

P.s: I chose to set myself adrift while I wait for Mayamma's milky coffee cause if there's one time I annoy myself, it is when I pms in this fashion! Thank god for variety, I'm subject to 4 of them and each month they differ and are mercifully short-lived :-) One, I think way too much like now. And to make my head shut up I ramble on like this avoiding the niggling voices in my head that want to over analyze any given situation. Till date I've never over analyzed cause I'm too tired getting myself to listen to myself and not overactive eq. Two, I'm phenomenally energetic. Late nights where I'm either doing Marathon book reading sessions, painting bottles or some art, working, or on a cleaning/dusting spree. Three is pretty straight-forward - I'm terribly hungry. Four is just as simple - I'm not hungry at all. Coffee's Here!

:-/

2008-04-03T17:30:00.009+05:30

What makes any kind of imprisonment or restriction, physical/emotional/intellectual, unbearable is not the treatment or conditions that it makes legitimate (by default or not) but the state of having been deprived of options. 1984, Brave New World, The Handmaids Tale all go to highlight this fact.

It is not the Thought Police' intrusion into Winston Smith's supposedly taboo love life or the torture Julia and he undergo that makes Oceania unacceptable. It is not the World State's anti-conditioning that drives John the Savage to the brink but the inability instilled in the inhabitants to discern what sort of conditioning works positively on an individualistic level. Offred does not find Jezebel's, the brothel run by the party, alluring because of the exciting costumes. The dictum is just a means to effect the end. It is what the end denies that spurns.

For all of them (in 2 of these dystopian novels and 1 utopian gone overboard with irony) it is the impossibility of basic human emotions being discovered, questions asked, or even the space to talk to one another just because one wants to, that incites them. Whether the urge to do away with the shackles results in smart moves or not is irrelevant. Some get smart, some succumb, some go to great lengths. The lack of the other, lack of options is what crucifies human spirit.

None of this is relevant to any situation I'm in. Neither is it as great. But it's kinda depressing that I'm deprived of some options!

But I take respite in being human. I shall crib and wear this thin. Soon. Or maybe it's just PMS and in that case it will definitely be out of my system.

Random Realizations

2008-04-02T11:34:00.013+05:30

And then it dawns on me, Why certain things need to be a certain way with space tween. And all is ok. For now at least. Hope this innate understanding stays with me throughout while calling upon patience to do a pillion and time to act as the best fuel ever.

The video of "June ponal", the song, from Unnale Unnale features Mocha - The predominantly yuppy hangout on weekends that's mercifully spared on weekdays for those who want to indulge in Chocolate Mint Cake in peace! - in bits.

#3 - Spider-Man is my favourite Marvel Super Hero. Underplayed, wary about own strength, humane and human at the same time with the most endearing flaws, a true romantic and with the most fabulous theme song ever! Love Michael Buble's version doused in Jazz.

eh?

2008-04-01T14:51:00.018+05:30

Nod head vigorously. Eyes wide open in acknowledgment. A knowing look. Poof! The head at an angle making a skewed question mark. Fingers strumming chin. A glazed look. Skeptical curve of the mouth.

Tis like when a parent says milk is good for health yada yada yada and the first sip leaves you spluttering over "yeah?" Like concepts that make complete sense when studied but leaves one's grasp while writing an exam. Like the girl in Hitchiker's Guide who figured out the meaning of life just about when the planet was obviated by an alien invasion. Uhh...What's the point again?

Somethings are based on trust. Like one would prescriptions. Wary but once swallowed do some good. Questions proximate with mild confusion. However, nothing was in vain. The puzzle is in place but missing an elusive piece to help comprehend the complete picture. Hazy recollection of where it could be. Clarity flits like it does off questions such as Why is God God and the likes. I don't like milk but chilled milk, yes. One must have it and so one must have it. Answers will come meandering their way by time.

And while it does, shall go binge on books, hum out of tune, watch macabre movies (Sweeney Todd! Yaay!), and for once feed not-far-fetched (Karnataka is next door indeedy) plans of travel to reality.

Yes, please bring on the forceps

2008-03-28T12:47:00.010+05:30

There are several posts on 'things that happen to me only.' Of course this entire blog is about things related to me. And now there's one more about stuff that only I can attract or so I console myself offering a cushion of supposed uniqueness as irrelevant as fish sleep with their eyes open (will overlook fact that they don't have eyelids).

Methinks it started last evening. On having identified one of my biggest crushes despite his long hair and eyes that don't seem to be of the same colour, I decided and insisted that I do have a phenomenal memory for faces. And in that strain I excitedly pointed out at someone who had just walked into the pub and exclaimed that she was a classmate of ours to two of my skeptical friends. But considering they had downed a few, they were quite willing to trot after me as I went up to say hello to her. I swear she looked like that classmate! From the side that is. When she turned around my face blanched. But then I couldn't walk off after she having seen me stride with such purpose towards her. So as N said, I ensured large scale loss of maanam and went on to say "Hi! by any chance are you so and so" in one breath, didn't stop to hear her say no, spun around and scuttled away to my corner with sheepish grin plastered on my face.

And this morning I got thinking maybe Mondays are kinder. Kinder in its consistency on what to expect - a short fuse, a lengthy lazing session in bed with tea and news paper (tis the one time I read all the articles to egg the day further away from me), Billie Holiday (great voice but wedges in the melancholia) or Sarah Vaughn followed by Acid Jazz when I finally get sick of playing blue, mild sense of urgency that sets in and has me rushing out of home in a hurry to face Monday and get it over with, and invariably late to work.

Its days such as today -unpredictable, twisted bully who pushes the limits of mockery- that leave me wondering about better mondays as I lay sprawled like a battered cockroach in time that stops and stares to wonder if the day would flip me on my back and stamp me out.

I wake up on time. Leave on time. The bridge is choked. Another route that usually allows bikes to meander ahead turned out to be gelatinous. By the time I made it to the end of the stretch I memorized enough of the two people in transit on either side. And then when it seemed like pace could be spelt, the bike falls apart. Literally! The foot rest on either side detach. I didn't pull over to retrieve them but because just about the same time pretty blue decides to emit a guttural roar. Deafening. There are times when Douglas Adams' 'total perspective vortex' comes into play. This was one such time. Standing under a scantily leaved tree in the heat 'why' resonated. The choleric traffic got me back to thinking. Trundled the bike to a mechanic down the road. My arms feel great by the way!

I don't go through life consciously aware of my sex. I see myself as a person and not as 'female'. Primarily cause I'm very comfortable with my body and who I am. There are of course a set of conditioning that goes undeniably into being a woman. I acknowledge them and accept the ones that work for me and question or deny the ones that don't. In spite of all this comfort, there are times when I'm made painfully aware that there are things that will be determined by sex. One of them being the assumption that I don't know how my bike/car works. I have to prove to the mechanic that I know what I'm talking about. And it's a long grueling process where smirks and egos have to be fielded.

That done an auto comes to me as though on cue. A cue I should have missed and hailed another. I was late already. And I was phenomenally late by the time he dropped me off at work. Man didn't know the way. Insisted he did. And right when I was about to believe him he juddered his way through the longest possible routes to the most easily accessible destinations. I couldn't stop him!

Finally out of agonizing ride, dazed, I was happy to enter my cozy room at work, settle in and dive into familiarity. When it rains, it pours. Or so I thought till Nina Simone crooned 'Feeling Good' drawing the shades off the sliver linings.

Partially evicted Unfettered Writing

2008-03-26T12:01:00.008+05:30

I had this mini-scuffle with a close friend on how I wanted to be an odd number while it was insisted upon that I'm even. Turns out I am odd. The year of birth had been mistaken. 3. Delighted overall but mildly bugged that it isn't 7.

There's something about odd, being fashionably a step-out-of-time. But as much as I embrace the need to just 'be' regardless of conformity and convention in a way that doesn't have me stepping on toes as much as possible, confrontation is unavoidable. I crave for even. Equal relationships all round. A sense of justice that isn't black and white. Bollocks indeed!

Oddity = life. The scale will oscillate, tipping over incessantly. The only 'even' hoped for is that it tips over on either side an equal number of times.

I didn't want to write to forget. True. But the equanimity that anonymous offered no longer exists for writing that distracts. It's not about being judged or figured out that has me stuck (all 'writing', anonymous or not, is open to opinion/critique/etc but not the person as a person is more than just their writing). But the fact that I might have an unwilling and oblivious entity subject to repercussions (for lack of a better word) cause of an inanity that I let out that is far removed from them with nothing to read between the lines, has me thinking. It's not an assured but a 'what if' lingers around. Now this space isn't even my own. I think too much. Usually. Now I think more.

But I guess like everything else, space and anonymity are transient by choice or not. Billy Biswas tried. And that's a very 'unfair' parallel indeed! So I shall turn to music that say things I don't know and edit out, as I whistle along like a milk cooker.

Reporter turned St. Peter

2008-03-15T18:19:00.010+05:30

It is insane that respect or value for one's life be determined by morals or lifestyle one prescribes to. It may not be the case predominantly but it apparently exists strongly enough to appear on MSN News.

This reporter, Nycil George, feels that Scarlet's mother is unjustified in raising a hue and cry over the slackness in which her daughter's murder case has been handled. The reason being her choices in life which he believes does not warrant credibility to raise or have concerns. Who made him God!

He obviously suffers from a colonized complex! Get over it!! We're 61 years out of it. "Dark Secrets" he says. 'Mind your own business' sounds familiar? How is any of her personal details pertinent to the case? How does knowing Scarlet's and her mum's choices make it ok to be raped and murdered? A no is a no.

I'm annoyed that there's no provision to leave comments or e-mail him on his trashy, moralistic crap he calls NEWS. He plays it safe though. He says "the media" propagates details of Scarlet & Family while he does and queries whether her mother's statement should be taken seriously at all cause she's British!

Grow a spine!

A Note I couldn't make

2008-03-03T00:38:00.004+05:30

I took a tickle test on where I would find the love of my life. San Francisco. You're the closest to the prophecy :-)

A town that goes around in circles has me dizzy with the no:of things it can do

2008-02-17T18:04:00.003+05:30

B'lore. A city with which I have a lot more than a love-hate relationship. Summer holidays from the time I knew what vacation meant was spent with a definite stop over at my uncle's place on Museum Road. I despised staying indoors - the gray cold got to me! Loved walking the few roads that I got to know way too well - Residency, St. Marks, Brigade and MG Road. Ok, and commercial street which I never cared too much for except the Grape juice at Woodys. Gulmohar's patchy carpets on the pavement, buttoned sweater, pineapples, papaya and guava's off the street vendors basket, Ice Cream at Lake View and a browse through Higginbothams, rose flavoured milk and pastry from Nilgris is about all I routinely did when I was there. What we did with the family was dinner at Bowring Club, snarling with rubbery parattas determinedly caught tween our jaws at Imperial, checkers with a nasty grandmom and to pretend to enjoy playing at Cubbon Park with random cousins.

And then I met A when I was 19 and B'lore turned out to be this city of whimsical escapes with heart on sleeve. Apart from the lovely weekends there it got me used to the groove of hopping on and off trains on short notice.

When I was a kid I wanted to go to college at St. Josephs. I loved the old building. Unfortunately I went on to study in an institute tucked away in a slum stuck midway in turning urban - 2 minutes away from Forum with murky gray frothy sluggish stream right through it. Two hellish years! It really was a hell-hole. Even the road sloped downward. Usually trips out had me leaning out of the auto and trips back had my spine glued to the seat with fingers curled under for support. Redemption came only on Sundays and that too only those of the first two weeks of a month- brunch at Koshys, a play at Rangashankara, a visit to Blossoms that never leaves me sated.

I got back to pretty old Madras and A returned to supposed garden city. While I was happy that a long hoped for status quo had been established, the possibility of a new home in the town of mixed experiences had me sighing in resignation.

The status quo didn't last for long. Estranged. The magic B'lore holds for me now is one last pending visit for reasons I can't articulate but purpose being to retrieve some of my stuff from a pretty lil apartment with a lovely old lady with the most impossible energy and zest for life, and a green thumb! The magic will linger on from books waiting to be discovered at its cozy stores, in the languid pace effused by Pecos and Corner House that caters to my mint craving.

But when it came down to the day I had to make a trip there last week, I wasn't too sure. I didn't want to stay. The magic didn't have me eager to hop on to a train and do an unreserved ride, an experience that I've quite come to love cos of the proximity of myriad personalities, and in a very weird ass way proof that love and hate quite feed off each other - as much as there's egging for space, there's that much more space created.

Getting back to the magic - it was wedged quite comfortably into a day. Padner and I got to spend time after aeons. The most annoying taxi driver had me up at 3:30 am while Padner fumed at the "unfairness of a world that would slot a flight for 6 am jus cos it would be cheaper."

On arriving, thoughtful us got into a mini squabble with coffee shop that handed over a tin of outdated cookies. Happy on being handed over pretty tins we ran over to squg a very good friend who also happens to be an awesome cook! Onion chutney and for the first time 4 Idlis!!! My mom would be proud.

Then began our day of striking of the list of things to do. A second mini breakfast at Koshys. I take bad pictures predominantly and a few nice ones by default. She snoozed a bit. A short amble away we went to the Magazine Store to find the cats missing! Vacationing at home they said. Tsk Tsk.

The prelude to page flipping over we went to heaven of hysterical browsers and well-intentioned pauper-makers - Blossoms! Horns of Dillemma! The Sword of Damocles can all be experienced here.

Though we had to make do with a know-it-all waiter at my fav pub, it turned out to be pretty relaxing with Steve Miller Band adding to the ambiance while Padner was glued to Sybil and I burrowed into Fowles' Aristos.

An even more greater reason than "few of my favourite things" was one of my best friends engagement. The liberty he took in letting us change at his girlfriend's place on the day of their engagement was quite touching. And says a lot about the girlfriend too :-)

We did look pretty in spite of having trudged all morning in a zombied state. Everything was Bam! on time till dinner. Corner House was teetering on the list of make-it. Strawberries with Fresh Cream and Mint Ice cream drowned in hot chocolate fudge was the prize for having done everything!

Cantonement station, platform 2 is a place I've had many fond memories on - weekend escapes to home, goodbye hugs with I-love-yous that once were meant, hot chocolate under tangerine lights while being nipped by chilly breeze and now a night spent in waiting for the train as Padner and I sat on a cold trolley huddled under one shawl with pretty interesting reads as harmless drunks hollered, a bored couple stared, dogs fought and two trains passed on time.

A winkless experience that has me writing again.

There's a story behind every speed breaker

2007-10-06T23:40:00.000+05:30

The majority of last week (it definitely seems so given all the running around and doubling up as handyman) was spent trundling along the ECR with the photographer and his comic assistants. As is tradition the coordination was a mess. But again as is tradition, it all worked out fine :-) But about the mess - a road block on wild curve 1km right before the toll booth. Lines of lilac (ugh!) busses squatted a long way back into the road. People meandered. Heads craned out. Khaki clad conductors with wet armpits snagging change bag huddled under the sun.

A conductor said 'chinna' accident and that the villagers were creating a commotion. So we reversed with 'Vaseegara' squealing intermittently. The stretch that connects Old Mahabalipuram road to the ECR is utterly gorgeous!!! A family of the shade green nestling by murky blue waters with shrimp nets and polka dotted with fishermen wading neck deep in its waters. As you turn into Old Mahabalipuram road one garish engineering college follows another. We swing past Kelambakkam junction into Kovalam and the roadblock way back is forgotten with a phew!

A day later we were back making our way by the sea. If cops with speed guns didn't suffice as warning, several thuds did. A day back two school girls were rammed as they were crossing the road. Sisters. One died. The other in hospital. 7 speed breakers commemorate a break too late, lil girls in school uniforms. And has now effectively cursed those who go a tad bit faster than real slow with a sore back.

mad but wiser optimist (fingers knotted)

2007-10-06T23:20:00.000+05:30

It's odd to be a stranger overnight. A shell empty of the hermit crab. Scuttled away, saline water swishes in and ebbs out and nudged further ashore. There's beauty in empty shells lying face down in transient sand.

60 years couldn't rid my street of garbage on its eve

2007-08-15T13:23:00.000+05:30

Onyx, Chennai's so-so on and off efficient garbage collector seemed to have gone on a strike yesterday cause there contract is drawing to a close and are soon to be replaced by another company. And so in keeping with our freedom fighting styles they didn't go around throwing back the garbage in everyones house. They upturned the bins especially ones that were overflowing with muck on to the road instead. On independence eve.

The street lamps not working could make another post. But yes, the street lamps don't work especially the ones by the Electricity Board's Chief Engineer's office. So as I came bumping down the road (the road's full of moon holes and tarring it over and over again makes all homes a bloody drain during the monsoon!) many flecks of white caught my eye with lights from oncoming vehicles. The flecks grew in number as I neared home. The plastic and paper had been unceremoniously scattered without a carnival preceding them.

Muttering curses at neighbours who refuse to throw garbage into the bin, I got off my bike to survey the dump gone awry. And then quickly I took all them curses back cos twas the bin's reluctance in offering itself up to them. Upturned, the muck stuck around forlornly like abandoned babies. I tell mum this and she says tis a strike indeed! I tell her I'll go turn it the right way up. She says mind your own business. My nose is my business. My street is my business. The view of my house is my business. I go nudge it to my mum's disgust. Steel bin proves heavy. No one else on road. Don't think any avid pisser-on-streets would lend a hand for a bin.

Onyx is a Malaysian company (?) Fine, they don't get the significance of independence and clean streets but they might as well do their work while they're getting paid. They do deserve to leave if they feel they can allow the city to stink up for one night!

What more proof does one need

2007-08-15T12:58:00.001+05:30

to believe that women can drive and do a whole bunch of other things pretty darn well! What?!! I work for an NGO that provides mental health care to the marginalized and primarily for homeless women. This NGO is run by two very driven women and is immensely successful in the area it's been dedicated to. Here, any idea is viable as long as it's for the greater good. The regular notions of feasibility don't work here. Anything is possible and anything is possible with style! This place filled with women full of spunk, outnumber the male population in the organisation. We've got women drivers, social workers, accountants, etc. Yet, there's the sexist note underlining a few basic things like driving of all things. This, from co-workers who work for this NGO, who have seen the women in action, have seen how the women cared for have turned out to be so full of drive and guts, grow jittery by default because a woman says she wants to drive the car back to work cos the darn driver is missing!

All hell broke lose when I said I could drive back if a driver wasn't around to take us back to another centre of ours. A social worker, C, ran out and skidded on the slope just to stop me. What's worse, another colleague, R, a female btw shrieked NO! in spite of having been part of a previous episode when I took the car out and brought it back safe and sound. On pointing this out to her she goes "but still...". BUT STILL what?!!! We do have one or two drivers who are utterly rash when it comes to driving. The other day one hit a goat and nearly knocked off an old man on a cycle. She would or rather a whole lot would rather trust a man who drives like a maniac and promises some spine-breaking jolts rather than a woman who has been driving for 5 years and has already on a previous occasion shown she can drive safe. The only person who didn't bat an eyelid was V, a German. Maybe it's only Indian men who think women can't drive or shouldn't be allowed to.

If in spite of all the NGOs work and experience the sexist and chauvinistic notion hasn't been driven out by default, then it's a bloody dire situation indeed.

Butter Fingers

2007-08-02T06:39:00.000+05:30

I'm incorrigible. Clawing at fast-escaping time I do. What I also tend to do is distort the moment I'm trying to stretch like gum with not-so-merry coincidences that prove advantageous just about then and no further, an unheeding tick in me, and complacency of tomorrow is after all tomorrow. The moment metamorphosed into stringy gum that refused to pop happy. Why won't I learn hogging sometimes ends in nasty results, that gripping time doesn't mean I get to determine a situation. That time is just a time-keeper and situations are just immensely fickle at the pace with which they move. Only tabs I get to keep and not the bloody script in hand waiting to be done! Time does not own a moment. Now, what else can I say about time and circumstance...Time's a pimp! Time's a ration kadai!

Apart from that, a nipping topic popped by again and sunk into my brain and ripped out a piece of my life-giving thump thump and nicked me nice and bloody. I am not domestic. I appear so cause it just so happens that I love cooking, it just so happens that I'm neat and tidy, it just so happens that I'm not ambitious in a regular way and am not a title-hog and it just so happens that I prioritize relationships and my growing library more. Means to an end. But I do insist on the means being something I thoroughly enjoy. Ideal some say. I've found it and disfigured it to an extent to keep off the evil eye.

I'm tired of lil unmentionables given in confidence slipping like loose change, of the necessity to have a peripheral vision of what others see, of my knack to seem aloof when I'm involved, of embarrassment and the possibility of doubt, of not keeping my word on adding no more to worries, of living in constant fear of losing the only few things that make life worth a lot which makes its presence felt like a cut out of sight but constantly searing. I'm terrified.

Ghastly luck and with no title as an heiress, judgment seems inescapable. That one break hasn't happened. It could have in the first week of my first job if chicken flu hadn't made its way into mucky lungs on the day of the shoot for an all-chicken restaurant outdoor campaign. Contentment is so near. Yet elusive in my greediness. Impatience rather. And all I'm looking is for some understanding to precede the peace, harmony and the prevailing of common sense.

Train yosanais

2007-05-14T18:50:00.000+05:30

Listening to Shiny Happy People by REM that's exactly what I think they were. Shiny happy people in the unreserved compartment, greased by sweat and grime off 300 odd kms. I hadn't even got out of the city when this compartment of friendly accommodating folks began to smell of malli poo, sambar-caked-fingers, a fusion of dripping odors and water with a dusty rusty twang. Hygiene? What's that indeedy. Build resistance muchly. Chikku peels and shiny black seeds like bugs on the slushy blue floor. Meandering puddles of water and pee jetted from kids by grimy feet.

It's amazing how space can be created. Bodies meld and curve and create nooks and crooks to fit in a sagging knee, a curled finger, a curved behind into a curved abdomen, the head at an angle, criss-crossing armpits that lend a view to the left eye. Way beyond sticky, felt I should take a part-time job as the human glue. Park myself in a post office and get people to swipe a finger on me to seal their envelopes.

And the other time twas the kid rattling away her flimsy plastic toy gun and threatened to poke my eye apart from slowly warming my rage. But the kid was sweet. When she put that idiotic toy down that is. I was quite touched when she put a hand out to stop my book from slipping off my lap when I was struggling to get the change into my pocket while trying hard not to tilt my tea. I've always felt that we must go beyond tolerance to acceptance. But then I figured that tolerance is the best we can hope for cause we're so inclined to be pissed off as much as we're inclined to be touched.

...

2007-04-23T18:05:00.000+05:30

It's run out of life...uhh...it's got not much time left...Dammit! Times when words spread themselves on your tongue and tickle your uvula and get gibberish out instead of surrendering themselves to coherent talk. Paah! And that's what I said once cos I couldn't get the simple 'validity' word that would explain why I needed to go recharge in the middle of the night.

Words are like those slinky stinkers you find in comics. Those sideline snigger-ers. They scuttle away and peek from behind the corner to see how you're faring in the muck. And this muck has happened too often. But at times, kindly, it is refered to as gaffes. Anything to make the babbling seem light.

But even when in an interview!? Even umm and uhhs abandon me to scavenge for words and then when they're salvaged they come out in this sticky pizza cheese mess that finally snap and slop down my chin and then I'll have to quickly slurp it back before anyone notices.

Sometimes even the deranged hope, the kind your likely to face in oncoming death, gives way, and instead there's just this parrot stutter of blankness, like plain white flashes going bang! bang! bang! But you've got to credit hope for being thick-skinned. It morphs into the street smart and goes about figuring out the opposite of the opposite to the word that sits tightly wedged in a corner like an unreasonably angered child and refuses to spell itself out. Twisted but that's how I got reacquainted with 'altercation.' Truce...agreement...debate...combat...altercation!

Words are also a lot like gigantic unshapely boulders, the kinds preferred to get the sack with the body to lightless depths, where it can be nudged and nibbled by sea folks. When words go down they go down with grammar. Tenses mingle, words surrogate, conjunctions snip. But its these surrogate words that save you from falling face down into something vocabulary-less. For instance, I picked this post from 6 words back after 5 hours and it's not what I had in mind when I stopped. Even the most austere words can surrogate. I had anything but austere in my mind back then.

But context methinks gives word shape more than meaning. And any word can take the place of another, with a little help from conditioning maybe. A Clockwork Orange to start off with was interesting cos of its vocabulary which I took some time to piece together. But then tolchok, moloko, etc began to make complete sense and I even began using it in conversations in my head. That's when the book scared me and I put it away for three months, to rid myself of the vocabulary that had become part of everyday, before I started on it again. That book has proved its point of conditioning.

And words seem to be the other thing apart from music that induces hyesterical joy! Books make you fall madly in love with the most inane emotion, puts you face to face with unacknowledged fears.

Words are fancy creatures.

Summer Swelter Mad

2007-04-17T14:44:00.000+05:30

The purpose-in-life question accosts even a coaster, wet and spilling over. A square water mark in place of the regular thick circles. Cubes thin and float like sliced strips of coconut and then go lookin like a tooth I lost when I was three and vanishes. This one too goes into the earth though a little bit more complicated than cracking up the earth and pulling out chunks of more earth and placing it within reach of maroon earth worms and then smashing it down by shoving unearthed earth back into an ugly mound to bake, crack and get chipped with the evening wind.

Rice is a turn off. So is sambar. So is food in general. Tall glasses of Orange by day. Tangerine dreams by night when I'm out on the verandah warming my butt on still-warm mosaic steps with a street lamp that's got an incessant wink, wishing to be by a beach with a whip and a staple diet that includes anything and everything citrus.

Deoderant addict. The zest with which I spray it on likens those of the eagerness of dogs dashing towards and rolling in any watery muck. Anxiety thrives in the heat. Showering four times a day has got me wondering about sobby taps and annoying watchman next door who falls asleep when the tank is jetting water slamming on to cement. Not earth even. Yes, I do want a commitee in place to ensure people turn off their motors on time.

Heat, lethargy and coffee. The latter seals me in with a pack of slugs strolling in my feet. Tea! is almost a craving. 4pm is a lovely time. It grows a lil bit more brighter right then but in a happy smug satiated way. Like crackle pop the engergy combusts within. And for the next 15 minutes I feel like a helium balloon.

At night there's only one pose to take on the bed. Splayed. Maximum exposure to whatever the fan chucks at you. Pai becomes much more luxurious than the fattest softest mattress.

Pretty scarves begin to smell tangy at the crease with brow sweat. It's a bit tamarindish with sea salt and maybe a pinch of pulichified dough. In summer a lot of motorists do stop before the stop line provided there's a nice big phat tree with its holey green above us. Even after being under these spurts of coolness why on earth do people cut trees?!!! WHY?!!!! WHY?!!! Guess their intelligence is only skin deep and that too only till the timer on the signal goes zilch and then green. Aaargh! As long as I'm riding it's cool. I stretch my hands while gripping the handles and stretch my legs on and off for the cool blast to get inside my kurta and the damp junction behind my knee.

A glass of white for restless nights on sticky sheets. Chilled buttermilk to squidge the gnawing hunger of 3am, to quench thirst from grinding teeth while restraining the urge to swat the mosquito and scratch like my life depended on it.

If I don't wash my hair on every 3rd day, I imagine itchiness that has me treating my scalp in dettoled water on the 4th. I look at my crackling strands and promise myself and oil hairwash every second day. But that half hour of soaking oil in this heat is close to hellish. The shower nozzle is something I've become thankful for increasingly.

Yet there's the human alpamness in this heat to have summer fruits who propagate more heat. Irony. Paradox. Unfair. I love mangoes. I have one all to myself and I'm against the wall with a thermometer tickling my under-tongue while my mum goes I told you so I told you so. And the watermelons go out of fashion too soon. I see them only on highways.

Freshly exfoliated skin is coated in dust within a minute. Matte finish. Menthol based skin products line the shelf. Blue is all I care for. I wear only blue. A psychological conditioning that barely works. Leaky taps fill up buckets cooled over the day and are fed eau de cologne, mint and neem leaves. I just wish I had a tub of it.

Aah tubs! Why the faff does Bangalore have fabulous ice cream parlours and Madras none!?! Shakes & Creams serves ok-fine stuff but only when the dollops threaten to run cause of their long standing policy of slow service. Why no Corner House?! Why no gorgeous mint ice cream! They did have in Casa Picola but they ran out of it in Jan.

But I do like summer. I do like the heat cause I feel alive. I pine for these days when the city's flooded. Summer redeems itself by making cotton an investment, nungu the recommended high, mangoes with vanilla icecream regular dessert, beach visits compulsory, re-introducing the joy of sleeping on hard cold floor, highlighting the importance of water, generating respect for greenery, permitting unlimited ice cubes with no threats of catching a cold, kicking me out of bed at 6 cause it's too hot to sleep and the marvel of mint.

Crumbs & Crumby - Rozee's Story

2007-03-16T10:59:00.000+05:30

It is always better to say nothing than to say something that is obvious and hurt me. Did he do it deliberately? To shoo me away? Or did he really feel that way? I will never know...This is one thing that would forever itch my mind and keep me sleepless in my sleep. For even in my sleep I hear those words, and the vibration of his voice when he said them. It wasn’t something I did not know, yet I just didn’t want to hear it from him. I thought I conveyed him the message through the fear I hid in my eyes.

Summer came with a lot of fanfare. Gold rays spurted through blinds. The clothes on the rail whipped the smell of frizzling grass indoors. Everything around grew dewy including the people. Ice tinkled every half hr onto trays and into glasses. The bottle openers were out. So were the flower pattern hankies to mop liquid black salt off tanned gorges. Through the windows you could see everyone doing a jig towards the shade.

In spite of all the gaiety by default, there came some clammy news. The Cricket World Cup. To a prototype Gingerbread boy in happy self-imposed exile this doesn’t forebode good. Well, cause people snack as they watch wickers swing and wickets down.

For a minor flashback, the original Gingerbread boy dodged quite a few and ended in a fox’ tummy. Well, all I can say is, thank god the cow didn’t get him. Regurgitation is quite unsavory. You see, gingerbread is what you call a one-time instant crunchy flavour. But I digress. I, the new prototype outran the baker, landed in an assorted cookie jar of a premium kind making its way across oceans as Monty Panesar’s gift to a girl named Sumthnwinder. Luckily for me I escaped the gorging process. And to cut a long story short I made it into the hands of a kind small-town Dhaba owner who had no appetite for anything but butter chicken. A loving keeper indeed and it grew mutual. Every morning I get a quick scrape and some pink and Ajanta blue squeezed on that get me looking iced and garish.

Even though hopes for the Hockey World Cup for India belonged only to the zany, the rest of the townspeople didn’t need no hope to smack up snacks to stack up their racks while glued to the only LCD TV in town i.e. at my keeper’s place.

Where do I fit into this easy-maintenance lot? Once in a while there’d be a shortage of kurkure or jilebi as they watched scuttling figures and made the occasional remark about sexy calf muscles. It seems focus is a snack. And when that’s out restlessness sets in and the sexy calf muscles can be damned! At tense moments as these, there’d be the rabid eye glancing my way, itching to snap me in two. But my keeper’s surly appearance by my side would squelch even the teeniest sign of mutiny. This was last year.

And now, The Cricket World Cup! It is BIG! And so would be the snacking. My keeper had been brooding the past one week and looking my way with a sense of guilt, apprehension, love and I think I noticed even hunger and faint curiosity for the unknown. Things weren’t ok as always between my gracious keeper and me. The early morning shaves had grown shoddy, the icing runny. It’s as though he just wanted to be over with me ASAP. For a gingerbread boy, I have quite a heart. It hurt I tell you.

My eyelid started ticking. There was a grudging animosity in the air. My keeper’s shoulder slid to a spooky slouch. His eyes and fingers constantly thumbed the snack racks and the quantity ledgers respectively. There were blood-shot sneaks taken my way with a drooly leer. But like menthol induced whistles there were those short bursts of love that came through. Yet, I felt day by day that I never knew him ever.

On a starry night, I was taken out of my casing for one of those nightly treats, where I could sit on his lap and trace patterns that never end with them sparkly. This time however, the unrest of many days didn’t allow excitement to stir. But once out, swinging my crispy legs off his knee, it was hard not to get comfortable. My eyes roved the silver. A sudden draft nipped my iced nose. And that’s when I noticed the utter stillness with which he sat. Right then, he took me onto his palm and peered at me wonky-eyed as I looked at him with wild hope characteristic of doom. And he said, “Sadly, it won’t be me who first tastes you, biscuit.”

Picked Tag

2007-03-16T10:28:00.002+05:30

1. Were you named after anyone?

Yes, Dad’s mom but with 3 letters added to its end which make it sound a lot mo classy methinks

2. Do you wish on stars?

Yep. From stars to wishbones to cats that cross paths from the right

3. When did you last cry?

Tuesday

4. Do you like your handwriting?

Yes, as long as it doesn’t go beyond a paragraph cos then it’s kozhi kirukals

5. What is your favourite meat

Chicken. However, I don't mind helping myself to the rest when there's a choice

6. What is your most embarrassing CD on your shelf?

An ancient Smirnoff Megamix

7. If you were another person, would YOU be friends with you?

Yes, I’m good fun to have around

8. Are you a daredevil?

Quite

9. How do you release anger?

Clam up and let it lie/Bawl in private/Smash something I gauge to be replaceable to fight the need to punch (rarely)/ Stomp out for a long walk

10. Where is your second home?

Me. I'm quite at home with myself.

11. Do you trust others easily?

Nope. I think too much.

12. What was your favourite toy as a child?

No choppu and all for me. Just a bright yellow tricycle and an F1 look-alike pedal car.

13. What class in school/college do you think is totally useless?

School - Civics!!!! I hate! I hate! Bledy nasty teaches distinction! Dirty Subject

College – Mary Swamy on Prose indeedy!

PG – Almost all save for the few by guest lecturers

14. Do you use sarcasm a lot?

Nope. It comes to my rescue after the moment's passed like cops in the movies

15. Have you ever been in a mosh pit?

Eh?

16.What do you look for in a guy/girl?

Sharp, varied interests, willing to try anything or a lot of things, kind, ability to be and let me be

17. Would you bungee jump?

Ooohh yes!

18. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?

I don’t wear shoes…like my toes breathing.

19. What's your favourite ice cream?

Mint! Chocolate also

20. What are your favourite colours?

Blue, black, wine red

21. What are your least favourite things?

Monday mornings and cockroaches

22. How many people do you have a crush on right now?

Umm I’ve been permanently crushing on my 2^nd std classmate

23. Who do you miss most right now?

I'll change that to 'what' - Sleep

24. What are you listening to right now?

Love street by The Doors

25. If you were a crayon, what colour would you be?

Purple

26. What is the weather like right now?

Effin HOT!

27. Last person you talked to on the phone?

Panji

28. The "first" thing you notice about the opposite sex?

Their hands and what they do with them

29. Do you like the person who sent you this?

Oh yes…love her very much indeedy! Bestest Friend :-)

30. How are you today?

Mildly worried. My right eyelid’s been ticking like crazy

31. Favourite non-alcoholic drink?

Mint soda pop, Jal Jeera, Salt lime soda, Sweet lassi, Buttermilk, Litchi juice, Guava juice

32. Favourite alcoholic drink?

Anything Tequila based

33. Natural hair colour?

Dark Brown-Black

34. Eye colour?

Dark Brown

35. Wear contacts?

Nope. Touchwood!

36. Siblings?

None. Wheeeeee!

37. Favourite month?

November. Tis gotta lotta character with its showers, slugs, snails, croaking frogs, and the songs in its name!

38. Favourite food?

Shall overlook the hint at the singular and launch into preferred menu…Mum’s Biryani, Sparky’s Lasagne, Mexican Chicken Cheese burger from Kenzos, Vanjaram fish fry, Pecos’ Squid, Homemade pork pizza, Steak Cesare from Tangerine, Kaadai from Kaaraikudi, Tiramisu and Double chocolate gateaux from Jelly Belly, Chocolate mint cake from Mocha, Chocolate mint delight from Corner house and of course Thayir Saadham.

39. Favourite day of the year?

Any Sunday

40. Have you ever been too shy to ask someone out?

No. Asked out the big mistake of my life.

41. Scary movies or happy endings?

Sucker for happy endings but get bloodthirsty once in a while

42. Summer or winter?

Summer! Mambazham, water melon, maanga with molaga podi on compulsory beach visits

43. Holi or Diwali?

Deepavali. New clothes :-D Also, semma non-veg saapadu

44. Do you like your name?

Totally. Methinks tis utterly cool and weird.

45. What book/magazine are you reading?

Rumpole & The Age of Miracles by John Mortimer. Quite funny.

46. What's on your mouse pad?

the brand name of my comp. The excitement is killing me!

47. What did you watch on TV last night?

Hannah Montana on Pogo. Briefly. Such is the plight of CAS victims

48. Favourite Smell?

Mun vaasanai, sea breeze, Moore Market’s musty book cum fish tank stink, Pavazha malli, Raw guavas

49. Have you ever regretted breaking up with someone?

50. Most tiresome thing you’ve ever experienced/done?

Getting through Mondays, trying to be polite to annoying relatives, getting imagination handicapped visualizers to understand an Idea

An interesting shade

2007-02-21T12:08:00.000+05:30

Noises aren't helping enough. How much can one get out of a Wheeeaah! Can't paint to show all the colours dripping off to form pretty puddles I'm trying to skirt, step through and splash in. Don't have a cam to catch the jigs, the foetal reminiscence, twitchy hands that don't know what to do with themselves, grinning eyes, the pallor of self-doubt, my clueless hair on how to hang over my forehead, the anticipatory ticking of the left eyelid, the determined pulse moving towards white papers of dreams, the content stroll, the apprehension lurking on my left.

For the love of salt

2007-02-05T18:33:00.000+05:30

After a knee-whopping ride to the beach past the arch (known as Kapaleshwar Nagar Beach to the auto fellows) and being the object of some cackling, we toppled out on to sand and many pairs of eyes. They didn't glare, stare. They just gazed vacant with maybe a hint of curiosity in some. Immediately felt kinship with the beach, the sea and its creatures, especially the Mussel - clammed up instantly! Wondered if Ostriches would fit the landscape.

Somehow got past the freeze and plonked on the beach behind the group in a circle. Heads rotated towards the boy with the Guitar. It was such a pretty night! And it all started with some strumming and humming Simon & Garfunkel under tangerine lights. Muttered lyrics for fear of squawking, but when it came to Illayaraja, P'dner and I were mostly out there with accompaniments that go achum achum achum...Nila adhu vaanathu meley...! :-D what a song indeed!!

And then they descended - hordes of children, squeaking, giggling, loud!!! The music was lost in their bledy babble and repeated hushes they did to themselves was far worse than their yakking. But the guide saved the music of the night! Arun, a tall, lanky, bearded, hooded, sweatshirted, shorted, sweet man with a passionate disposition for the environment, took them aside for orientation. Phew! And we carried on with mi song...Wish you were here. Missed V quite a bit. It is our song after all. And the whispering of Clapton and Co went on till we were ready to trot.

Usually a crowd of 20 had tripled this time cause of the blasted kids from a school I went to and which I have absolutely no respect for. I do have reason to be spiteful. Forgot them instantly when we hit the wet sand. Ambling while the moon paced along and surf curled over feet, placid peace sunk in with each step.

Our first stop-over came quite quickly. The ones ahead had tracked a nest with 175 eggs! Fantastic pingpong look alikes! Soft, dented and pink in the moonlight. As N pointed out it's utterly gobsmacking to think that these turtles come year after year to the same beach and have been doing so for aeons. Parallel worlds I want to be a part of but then there's home and the potholed road to work. Not quite alluring but neverthless a predominant aspect. Tsk tsk.

Eels, puffer fish, bloated ones with eyes popped, tummy split, fins slit - my morbid side had a ball. Crabs skittered by for company and did their jigs across sand. Deft creatures. Cuttlefish bones to start with were a novelty. In fact I did a bit of grumbling cause the guide gave it to pesky kid. But we stumbled on many streaking phosphorescent white on the sand. Picked 2. Now figuring out ways to get rid of stench. Soon I came to be known was the Cuttlefish collector. A kid came and offered two! And the rest pointed out the picks.

Plankton I saw none but save one. Absolutely pthoooey. Bottles, crawling coconuts, garlands of the dead in ashes, but no plankton! Spotting that lone blue metallic glow was a special moment. Touch it, drag it, Voila! Light painting! Painted blue trails till it disappeared from finger tips. It's plain beautiful.

Nest 2 yielded 111 + 1 small. 1 small was deemed by a know-it-all to be born with defects. The ones who knew said no such thing. Quite a bit of know-it-alls on this trip. Having stumbled upon a dead Ridley, one loudly proclaimed it dead. Duh! We know. And how you suppose, we asked. The know-it-all did a long uhh followed by 'we'll have to take it to a vet to figure." Ok then. Most probably died of suffocation from the trawlers, said the guide. It was a 50 kg or so turtle, bleeding in trickles from the neck. Nearly 45 years old. 50, 000 left. The turtles wont be around to tell us that existence was before now.

We trotted by Bella Ciao, temples, N's old house, packs of outnumbered stray dogs, and circumvented around fishermens boats. Apparently the fishermen view us as an inauspicious element, a lot like the cat crossing the path. We happened upon 2 who had come back with quite a catch. They were untangling the net off a pile of Madava meen, silver and terribly dead.

You know you've arrived on Beasant Nagar beach when you see the plastic competing with the glitter of the sea. Plastic silver. It goes beyond the gagging reflex. But no ugly beach can deter plan for z walk in March! The hatchlings and lots of plankton... hopefully!

2007-01-11T19:21:00.000+05:30

Ingrown nails can be quite comfortable. Numbed in the pain one forgets. Similarly blackheads. I'm waiting for that pique that gets me started on the nail or the blackhead. So much has happened. I've tripped myself over a zillion times within a few hours and have the sheet in a seamen knots...almost improbable but when I do look at myself as a wrapping artist I seem to have done a darn good job!

Regrets bounce along stinging in quick pinches exactly where it hurts. 2 best friends leaving at the same time. 1 I hardly spent time with. The other, I didn't get enough off. Doubts come in mocking jaunts. Knock knees indeed. That thing called love and then me. Trying to fight the urge to be lulled by mediocrity. Learning in momentary haunts of clarity. Making peace with time. Making peace with myself.

Sigh squared

2006-12-21T13:41:00.000+05:30

Oh and this is my car. Pretty no. She's a lil raspy when started up though. This is my room...quite a sleep inducer and yada yada yada. Variations of virtual tours of my home were spilling into my ears and shot back into my head circuitously for more chopping, re-editing, rephrasing and additional knickknacks. Somehow I manged to rest eyes in determination not to like panda for the next day. Next day. Went about like yoga went wrong with a crick by the diaphragm and refused to exhale much. Mopped, swept, cooked, wine at handy. And tequila too. And ice cream.

It wasn't till evening that I actually put a face to my cleaning bout. Didn't want to count them chickens. However, Luck crapped on the two of us. It cost him literally. And I went skittering like a popped balloon.

The one good thing that's come of this is that home has been gleaned.

Bloody Dunes

2006-12-12T22:15:00.000+05:30

Why is it such a big deal/issue/expectation or whatever you call it! to want it straight simple neat...the person I'm madly in love with to be just as madly in love with me...? There's no such thing as perfect, no one has it easy yada yada yada but Orkut says otherwise. They all are bledy leaving testimonials of their love for each other now! No I don't grudge them. I bet it's so bledy nice to be that way. And Orkut is probably the worst thing to happen to me. Or maybe all this swishes around in my head cos of PMS. Guess I need to bleed to be a better person. Sometimes it's that simple...or so it seems. Monthly ruminations...

Once you get used to not having, there's a shutter that leaves just about enough ventilation for it to grow on you. But these bleeding times of clarity gets it all clogged in the wedges and in need of some dusting. Baah!

And synchronised PMS is rather deadly. P'dner and I have it together. We hardly meet, but then we do talk on the phone a lot. Both of us aren't up to bail each other out but sigh or hiss with nods.

Compass, ladder and some recipes plis...

2006-12-08T12:26:00.000+05:30

Having blared Rare Earth, RHCP and more, Worldspace quit on my mom when she switched to the spirituality channels, which btw are the only ones that will play on not having renewed subscription. Fiddling with the palm-sized remote with tough buttons that feel like thick corn (is that what you call it?) at the junction tween finger and palm, and mine I attribute to 5 years of riding a blue kinetic with musical notes etched on the side. Tsk Tsk. It's not so bad really. Deviant me. That was no sentence. That was a strand. I'd like to think it the vapourous stuff that Dumbledore pulls out with his wand and swishes into the pensieve like a stray string of spaghetti.

Yup, fiddling with the remote didn't get the stations back. The display said CARR 75. This, the customer care persons pronounced as CARE. Some care indeed. The manual didn't have it in the index and was still missing after having run through it all. When nothing they suggested worked, I was told to clamber on to the roof and direct the antenna South East at an elevation of 45 to 50 degrees. What?! This at 11 pm with a very reluctant moon.

In between all this I was screeching as to why they i.e. mum and uncle had to mess around when all they had to do was holler for me. And while the verbal blah blahs rallied, the aquaguard was belting out it's annoying, high pitched tune while my uncle loudly read out the manual. Mad indeed! But quite funny on after thought though in a frustrating and exhausting way :-) Oh well.

I'm considering opening up whiling wonky's popcorn! Made that fabulous vanilla flavoured, orange-tang-touched butter popcorn! Most fabulous ever! And meat chips also happened by accident on frying salami cut into nachos look alikes.

Wait up! Here's a ping pong bat...will you play me?

2006-12-06T23:21:00.000+05:30

...why am I reminded I'm alone in a lonely way? Got no issues with the former. Annoying the way it makes its presence felt with the help of the jelly legging latter, like sudden twitches of the leg making you start up in retinas otherwise glazing over. No matter what one says it'll never be ever. What makes the loneliness seep beyond the fine line of alone is the dual knowledge that you feel a constant and that the rest aren't or so it seems. Then constant is tossed on it's side and snoozes snugly but still ticking though a lil sluggish now. Alone makes its way through lonely by blaring at the other while I'm having it good and not knowing. Or so I believe. So it is nice to think so. So consolatory. Fairness. Glitches in so called constant time...when I haven't been what I want others to be. So we fill in the gaps like chocolate sauce in cookie ridges. Just isn't that sweet. Guess it's all tolerated for those moments when we're in step.

Mashed Potatos

2006-12-04T21:40:00.000+05:30

I like the Contours. And I pretend to be able to jive pretty well in my head. Or else I should just go with calling this post 'the world's always 3 drinks behind' as Bogart said. But sometimes it's such a dizzy I dunno who's ahead.

Average life it seems. Nothing really wrong. But it's buzzing with flies waiting to land on the stink about to ensue! One of them being owing p'dner a lot. Literally and otherwise. Sometimes nothing seems enough. Literally yes. 68. That's all I got. Otherwise... wish I could erase some and flick the grubby lead into a black hole. Or mix and match to every varying sense of perfection that accosts her at every step. Or at the least conduct a lobotomy. But then she would've never been her. I don't know the answer to mind block, contentment, tossing baggage. Baah! Incompetent. It feels crazy and freakishly so like bald tyres going wonky on roads. When an integral part of you needs the rest and you just can't get the grease in the right grooves. Terrible mechanic indeed. I just ride my bike and drive my car. I don't know what makes it move apart from the gas. Peering under the hood or letting the mechanic grope under my bike only reinstates helpless. In the former I know only the radiator. In the latter I know he's just unplugged the spark and taking me for my ride indeed. Wish I knew all the hows...

All day I've been having the smell of orange rind strung to my nostrils. Thanks to a 4 am sms on flavoured butter popcorn from P'dner (after which my nose was on high alert through fat mosquitos' drones and sudden bursts of jazz piano from the radio). Loverly indeed! 100 gms butter with dried corn in presure cooker. Here the crackle. Open up and dunk powdered orange rind, seeds of vanilla (where am I going to get that here?! In the city of sickeningly sweet Vanilla essence Arun Ice Creams!) and sugar. Bliss! What a happy world! Pthisssh!

Lotus Stem Vathal

2006-11-27T15:56:00.000+05:30

Monday. The dastardly day. Fie! It rhymes already. Triple Y! Oh my gawdy! What a bawdy day indeedy! Blueberry waffles I want simply cause tis monday and monday goes very well with blue. It's a cliche and it might as well hang with something utterly yummy in sick hopes of subduing its manic sting. Yes, I'm taking off popular terms associated with the dread day - blue, manic. Tsk Tsk.

Monday is precisely 30 hours along. It eats into my last 6 on Sunday. Propped like a cubist creation on orange cushions sipping languidly on mom's tea, spliced in neat lines of dull gold, a typical sunday sun, and cream blind's narrow shadows, I feel the anxiety getting unzipped and grate over each interlocking groove. Wallowing on what's to come, devising ways of making it to alternate world, actually a fisherman or a dolphin trainer will do. Or octopus catching in Grecian Urns by the seas of Tunisia will do too.

Loathsome morn I tell you. Why awake. Why can't it slip in unnoticed during the bustling hours when it doesn't matter what day or time it is but what's on hand is all that counts. Why the faff can't it dawn monday when I'm busy squabbling with an auto fellow, or busy rummaging through a book store, flipping channels on worldspace, while going ouzo ouzo with N, or when busy doodling!

Lilly livered monday! I dare you to take me at day time! Ha! Parasite prey on sunday. Out from 'neath buttercup yellow underskirts! Milksop! Monday you!

Episode 1 of Time and Timely Travels

2006-11-24T12:45:00.000+05:30

Scrambled out of bed bug infested side upper at 4 am. Stubbed my toes down and into floaters and plodded through snores on my way to make myself presentable. Splashed rubbery water that rolled off without removing a tint of the train's muck. Actively rubbing with tissue, it unclogged. Old man on lower birth panicked on seeing me so sprightly. He sprung up and went about waking his relatives scattered around the compartment. Every station he peered at as though waiting to leap out through the emergency exit if need be. Sat smug knowing we were still some time away. Complacently I went about applying moisturiser and lip salve, packing in my shawl and arranging my bag for easy grabbing. His panic heightened and he went about snatching shawls off his son and wife and folding them hastily. Sporadic lights came on. The ujala ones of the train as well as glow watches. They hrumphed and they grumphed, turned their behinds on each other and regressed.

In the meanwhile, I was busy going bright eyed at myriad flashes of being received and how. At the station? Should I just save trouble and land up home and surprise? Will, I zero in on speck tween all that sludge like flow of sweatered trudgers with luggage? Or will I find him step-in from a corner? Will I kill slow minutes, squishing them with glee as one does when squelching nits and tell myself to walk patiently to the gate to prevent myself from tripping over auto men's legs? And then will I take short wisps of searing cold in bursting anticipation, recapping to the slow droll of days past? And then on seeing his car, I knew I'd grin like an idiot, highlights streaking off like the northern lights.

By now, the train promised to pull in at the station closest. I saw his apartment zip by. And it took me quite a while to figure that the train wasn't going to slow down. Drat! More time in my way. In between all this anticipation there were other eager souls who kept shoving their mousy hair under my nose as they kept ducking to see if they had indeed arrived.

Jittering and thudding on potholes I landed there pretty fast. Ripping out hairbrush, I gleaned scattered strands. Trotted to the elevator, slammed gates, n whistled like a milk cooker. That name plate :-) Ding! Dong! I tried to look composed. And my idea of composed is staring at a space nowhere. I walk in. Act like I've just arrived, plonking bag and all. And turn around to get a squg. Squg! Warm. Catholic experience. Time's zapper. Content. Blissfully blank except for one strong feeling of just being. Period. That's what I've been waiting for over a month. That's what I dreamt of and daydreamed of a trillion times. That's all I've been quite wanting for sometime. And now that I'm back, I want more!

Nosey worries

2006-11-23T14:46:00.000+05:30

My monster nose is gonna give Rudolf stiff competition. Raw red, it's gearing up for the christmas season doing trial runs with make-up - tell tale snow flakes. Flaked skin. It burns I tell you. However, I am begining to seriously hope that I do take a trip across the world and land up in N's stocking on christmas day.

Should've taken up p'dners invitation and gone to Pondy tod. Uncle would've been quite willing to let us go and get drunk. Rocks to warm butt on. Green moss slapping behind your ankle. A lone fish flip-fopping. And all that pasta! Fie O Fie Arcane!

Apologies, confessions, purgation, lobotomy

2006-11-20T00:31:00.000+05:30

I was contemplating avatars the other day. Figured a shriveled mushroom or even bacteria on a green bathroom tile would be apt. When faced with potent embarrassment that's bound to zap you out to extinction, you begin to ponder escape routes of a better life of a lowly miserable creature not worth noting, living blissfully for a few days in anonymity and utter contentment. Filth is at large you see.

Hoping that A doesn't write me off as disgusting and weird in need of a shrink. It was a mistake! It was a reflex! Monster House will prove my innocence at the gagging reflex. My uvula did it!

What don't I screw up? Even the art and joy of gifting refuses to take place as it should without me tripping all over it and sliding in my own butter at desperate lurches to save it. A cd I sent. In spite of having known that no one would be at home to receive it, I thickly drill squiggly lines of the residence address. Next morning I fret. So much for a surprise. I msg and reveal all in anxiety. Anxiety kicks into 5th gear and I make calls to DTDC offices in the city and out of station and finally land up with someone who is quite sweet but understands no word I say. Spelling out office address thrice and one hour later I get a call from the Chennai office for recipient's number. Recipient hasn't messaged. Was stuck with weird old man who kept emphasizing on how tongues wag when the opp sex hang out even if it's professionally. Lasted for 2 and a half hours!!! Tracking? My ass! I dunno if it's reached. Recipient is blank. Drat!

ketchup

2006-11-10T12:01:00.000+05:30

A quart of vodka, my mauve blanket and Sophie's World. Wet dogs. I smell wet dogs! Slugs trailing in tantric patterns. Shadows glued to my curtains; waving and moulding to the breeze. A lone mosquito drones by the ear. Coconut goes thudding in the next compound as I plot to jump in and save it early next morn simultaneously preparing threats at grouchy watchman. Kitten bawls. Cats come skidding. Squeals and spitting orgasms. And then sleep's breathing becomes evident, permeates and explodes. Community feeling. Can't make up my mind if it's peaceful or bothers. Any sense of belonging icks me out. Only a mutual wanting for company corks hiccups on singularity. I am not a vagina. I am not here to reproduce. Being female is being part of me. Chocolate ice cream from sunday. Sugary chocolate sauce. It never drowns, the bottle's almost empty. Splicing and shoving with a spoon. Flipping channels. Reading news that stinks when its rotted so completely triggering gagging reflexes. Twiddling toes on carpet and wondering if the living room needs a larger one. The lizard population has grown. They somersault on blinds making thudripping sounds. I miss frogs. So long since I heard a croak or saw a snails black metal trail. The cops are having a ball with the new patrol cars. They experiment with the howler. Banshee! Dogs growl. I wonder if they see some white floatsomes. A bit of a wus, I stick by the TV longer. Scalding hot water from reluctant spores come gushing in archs hitting tiles and anywhere but me. Rituals of calls and messages and fears and complications. Praying. Transit to in between.

Sun Dunk

2006-11-02T14:07:00.000+05:30

This morning was grasped with disbelief...it's a thursday! :-) I can sniff the weekend. Spilled out of bed in a scraggly vertical line and smacked palms on the switchboard barely squinting and twiddled up to the fan knob and eased it off. Peering eagerly for a calendar that wasn't there, my mind fell back on groping with yesterday, feeling up for a detail that would've positively made it a wednesday. Umm I remembered something about Kannada Rajautsav being on wed and I knew he had an off...ha! wednesday! Sunshine crept in.

Gulped oats and stepped out to be speckled by splotches and creeping gray. It hardly lasted for 2 minutes and the sun shone all the way. Drat! I'm rhyming! Rode in a daze. Landed on a pile of work. Ick.

I inch my way to lunch break only to be jolted and cringe a feet away. There was a puraan in my lunch packet lashing meekly. I don't know what that bledy insect is called in english. Anyway, its pincers are known to send rashes round the body and bloat. Egad! It was dying. Well, it was squashed under my lunch box all this while, some curd rice and mutton. Partially squished it turned a lovely blue. I saw it breathe its last in the curd fumes before chucking in a bin.

Rashes or bloats or not, an electrocuted cat on a wall is what I look like though the bristles are subsiding slowly. I'm still sitting on edge. And now is when the cleaner decides to mop the floor with a generous helping of phenoil. But the darn dank mop has stomped over the phenoil pungency and is wafting its stench through the vents. What goes around comes around. Blistering Blue Barnacles indeed!

Zilch appetite. Ordering from the fly-o-drome below is smudging away the hunger gnawing at my throat. Waiting for 415 and some plum cake and luke warm caramelly coffee from cheta. Tick faster time...I'll feed the world some quotable quotes in your name.

pinch me!

2006-10-20T21:54:00.000+05:30

No more nasty wails whipping me awake from above, no more fear of being split haphazardly into pieces of gut and sticky flesh and red. My fan’s got a bush. Ahem! Yes, apparently it’s a gadget that muzzles it into place instead of letting it swing wildly in hallucinatory rings. Oh and it also makes it meek. Before, at around 3am or so it gets guttural and starts hiccupping and when it goes into the final lap, it begins to screech like a banshee! Without it is so silent. Without it means growing wet like frozen lemons out in the open – slippery, slithery, leathery. Without it means no sleep and squinting at it with disdain in the dark. With it means wind (it’s got four blades). No, actually a mini typhoon. With it means I get into my frog position and say ‘so screw you! I’m gonna sleep nice especially if it’s my last night!’ Now, it just wisps along demurely. Patriarch I sound like.

Gummy day yesterday. Juiced and stretched beyond wood pulp. Made quite a purchase. 7 meters of upholstery and a lovely dhurrie. My aid was a good bud, quite uncomplaining till my bike shuddered to a halt. Bledy drunk had walked out on me one more time. I rolled it up to a bunk 200ms ahead. And good bud cum aid turned coolie, lugged dhurrie, profusely sweating, cussing and hoping no one caught him trailing with a big brown mat, especially in his red jacket, which almost did well as a uniform. Sorry Kuku.

My nights slip into days considering I’m usually jilted by sleep. And what a day. Hot chocolate with good friend and a midnight chat with her lying on a hospital bed! Ankle broken in 3 places. Wired and bolted this morning, she’ll be up in 4 weeks or so.

The fragility of it all is freaky. It seems to be the only thing that’s real. Everything else, the means, the whole being perched on things that flit, is surreal. The only thing we wake up to is a tap on our porcelain window. And then quickly, it’s all plastered over and the grooves grow thick with the muck of life, only to crack up a lil later. How many wake-up calls I wonder.

She was on a bus heading home, and midway, the front tire exploded tossing the crowd out. In all that metal and meaty bodies a woman lost her leg and my friend thankfully just an ankle, temporarily. MTC will pay up I hope. But being just a statistic doesn’t help. Don’t think there’s a long wait to be barcoded. We already are. Busses will be overcrowded. People will footboard. The entire frame will be falling apart. It will still run. It will still be spitting out black fumes recklessly, with no emission control in place. Women will be pinched. One woman to another woman will advice on how modestly to drape a dupatta. Women will take men’s seats in the name of positive discrimination and holler when an old man takes a lady’s. Babies will relentlessly wail. My friend will walk. We will be numbers.

Oh yeah and then there’s Hope.

Flitzzz

2006-10-18T13:05:00.000+05:30

Aah morning and I feel like a headless chicken especially when I’ve got so much time on my hands, cupped like orbs waiting to be freshly juiced. Brad Pitt’s voice from Fight Club goes like a gong in my head, ‘your life is ending one minute at a time.’ Patience evades, panic settles on skin like gooseflesh prickling to a siren. Food is gobbled. Taste scathing on tongue…like I don’t deserve to have it any longer.

Gaah! When most things are fire walled and discretion and quickies to blah and co is a must so as to not get them tagged ‘forbidden’ by abishtoo spouting IT people, and to ensure that rituals can be conducted without interference the next day, abstinence meanders to boredom, which in turn chugs towards Linda Goodman’s zodiac signs. Scorpio. I am cute. Not some husky voiced seductress. I’m specksie boo up for cuddles. Egad!! I guess it's the same difference the bones make...one's own voice sounds different from the way others get it. Can’t escape Specksie Boo even if my name is ‘Arcane’ insists p'dner.

Overall emotional compatibility – Aquarius. True. Overall incompatibility – Leo. False. People I’ve fallen hard for including my first crush in 2^nd std is a Leo and I still trip on him. Plus, i've discovered him online after aeons. Though none of that sucked-in-stomach state happens anymore, it's still got the highlights going off my cheeks. Secretive. I just forget to tell. Dreamy eyes. I’m an insomniac. And I don’t have a planet anymore. Pluto isn’t a planet…tsk tsk.

Watched Hostel…freaky concept…torture house where you can explore your sadistic side on a variety of nationalities, American’s being the most high-priced. Very disturbing to know that violence of that kind is imaginable. Charles Manson’s a Scorpio. Don’t understand violence being described as animalistic. Animals hunt to survive. But then sadism seems to be a singular entity, which needs to thrive. Incidentally, goo from the vein connecting the eyeball to the skull looks like mint sauce. If this were Happy Tree Friends they'd be slurping it up

Now, how can someone constantly turn ideas into senile vegas boards?! That only. How?! An awareness ad was turned into an obituary for the dead person. Now it's cheesy glamour, uncool bling, raunchy glitz and all of it in one go has got to clear the stomach lining out.

Toodoo lama lama toodoo lama lama...

2006-10-17T15:03:00.000+05:30

Faux pas de la vida almost lived. Not anymore. Cause I refuse to be apologetic for me and my rambles and hide. No more unsettling feelings of being exposed, of stuttering over grammar. Detachment starts here. I don't care. P'dner...faux pas de la vida's last words...actually last mother-of-paras

It's amazing how 2 words and a conjunction can take me on a spin that's totally out of order, self-inflicted, unwarranted, unfair. All it did do is throw up a few things that stand as they are in spite of anything, be it smart, talented, and all those nice positivie ego-boosting things. I don't seem to want anything bad enough. And that's what I want badly. To not want. To flit through life, get zapped by what it has to offer and move on. And there's a very convoluted connection to all this in the name of work, save, get real. In a weird ass way that I can't explain I'm happy. What I don't like about being happy is that there are so many kinds. And this one is placid. I hate placid! Duality would be easy. But duality never met. Doesn't get to meet I guess. Btw I don't believe in that. It's theoretical. It's real and therefore I don't believe. Plus, there's no such thing as duality. It would exist only if I were a sunbathing cow on cud. Why is letting go such an issue. I don't know why I cling on to things umm well like fluorescent rubber bands with polka dotted teats hanging off. I don't need a shrink. I need a blockage. I can move. Masochist in me wants to know how much longer. Apparently longer. Breaks don't do me good. Time off is absolute no no. I am running out of time. I wanna hop rides like a hobohemian. Nothing's stopping. I need to buy a ticket. Not unreserved but first class. I just have to. And when it's all done with I'll be bumming around the 'real and sensible' way because somewhere I'm above average and yet want to be safe not cause chances unnerve me but the fragility of losing it all in a wink. Detachment. It's easy. I've almost touched it and scooted back. I want to get there...pronto! I don't know how...ya think tis an entity or some privilege club that approaches you. Am I too lowly not to deserve a reason? Or ya think money can do the trick? Maybe you're going "i can't believe she's so complicated." I'm bad with knots. I just want to know. And weirdly it all boils down to one thing in the lack of detachment. Being loved.

Now, I'll just go chaperone my boredom.

RitzyKracker. I almost called the blog that. But it sounds like some peroxide blonde in a doll dress doing the splits amidst bright bulbs and hoops. Oh and that's how far my French cum Spanish goes...faux pas de la vida. Franish. Franish sounds like an omelette with foie gras and spanish tomatoes. That's pretty much z idea...faux pas...foie gras...fattened with averageness, churned into averageness, oh fie life! Enough methinks with all that pasting and grating, enough of those sporadic giggles and poke at poor geeky, plump, bespectacled, waddling life.

Toodles boredom! Tata! Shoo! Scat!

I lost my larynx...

2006-10-12T15:10:00.000+05:30

methinks. I've been scrounging for it in replays of fabulous days that don't wait for my nostrils to dilate as I pass through moments of glee or collapse with my deep sighs on blissful moments, but just keep rushing past. And now it's almost automatic. And I can't find my larynx.

When it makes a meager appearance, it can't keep up with the speed of recaps. Soon a fresh burst of sores clog it up. Words come out searing and difficult. And I let myself be lulled by clippings of zipping on gorgeous roads with a person I hold closer than close.

And when exhausted of doing those umpteen trips, I allow myself to be gnashed in a motley mess of squatting commas, periods due for eviction, and narrow straits of dictated strains and insipid creativity.

Manual work. Shoveling bodies and parts in Lebanon. Or building. Cleaning the gore. But Red Cross apparently takes in only American citizens. Tsk Tsk. I'll settle for a lift operator. Shuttling up and down, I'll be limbo-happy in that damp, dark, musty box in a void that comes in fragments of unpeopled moments gradually growing in humidity and sweat swirls churned by the buzz of dust laden rotors.

Half the time I’m reminding myself the means to an end is just a means. The remaining quarter I let the means seep in so deep that I’m running out of time. The other quarter is reserved for those flashes of nincompoopness that laughs at its own dilemma likened to a sticky Turkish sweet that wont give. And then it swears that it wont let me be average, seeking safety. It’s lot like the East coast undercurrent. The water wallops you to the shore and the sand underneath drags you in. Clawing and digging your toes into the loose wet gold grips you in a tantalizing fear. I know I’d love to know what happens on being dragged away cause like someone said at the end of every fear is freedom. Blank-out pills help blot out all the striving that takes to be average and wanting of a world with routines, a world that’s staid and flat. But a few grains of sand have gotten under the seams, and can’t be washed out. I’m folding that bit up and stitching it up double.

Panju mittai!

2006-08-18T18:40:00.000+05:30

Now I have two templates. Must be me wonly...one is a ghastly spiked-with-great-amounts-of-rose-escence-rose milk colour and the other, the usual speckled one. Idle hands and idle kicks I tell you...the template samples showed something close to hot pink which is a colour I like and then it turns out to be this bledy cotton candy with words scrawled all over! But if keyed in without the www then it's good ole speckles! Paah! Why won't that pink go away!!

update: pink poye pochu!

Fuzzcurr

2006-08-18T13:00:00.000+05:30

This is all some yikety yak cause it's an experiment. You see I had just uploaded a few of my fav poems...4 of them and blogspot refuses to show them. And the few that flit past my blog might miss out on some of the most amazing poems by incredible people. So I'm hoping this post effectively puts the missing poems back in view.

So about the yikety yak...is this the feline mating season??? Cause my garden is brimming with scurrying fluff and colours of all sizes and ages!! It first started off with a perky gray one with eyes that move faster than neo. Perky one's a sucker for cuddles. All that smothering gave his catty nature of owning the world, a mega boost. He sauntered into my house. It wouldn't be a bad thing if my parents weren't finicky about the cat shedding and fear of what the cat brought in and what the cat took out. So it's just the garden and verandah.

Anyway, Neo made his home everywhere inside ma house. We figured he sneaked in at some odd hour at night through the window. Instead of some holy-aura-instilling melody, mornings were bursting with hollers of my holy name! Cos Neo used to greet my parents every morning with a well rested purr. The cat expert was alerted with the negative vibes of muttered curses punctuating every bellow . Tripping down the stairs I had to come all groggy eyed, puffy cheeked and with gnarled hair. Cradling the oh-can-we-play!?!-I-throw-ball-u-catch, grey kitty, I go through rapidly unbolted doors, out on to the verandah and into the garden and leave him in the farthest corner. And yes, Neo thought it was a game and he repeated his outings to my house till we shut the windows and he ditched us after a week never to be spotted again i.e.
permanently loitering in our garden. Though he does drop in once in a while when he's crossing over to greener pastures. This one time instead of assuaging our wounded ego at an ungrateful cat who gorged on the most sought after fishes, we were quite relieved and I slept peaceful mornings.

Neo's best bud and blood bro Zebra had us quite worried. He was a docile cat. Never used to eat much of what we fed him and always let Neo have the first helping. We thought he was a wimp and not much of a cat. He couldn't even poop right and clean up like one. Yep, he wasn't much of cat. He remained a kitten for a long time. He was tiny and skinny. While I was wondering if he should get some growth hormones injected into him, tada! He grew. Jus a tad longer. And we saw him streak under a bush with a chameleon hanging limp and wanting to be dead in his mouth. I'm happy for him.

Karuthama is one hot kitty cat! She's jet black and is slick and sleek as Naomi Campbell. She's such a tease man. You gotta see her walk with those long legs patting the air daintily with her long sinuous shimmery tail. If twas the ramp, those would be flying kisses. And she's a CAT , a real one...silent, intriguing, with a purposeful look lining her green eyes, and flitting in and out like a dream.

Then there's Puff, her exact opposite. A little pudgy with irregular white tufts grown a lil muddy. He's quite a dirty bugger unusually. He's sweet, lazy, and easy on the eye cause he just sits, sits and sits. Wonder if beneath this languor lurks a maned lion insitnct...get me food lady! Now! On the double! I sure hope that Karuthama isn't dating him. But I gotta say he is quite an endearing slob, all round in the face like some stress ball and oval slits for eyes which are perpetually half closed with a blissful sunny smirk twitching across his lil mouth, wagging his tail slumberously while lolling under the pavazha malli bush bathed in its perfume.

All brown cats must be called Ramaswamy cause my dad's childhood cat was one and we think it's him in his 9 avatars. So Ramaswamy in keeping with his name is very south indian in nature. He loves rice! And any kozhambu added to it has him snarling at us to get away from him asap so that he can bury his face in the lil rice mound. He's home early and sticks true to what they say about a cat "poona pola varudhu"...one minute he is there, the next minute he's gone! No trouble with him. He wants his rice. But give him a whiff of more exotic stuff and something overcomes him...a kind of frenzy, the kind the masses feel when they get scent of Rajnikanth being due to make an appearance somewhere. He paces on the kitchen window sill alternating hiccups of squeals and cajoling purrs while my mum carries on passively cooking the sora puttu. He's almost in tears when it's cooked for he can no longer get anything outta his lips. But otherwise he's quite a placid cat.

The amorous ones and I have quite a connection. Their hotbed is right under my bedroom window. Their orgasmic spitting and snarls has me bolt upright from the bed at unearthly hours, scramble for my phone and wake up snoozing p'dner and make her snap out of her slumber as well by holding the phone to the window. Once, the coconut tree bang outside my window got tired of their foreplay which involves some highpitched squeals and bawling like a baby, that a branch crashed on to them sending them in opposite directions spitting curses.

Apart from these regulars there are other locals who use my garden as a highway to ply between prospective food spots. Not only don't they pay toll, they don't even look sideways at us while strutting over and taking toilet breaks. Pthoo pthoo pthoo to you whiskered ones too!!

Ma bag o lyrics

2006-08-18T12:28:00.000+05:30

Marriage
Gregory Corso

Should I get married? Should I be Good?
Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustaus hood?
Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries
tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries
and she going just so far and I understanding why
not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel!
Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone
and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky--

When she introduces me to her parents
back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,
should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa
and not ask Where's the bathroom?
How else to feel other than I am,
often thinking Flash Gordon soap--
O how terrible it must be for a young man
seated before a family and the family thinking
We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!
After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?
Should I tell them? Would they like me then?
Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter
but we're gaining a son--
And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?

O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends
and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded
just waiting to get at the drinks and food--
And the priest! He looking at me if I masturbated
asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?
And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!
I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back
She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!
And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on--

then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes
Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates!
All streaming into cozy hotels
All going to do the same thing tonight
The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen
The lobby zombies they knowing what
The whistling elevator man he knowing
The winking bellboy knowing
Everybody knowing! I'd be almost inclined not to do anything!
Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!
Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!
running rampant into those almost climatic suites
yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!
O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls
I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of
bigamy a saint of divorce--

But I should get married I should be good
How nice it'd be to come home to her
and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen
aproned young and lovely wanting by baby
and so happy about me she burns the roast beef
and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!
God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married!
So much to do! like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night
and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books
Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower
like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence
like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!
And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
When are you going to stop people killing whales!
And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust--

Yet if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snow
and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,
up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,
finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man
knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear not Roman coin soup--
O what would that be like!
Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus
For a rattle bag of broken Bach records
Tack Della Francesca all over its crib
Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib
And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon

No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father
not rural not snow no quiet window
but hot smelly New York City
seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls
a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!
And five nose running brats in love with Batman
And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired
like those hag masses of the 18th century
all wanting to come in and watch TV
The landlord wants his rent
Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus
Impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking--
No! I should not get married and I should never get married!
But--imagine if I were to marry a beautiful sophisticated woman
tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves
holding a cigarette holder in one hand and highball in the other
and we lived high up a penthouse with a huge window
from which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer days
No I can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream--

O but what about love? I forget love
not that I am incapable of love
it's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes--
I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother
And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible
And there maybe a girl now but she's already married
And I don't like men and--
but there's got to be somebody!
Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,
all alone in furnished room with pee stains on my underwear
and everybody else is married! All in the universe married but me!

Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible
then marriage would be possible--
Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover
so I wait--bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.

The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
T.S. Eliot

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreatsOf restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, 'Do I dare?' and, 'Do I dare?'
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!')
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: 'But how his arms and legs are thin!')
Do I dareDisturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in
upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: 'I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all,
I shall tell you all'--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: 'That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.'

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail
along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a
screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
'That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.'

. . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

The Revolution will not be telvised
Gil Scott Heron

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,S
kip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will n0t be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The rvolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o' clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will notbe televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

The Emperor of Icecream
Wallace Stevens

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

snicker at smacker

2006-08-11T12:53:00.000+05:30

The other night I was going through the Metroplus Food Guide of Chennai. I knew almost all the places and very few I had actually sampled. Many reasons for the unvisited - driven away by the yuppiness, expelled by the prices, shaken off by horrible stories of service, banished by tags such as Pure Veg and Health Food or simply cause it’s not in an area I fancy.

Perusing, I figured them ambience out in my head and scrawled numbers and names and addresses for better pocket days. And this list I know is doomed from its inception. Cause I am going to bust money on mexican chicken cheese burgers at Kenzos, a beer (I always find myself stuck with a bike to take home so...just an a will do) and platters of oil-leak-sprung kebabs at Bike & Barrel, or crumb fried chicken and hot fudge brownie at Sparky’s, chocolate mint cake at Mocha, chicken stroganoff and mint ice cream and mint soda pop at Casa Picola, or chocolate truffles at Satyam laid hands on by braving lecherous crotch-rubbing men, kids who love to push and squeal with the surge, aunties with chiffon sarees gristling against my skin and all for gooey chocolate. Tis worth it! Or else I’d be with ranji at Noodle House over steamed rice and spicy chicken gravy, or coffee world and their really real and addictively aromatic coffees, or at karpagambal mess embedding my fingers in malli poo kinda idlis and swiping the yellowing banana leaf off its gobsmakcing saambar or scraping kapaleeshwar temple’ well-renowned puli sadham out of a dhonai. Note how the tummy budget shrinks.

Well, that’s the way of my pocket and that’s where the tongue leads...to tried and tested satisfaction. Utterly conditioned by these places and having figured out ways of my shrinking wallet, my taste buds have grown conservative. But they aint dogmatic... Yet. So a lil conscious overworking of the glands will unloosen legs towards a new destination.

My tongue I must say is quite a fretter...uneasily settling in the mouth, constantly lapping and tickling roof in annoyed anticipation, oozing skepticism on what’s to come. Keeping it still is quite a task. “Can I have a fresh lime soda please?” The salinity and lime gives it a lashing. In the meanwhile I scan, peering into the menu almost expecting a culinary hole to slide down. While marinating in the salt my tongue gives sudden upstarts as I skim over loving words...cheese, spice, jalapenos, deep fried, tangy, curried, sauteed, chilli, garlic, ginger, cloves, spring onions, melting hot jacket potato, vendaka, broccoli, cream of something soup, sour cream, mayo, beer batter, tamarind paste, vanjaram, kaadai and a bunch of other stuff. I stick by my decision to try the untried and clamp it shut, grind my teeth giving myslef cheek bites and order.

If I could give my tongue a cigarette I’m sure it’ll grab the opportunity, walk out of my mouth, envelope the tobaco and puff away while marching up and down in anxiety. Breaking conditioning is hard for my tongue too. But it has to understand it belongs to me. And it is not me. So I throw it a scorching look (all internally of course). And while it sulks, people watching, spacing out, a book, or a TV with set top box has me quite occupied.

New food arrives. I am pathetic at introductions. This piping hot something or bledy cold somethinger or neither nothinger greets my glum tongue with thrusts of spoons or scooped fingers and more often than not they always click and have a ball of a time. “I told you so...I know what you like. I know what’s good for you.” Am I a tyrant? Or is my tongue just indulging me having had an understanding with my brain?

And then of course that slip of paper with the Slurp List is doomed otherwise also. We all know all that is scrawled must crawl away.

Ackpthoo baby!

2006-07-11T23:24:00.000+05:30

An end(s)-of-days paranoid is what I've become over the last few months. Resigned myself to the idea that hell is convenient. What's to complain in a place that doesn't give a shit about etiquette, norms, bonds and other jazz. Instantaneously a nearly superhero status of Iceman overcame me. Was sweating beads of trepidation. And all this because I contemplated complete freedom and acceptance of hell. MF freezes because her conditioning of chuntu years kicked in. God was feared eventhough she isn't. Involuntary. Reflex. Conditioning done good. Heels keeled over washed out by deluge of abishtoos. Maya gave CPR. Sputter-to-life soon turned into a gurgle of glee as the nut rushed out at life with open arms. For the moment forgotten. Waiting for it to accost me while reading spoof on Vijay Kanth, while swerving to avoid pothole, fidgeting with blackhead and other such inane instances. The end isn't ashamed to reveal itself. But insipid ties and a taste for family politics glues on like tar. If this isn't sadistic on one's part and masochistic of the other (unbenokwnst) ya lay down and roll in the tar embedding specks of gravel in bosom. Expunge I say. And of course there's no pain. It lives in the head. One last emotion or 50 odd years of surfing emos and being perpetually lost in transition?

Gaah! What the faff. The talk of hypocrite. Rebels, actually registers only mild irritation not when the rut crosses my path but only when it nudges me out of the way. Not punctual. Not particularly ambitious. Hey a Canadian dude bartered a giant red paper clip for a house. SEE!!! Now why's that bit of green and silver stopping us eh? I can't have my cake and eat it too. Never understood it. Why de faff can't I?! It's ideal. That's why I can't have it. That's why no one can have it. Those who think they can, pretend. 2 ways about this thingy...ya don't listen and sink into blisfully willfully ignorant lifestyle reconfiguring means as ends or ya don't listen and look at what's in store in the direction ya don't take (as Kerouac said) with an i-pod doling out mood music by the minute to keep you in the spirit. Oh and I feel terrible for Zizou.

long time comin...

2006-07-07T14:54:00.000+05:30

Was tagged at the beginning of the year. Now I take it seriously cause I'm bored enough :p

10 years ago...
Figured the joys of turning invisible. Turned a confirmed escapist. Read Shakespeare for the first time...The Merchant of Venice. Was an athlete...shortest on the team but always managed to place in high jump. Realized I like poetry.

5 years ago...
Passed out of school :-) got 95 % in accounts ( I get kicks out of not knowing how de faff I managed to land up with such marks considering my history with numbers). Realized there was nothing I can study except Literature and that if I tried anything else I'd be doomed for life. Went to the college of my choice and sank into blissful complacence entitled by a small world of authors, dramatists, poets, to-be-writers, I'll-just-get-married-after-this(ers), assignments and exams. Travelled by MTC for the first time. Learnt how to ride a kinetic. Figured my mom was the queen at making sandwiches! Lumbered with Thomas Hardy (though I really do like Far from the madding crowd).

Last year...
was thrilled there was just one more sem to go in the hell hole! Terribly disillusioned because a certain person of authority brought to my notice that molestation is OK and that if I felt otherwise, I must come from a middle class family without sophistication. Saw this attitude being backed by a majority of women aspiring to be journalists. Made a good friend, J. Fell in love with Rohinton Mistry. Finally decided to let the grudge I held against B'lore drop and enjoyed its bookshops, ice cream parlours and theatres squeezing me dry. Got accustomed to rats of all sizes scurrying past or nuzzling behind my laundry bag. Kinda came close to figuring how it is to be a lesbian couple when my roomy and I took care of a stray pup with a broken leg, who in spite of it insisted on playing at 4 am. Began to like the vegetables chow chow and dhondakai.

Yesterday...
Saw Mi3. Made mango souffle which initially seemed good and then decided to suck. Perused through 'Pretty Women of Paris', a directory of 18th century prostitutes in Paris and wondered which wench I'd be. Used Pril dish cleaner to wash the loo just cause I was in the mood and there was nothing else...it works pretty well...lemony and fresh! Was punching the air clasping at mosquitos and the number of hits exceeded the misses.

5 yummy things...
Vanjaram fry (mom')
Kaadai fry (Kaaraikudi)
Squid (Pecos)
Hot fudge brownie sundae (Sparkys)
After Eights

5 things I know by heart...
13 stanzas of Thiru Mandhiram (pithy, terrific tamil poetry doubling up as mandhiram)
15th ch of the Baghawad Gita ( it's the smallest and therefore the only one I tried learning)
The Second Coming by Yeats
Lines from the movie CRASH
Lyrics of Ninukori, a few others by Illayaraja and a whole bunch of Sinatra songs

5 things I'd do if I had a lot more money...
Hire assassins to snipe those I don't fancy
Fit a decent music system in my car which plays other stuff apart from my mom's Jesudas and Bhakthi paadal collection
Chumma chumma buy stuff for friends
Make mint chocolate cake a part of my everyday menu
Hoard books (and the more real ones like buy p'dner Second Sex which is overdue)

5 things I'd never wear...
Stilts (though I do rarely in my attempts to exude a certain amount of grace when I'm in a sari and to prevent me from strutting around like a thug)
Hair mascara
Gold jewelery
Kanchipuram silk
Pearls

5 favourite TV Shows...
Don't watch TV but if I did 'twud be for Friends and whose line is it anyway

5 things I enjoy doing...
Singing along to Ella Fitzgerald in hopes...sigh
Sweating it out by rummaging through stuffed second hand bookshops
Trying out new eateries
Plonking on the beach
Daydreaming

5 people I'm gonna tag...
None. Don't expect anyone to be as bored.

Mi God

2006-06-21T12:46:00.000+05:30

has mid-life crisis.

A bit of history...The Nothing that makes him dumped in his hands some very exciting plastaceen in his early years. You see, this, Nothing had to do cause God liked to get into z laboratory of Nothing and eat prototype of mud as a kid. As a toddler he had nightmares about his destiny. The countless gazing faces, grasping hands, whimpers simpers and burps and nauseous gasses as offshoots in his name...not exciting. So this scheming kid who wanted to runaway from the looming homework, shoved copy of mud down his throat in hope that he turns out to be the protoype of a future creation - de one with a crevice in front and back and quite smooth all over. He thought gorging and squirting would be job enough and no one would kandufy such a slimy thing and probably get evicted by Nothing. *Now I dunno how he sounds like this...my God is quite nice. Anyway, let me proceed.*

Then God did grow up. Nothing was pissed that there was nil economic value or systems in God's plans. God's chosen vocation you see was that of an artist...art for arts sake. Pottery actually thanks to all the plastaceen. He was on a roll and yeah he had a ball. Everytime he stepped on the clay to make it right, he made it all quite tipsy in here awrite. And then it was done. Then he wanted to add a bit of glimmer. Wrong move #1. Actually the only wrong move. He thoovified Hope all over his creations. And then Hope being one of the last things to make the world didn't have enough raw material to make it a wholesome thingy. So it had a fragmented DNA and turned out to be this mutant of a parasite. HIV was the rage...is the rage...Hope Infected Victims :-( Hope's henchmen greed, jealousy, lack, loser, geek, sidey oggler, moonyeyed romantic and the rest of the jing bang made their presence felt by giving it all up and promoting currency and the sale of apples, fences, chalk pieces, and walls for terrtitorial pissing for the discerning kinds, the ones who make the rules, the laws, economics and all that faff by sniffing at urine splotches. They probably are lying cause it all stinks!

Anyway, getting back to God. Well, he didn't have a whitener and good thing too cause he would've been busy sniffing and getting high in his depression of having let lose a bunch of pathetic mutants. He created cockroaches next.

And so went the life of God. The parasites grew. Hope was stronger than ever...all for a better world. What faff bledy conner!

And then boom! Mid-life crisis. God's sittin clueless in his laboratory reading Pinky and the Brain and says 'faff of world! you make me whine.' God thought if he made his presence felt in every creation and got into the core, he could figure out how to get his creations out of the rut of Hope. But, he just got under our skin and we got under his. And so it's a shared ponderous grievance. I mean God's hoping too man!

Fie! Shame on us for scrambling to God under the bed, on the dias, under a gopuram and any other weird ass place cause well, we need to figure out how. In his mid-life crisis God figured there were a few clauses left by Nothing to offer him some reprieve - God helps those who help themselves, Where there's a will there's a way, The will can squish the fate *my rephrasal of something*

P.S: My god is androgynous. Maybe that's why the earth worm fascination...? Also, God is this marshmallow of volatile emotions ranging from extreme love and passion to hatred, anger and nail chewing finger chopping stuff. Oh and is quite contrary to what he himself thinks, is always all ears! And yep a bit of an addict to doing the tackle...to give or not give...I won't let you get screwed or faff off!

P.p.s: Sometimes methinks he's the fallen angel cause well, look what he's done. Sometimes methinks Hope is the bledy fallen angel. I dunno I'm still figuring out God and sometimes I think I've got him...he's a lil lost.

P.p.p.s: Why I say is it so expensive to live? Why is art, literature, music and medicine so bledy expensive??? What the faff are people who haven't got a UB supposed to live on? P'dner says survival of the fittest. Maybe Nothing didn't give a lesson on economics to the young God - 'Ya overproduce you only get depression!'

P.p.p.p.s: Am thinking I should scoot to the lands of deserts and earn pots of gold and take care of every soul I love (around 15) and keep them happy and maybe even buy some contentment.

Faffdom

2006-06-12T11:30:00.000+05:30

We're just a bunch of neurons, life's a bunch of sensations, said two people whose name I don't remember. And life's lived in transitions...piss off isn't it. If I could hold on to this thought when it counts I wouldn't be writing about it right now in hopes that selective amnesia wouldn't recur. Fie! Fie! Fie!

Things I wish didn't come into existence:

Currency and its offshoot which is practically everything!
Monogamy
Society (not saying trash company...trash tags and norms...this is also offshoot of currency...methinks)
Hope (the worst thing ever to come out of Pandora's box)

Hmmm that's all...perfect world possible

nits

2006-05-26T12:34:00.000+05:30

Aint there no redemption from this?!!! Aint thurr??? Bored one after bored one trundle like slugs. Eyes glazed over by no blinks. Graatch! But yes there's a kicking and a lil living...a thing that goes knock knock you stupido what the faff you sitting around and watching?! Nothing I sez...nothing. Driven to wanting to vegetate in a cinema hall of rotten films, of wondering about Christ and that I could never be him and that I don't want to be him...no redemption for me indeed. Clicking incessantly looking for some reprieve. Hopeless Romantics??? That's where you got?! Yes, I sez...yes..."im in love with my economics teacher.shes only ten years elder to me but does that matter? does my age reflect upon my abilty to love and cherish another......" says a despo dunderhead. Egad! Dunderhead me! Duffer me! Scat! Shoo! Get away from thurr...you degenerating mothball! Well, shall go back and wallow in insipid, deflating nothing...it isn't that bad actually...when there's all the time in the world to compare Amiri Baraka with Gil Scott Heron and analyze why Madonna is Madonna and why i'm the only one in office.

Insolent insomnia speakzzz

2006-05-25T00:44:00.000+05:30

All I seem to be doing is mope over One hundred years of solitude - the wasted lives, pestilential passion, the lunacy of sainthood, the tormenting flashes of focus consistently leaving one to rot in the bog eventually, the strength of being removed from the all and the pity it evokes in smug dimwitted outsiders and the absolute irrelvance of it to the loner, the bury-you-alive capacity of vanity, times twist in bulging veins of gelatinous bags of stumbling aged flesh, the janus mask of memory; and listening to soppy songs like last kiss and reading love notes on networking sites...real lovely love notes exchanged tween two real people. I got Chaka Khan, temporarily stranded without vodka and no Colin Firth in the offing. I can't choose like you Bridget. Catch 22! What ya do when you the catch??? Sleep...I guess.

Pre-phallic fallacy

2006-05-24T22:51:00.000+05:30

Go through hours without conversing but clued in. Go through days with only a book for company yet get along quite well with those who people everyday. Go through time without wanting to know people cause friends, relationships happen by default. Love those few.

Wouldn't call it self-sufficiency or self-possession though there are strands of that swirling within the dyke. Lil whirlpools suck the fabric off existence and experience, and reveal nothing. Nothing is just a step away. Freedom from nothing. And then life would indeed be perfect. Death would be the next natural thing, as natural as breathing. Zilch struggles with transitions.

But the dyke is two-way. Walled in. Keep cresting and peeking over the ridge. Smile and wave at pretensions. Keep making eyes at self-delusion. Throw myself at the edge and over the wall. Lil specks, droplets lie clinging to it all and then dry up. Renewed.

Frustrated and hemmed in by yearnings of why do I know and why can't it be, of things denied for some weirdass reason of time, wanting to ignore, wanting to dry up in the cliched sea of life, wanting to fear death, to live moments of transitions. And as human as one can be, give up exhausted. Resign myself to nothing. I can do without nothing, I say. But I'll never have nothing till the vanity with which I say it lets go of me.

Things could be simple I realize. But it isn't. It isn't complicated either. Black and white's real. Is. Isn't. What to do with them is the grey area. Not run of the mill yet wanting the same things plus more. Compromise is the fear of death.

One shot at life. Why snuff it out before it's even kindled.

Larry made his peace with the world. Billy ran away from it all but couldn't hide.

Drat! They didn't cut my chord right.

Taaaaaayyyeeeeemmmm eeeeezzzzzz honn maaah syyyyeeeeddd

2006-05-10T11:03:00.000+05:30

Maybe it's Himesh Reshmiya. arf! arf! No no...Mick Jagger wonly. Just very nasal here and disoriented. Ears have clogged and suspended me in a time warp. It moves yeah. Slug like. Slug like I feel. Slippin and sliding into seconds, shimmying past minutes, gliding on top of hours leaving slick trails of nothing on it. Time's a pimp I tell you. Puts an arm around my shoulder and takes me along the sordid alley of mindless fuck ups.

Taayyymee eez on maaah saaiiieeeddd...yez teeezzzz

Nuthn's easy is it...

2006-05-10T10:52:00.000+05:30

backstroke! bledy brilliant feeling. de amount of concentration required to make sure my lethargic body doesn't sulk at de effort is immense. Focus man. Sorta grazing by default. Snuffle when a stray Marina grass twitches past. Gazing up at de gaping blue my peaked nose peeks out of the water snorting a lil spray when a silicon like texture slips over me, fluid glass. Beautiful but highly pungent. Bob dammit! And then focus, kick straight, flat. I'm moving! I don't feel it. I don't see it. Tis de gaping blue i tell you. No markers at all.

jus anuthr bunch...

2006-05-09T13:03:00.000+05:30

sprained my butt in the pool
kept sliding off the walls before push off and flopped around like a water rat while everyone else kicked jets
swam diagonally
focused on figuring out what's on the pool floor than actually covering distance...well, it did pay off...found a 2 buck coin...very brown with de chlorine
hands roamed all over the wet platform as though I were a blind slobbering dog while pawing the pool walls to get out
looked like a very popular alien

swimmin's phun!

Say gili gili gili

2006-05-06T17:04:00.000+05:30

Latest thing that takes me by surprise in a very unpleasant way is the Microsoft Word document. It's blankness scares the shit out of me. It doesn't even give me a chance man! There's so much to say, so much to be keyed in. Clamps down like the lid of a cookie jar jammed down hard so that whoever wants one will probably bugger off. Oh and am I buggering off...I love the 'new post' page. It's got character...that's how umm gone I am now.

I've been wanting to write how much P.James' Magic show is an integral part of Madras' cityscape. All of those who studied in Madras schools and had birthday parties and attended loads would probably be familiar with the name. I have no idea why any parent would get this not so phunny man to perform and keep us away from the cake! That's the point? Anyway, he's this scraggly coated, musty smelling, oily faced, smooth shaven man with an insipid hat pulling out things from behind his ears and top hats that had resigned themselves to his gili gili gili. And we used to indulge him at an age when we hadn't come across the word 'indulge'. A bit of forced cackling...some of us used to laff so hard just to get it over with. I mean that guy was at every kiddy b'day party! But methinks I laughed cos I wanted the cake and make him feel good about his tricks...cos you see my bunch of snobby fellers never showed much respect for his efforts. That man's still around? Or is it his gilious offspring leavin numbers on wall.

And I love music. I'm so happy my music's around. Would've been nuts now if otherwise. I can still dream...everything from theepidika to unforgettable to don't fear the reaper. But dreams are effervescent. I wanna feel too p'dner

For those...

2006-05-05T13:17:00.000+05:30

who have a phobia of floundering around in a single state of existence, who willfully procrastinate till kingdom come and wake up for one last moment with loss snuffing them out, who are scatterbrained and penniless in de big phat world with a head full of personal milestones to set, who live in dreams and wake up to kick real's rear in whatever way they can, who are scared of never knowing, afraid of a state of never wanting to know what's beyond...

Maybe marriage is a good thing after all. And probably so is conditioning. Cos when the ends are out of the circle of experience and therefore tagged farfetched, pigheaded and other stuff, marriage gives purpose, an end when there's none or when others are unattainable. And to indulge us there's friction, pressure, pain just to pacify the conscience kicking against de faff of nothing beyond. Or maybe it isn't a good thing (in isolation). Cos mayb it sprouts from pessimism, writin off possibility, will, perseverance, pleasure. Boxes rule i guess. Well, I seem to be thinking in one...

Or maybe it's jus my clogged ears.

'Wiggle your big toe'

2006-05-01T11:23:00.000+05:30

Eggs on cause it’s not yet time to lie down and wait. It nudges me forward cause there’s no strength. Stuck in a wide-eyed coma. Unable to get out of it cause there’s only the white ceiling sealing in. Nothing more… there’s nothing more to tell me that my senses work. It’s a kind of claustrophobia. There’s nothing to thrash against. Stymied.

Cramps turned numb now. Can’t feel the ground. Slithering in a vacuum. Nothing to grip onto. Not even a wisp of air. Not one fucking sane strand. Not insane either. Just gasping in gulps of blandness. Passions now vague. They come in hot mercury flashes and sag and fractured, crackle and get whisked away into the blank. Zilch.

I mean look at this. This is all that comes out. This is all.

Everything I thought my chosen ‘means’ was, isn’t. My body will be physically intelligent till it can. I will wake up everyday on time, bathe, eat, get dressed, hop onto my bike, overtake, swerve, keep time, surf, write cause it’s gotta be written…words coming out in gooey, sticky gushes like blood through hypodermic needle and then splat, will orkut, will sleep and do it all over again. This till it turns to me in disgust and turns me in. I want out. No not that. I want the ceiling to crack. I want to feel.

katndawg

2006-04-17T12:43:00.000+05:30

Bump over lil brown hardened humps to pick a spot that’s coolest so that by the end of the day my seat aint got a burnt hole darker than the black smelly rexin. That’s the first. Then fit face into a mirror that says ‘things are closer than they appear’…tell-tale signs of black heads, pollution clogged spores, and blossoming pimples and flaky lil specks of hair on upper lip…a rampage looms and the sun is an illuminator like no other. Flattening loose anti-gravity strands clipetty-clop over pebbles. The glass door recently turned hi-fi wont budge unless a card is flashed to announce that you have arrived. Darn thing needs to be treated like one of those annoying government employees who ponder over a small piece of paper pissing off time and the person waiting for a purple seal…patiently wait till it reads the card, burps and figures it’s you! That’s what comes of wanting to give an identity to inorganic stuff… bulldozes you into becoming barcodes.

An AC that’s as inanimate as inanimate can get. This is a shell. A real shell. The ones on the beach are animate with imagination in its colourful swirls, with grains of sands sticking adamantly in unreachable smooth spots. Stale sweat 24 hours old now turned sour not with yeast but microbes that send you fleeing and gasping for the air you were breathing just outside the door, fumed or otherwise. A vase with plastic flowers squishes the vibrancy the bright red wall attempts at infusing with its withered and yet undead look. Tis actually a positive thought, you know perseverance and all that jazz but the damn thing looks like it’s hooked to drudgery shots. At any moment you expect the damn flowers to throw up some of that vile colour dabbed on its petals, turn utterly pale and absorb the mashed exhalations of those who waited and sweated on three straight-backed leather chairs and go back to being its vile self.

Stride up over uneven stairs with an imitation wooden flooring sheet attempting to hide the not so rectangular slabs with its ridged edges. Push the glass door and get hit by a draft of hot tortoise kosu vathi…last nights wrestling with sleep evident till you cross the threshold into the studio.

Here, you smell the day, with the soon to begin fight of opening pores, of absorbing the sniffing AC’s cold frail strands and eliminating competition by turning others into poreless wonders through sheer will…willful dreaming. Windogurl! Magnetically charged air drafts, however minute, due to friction are magnetized and directed towards me with magnetic-tipped fingernails. She my doppelganger ;-) Janus! My Siameese twin, emitting farting noises every time she zaps a cool straying waft. There are various tones though…fly swatter, static (the kind you get when you trail a finger 0.5cm away from a comp screen) Long live DC comics! And I know no physics. Tiring of super-heroine with no real palpable powers, I eye the studio manager with envy sitting bang under the AC and the 2 fans in my heat smothered retinas look like giant windmills promising to blow away heat and its allies from my dictionary.

Come lunchtime and a shot of lead. The thought of food in a furnace with two funs churning it into froth till you’re this gigantic cotton candy of wispy heat waves wants me to turn into this mutt bounding off towards a muck filled puddle. Cud the food. Swallowing hurts.

Creativity cozies and snoozes the evening away, its absence jump starting every time the head lolls to the left and I travel through a black hole involuntarily. The vortex closes in and then the eyes smash open, the lids hitting the forehead in a look of blank emergency.

The pen feels alien in my hand. The letters come out in hexagons and the lines that make it aren’t in fact lines but squiggles like slimy worms. In disgust, creativity leaves. Then, a period of wooing. Enticing it with caramelly coffee works. Coaxed out, like an oozing mollusk, I scribble away before it slips in and gets washed away with the next tide of distraction, lethargy, or just for no weird ass reason. The warm-up pickles the mollusk! I am liking it now. I am liking my ideas.

Smugness the bitch saunters in and plonks herself on my gray beanbag. Then a lil fencing and a reworking session, sewing the miniscule strands.

Then it’s a war with the real world. If I am a pain to myself the outside is a freaking brick jammed down my larynx. A bit of herding, a bit of bickering, palpitating, materializing…the rack…stretched. Blistering blue barnacles! My bunch of appendicitis'...aches that turn up uncalled for, uninvited...part of me neverthless...the masochist has a ball.

Feeba! Feeba! Femur! Tumour!

2006-04-06T22:21:00.000+05:30

Baah! Most of the times (which isn't much really) with men it seems like a half-hearted sea-saw ride. Bounce-dip-dunk your toes-up you go. Never, feet flat platypus like-knees apart for a squat pee-turgid calfs-and whee! and vice versa. And MF is the bony lass squiggling in palm-space seat, grunting down and up, hoping to make up for the happily smirking one on the opposite with legs dangling as though boneless. Ok so MF is an indecisive hotstepper too. But then there's this weirdass oracle nestling in my sinus wheezing thick yellowed affection, the colour of colostrum, point being matured and unconditional affection. Because somewhere Oracle deems that nothing lasts. The Oracle needs to put foot in mouth! If nothing, the nothing is at least filled with a peaceful, cordial relationship springing from non-existence. So arcanus in the tradition of remaining arcane figures that the only thing she will ever be is a comfort woman...great company. But thats all. You know...the Geisha types, Devadasi type...around but nothing defined. Arcane was comfort woman for 4 years (Arcane blames the sunflower kid who believes that it's ok to talk about love for another when you're going out with someone cause what the heck it's love after all). And then Arcane is comfort woman for 3 years ('cane blames satyavati for sticking to the deal and expecting nothing above the deal and calls it a deal eventhough it's much more in an attempt to depersonalize it. Pthrrrr!) Arcane lives. Inspite of all this Mata Hari texture to it without the really deadly elements of course, she's called Specks! True, her real name is the kind which needs a tongue with a likeness to MTC busses where every roll and judder is evident, but Arcatella?! How about Tarantula? That's not so bad. Dumb optimist.

Scoring out shoppers' eyes - those in favour of euthanasia would agree to this too

2006-03-31T15:36:00.000+05:30

Chennai City Centre, apparently the fourth largest mall in Asia. Well, I went there yesterday. Umm my eyes were beyond repair when I came out.

Buildings here is a motley of twisted history, impersonation, glory and art classes from kindergarten that went so wrong. They all suffer from an identity crisis.

This huge vanilla cake sitting in the middle of the 'centre' seems like some weird-ass baker's PR tactic. On a closer look the icing looked ghastly...hellish in fact, like the vines you find in Jumanji. To the builders - You ran outta paint for these twistys??? It wouldn't have looked half as bad if it hadn't been staring me in my face pretending to be this snoozing, unassuming, harmless lil bit of supposed creativity as I tripped myself eager to get away from it asap.

The inside of the cake is another uhh what to say...experience (?) altogether. Signs of the impending mpd were outside but quite inconspicous I must say - pista green (methinks) vertical strip on one side and violet on the other. And then palm trees! This Victorian wannabe has palm trees! Dubai Shoppin mall feel I guess. Anyway, then there are these round mirrors in ornate frames way way above the height of the average Indian. Now...for what joy?

Btw the walls on either side of this oasis look (pthooo!) are peach and black currant. Adds flavour to all the vanilla you see. Amble along and there's another fetish - the Sistine Chapel! Well, this Michaelangelo or Os taken on contract by the bakers of City Centre have added some blue tones the vanilla...sky with birds. This brings back memories of kindergarten, scrapbooks, crayons, polythene covers with extra undies just in case. Yeah, the birds look so like those 'r' birdies we drew. Sigh!

What on earth is this place?!!! Shopping experience and all ok but why the splotches of colours, the big heart for artists who can't even doodle right, and the palm trees! What the hell are they doing there!

Somebody know architecture? Spell aesthetic? Difficult? Ok, can you try and spell 'Easy on the eye'?

2006-03-29T12:03:00.000+05:30

It's all about the majority and the one word I hate and addicted to fearing it is conditioning. Standing alone even in the most insignificant situation invites glares and collective silence. Apart from betrayal tis a lesion in the herden mentality, unity and all that bledy jazz when ultimately and everyone knows tis one for ones own self. Hypocracy is like that lock and key games we play in LKG...maybe that's why we play it...to inculcate it and imbibe it real quick! And then there's no escape cause every time you stand alone, you'll be second guessing yourself, stepping on toes, getting trampled, shoved, and then when you're out it feels like nothing on earth! That you were right are right is a feeling lot like your heads cleared the clouds and you can feel every breath sear through your head like mint.

Hmmm the one thing that I would take from eyecandy..."how bad do you want it?"

Fig

2006-03-27T16:54:00.000+05:30

The heights of optimism is when you're haappy tis your left side of your tummy that's achin and not your right cause well, ya know for sure that it aint appendicitis!

Ideas are fabulous things...absolutely breathtaking when you find them and then your breath doesn't come back till it's art directed well.

Anticipation smells of dried fish - Hidden Arsonist

Here's something I went a lil goldfish over yesterday! As in blinking wide eyed with a small O...

Rubbery
Fluid
I taste your blood
Rust on my tongue
Beneath the thin substance
Your lips engorged
Slip over me
Fluid
Rubbery

Your cheek exfoliates mine
Nibble my chin
The scar will be my smile
In dark rooms
And dim mirrors
A layer of me to pick at absently

The peel, caramel-coloured
Shows in photographs

I search for your cavities
Your tongue strains to find my wisdom
Dental excavations tickle

Your fingers trail over my navel
I giggle convulsively
Writhe
Pull away, pulling you closer

My stomach freezes
You forgot your hand there
My breath is stuck
The familiar free-fall
I feel when you stare too long
Or I think of you staring too long

There is intimacy in anticipation
In your weight anchoring me
In my sleep lost to your breathing
In the freedom to
Remember
Reconstruct
Recreate

Salt everywhere
Your hand holds a breast
The one without latte-brown predictions of foolish love

Memories mock

She brilliant!!

O

2006-03-26T19:07:00.000+05:30

sod off!!!

MFWho'sane?

2006-03-13T11:25:00.000+05:30

A dedication to Hidden Arsonist from the narcissist pinstripe of MF who embraces loserdom in all its splendour and pomposity.

Mangled Foetus is as her mom calls her a paradevathai, in mortal terms a weirdo. The things that happen to her are things that happen to everybody but with a slight twist. A lil background into the mangledness of Mangled Foetus…she’s a royal liar, lies only to get things her way, lies for survival. But all these are harmless lies and restricted to the 2 loves of her life who can’t comprehend her mangledness in its sweet entirety. MF aint a doofus, drinks sensibly, abhors tobacco, can’t party even if she tried. Not that she can’t/doesn’t have a good time but she’s the arcanus types ;-) meaning sits in a corner, drinks up and observes. Very arcane indeed! Pretty boring…? No. You aint been inside her head! Anyway, getting back to the goodness of this confounded soul…she isn’t gullible, skeptical bordering on practical.

MF knows how to get out of skirmishes but when there aint enough she creates some to whet her dodginess. And every time she believes that she must leave the unbeaten path and tries to, she is picked up by the scruff and tossed back onto it, and left to continue in her wrangled ways (aint no second chance in reality). For instance, the one time she needn’t necessarily have been honest to the 2 loves at home about the turtle walk, she decided to tell the truth. And instead, she was washed away and smacked back on to her prior belief of ‘what you don’t know can’t hurt’, by the tsunami fears.

Everybody loses their first phone due to slips of z mind blamed on fate or filched by kleptos again blamed on fate. Mangled foetus too lost her first phone. It was filched. Flicked by kleptos. Pretty much the same plot. But, this was an eunuch invasion. She blames it on fate.

This ‘bunch of neurons’ is also a physically intelligent species likened to those of Schumacher. She doesn’t know how she gets from one place to another half the time. Dodging bumps, pits, wobbly cyclists, psycho letches, she studies break lights from a distance, weaves in hairline curves and all impressive riding on her kinetic whose alter ego, a motor boat, beats her dad’s late lambretta hollow. This fascinating creature also has patriotically tuned epidermis which breaks out into goosebumps on cue to Vande Maataram and Acham Illai taking her complacent inner being by surprise at the ferocity of the bristles.

And thus rolls on the life of Mangled Foetus…

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Confounded mangled foetus

2006-03-11T10:35:00.000+05:30

Wonder if conditioning is a tool to zap one into the vicious cycle. And the darn vicious cycle seems to be happiness. The bledy flock of happiness for every occassion...its presence felt in its existence and its lack. Happiness is a fat lump of drugged bubblegum stuck up in cloud 9. Sadness has a heart. It breaches the gap and keeps egging us on towards happiness...closer, closer.

Is to want what a lot of other people want conditioning or normal? Or is normal conditioning or vice versa?

I want to travel the world, want to belong, write travelogues, work on my autobiography trashing all those nincompoops I let trot over me at one vulnerable point of time, want to do whatever cause I want to do whatever. Wanna be a bar tender, a broadway dancer, a corporation school teacher. Wanna start a school, a wildlife reserve, get madras corporation to mix rubber into tar while laying roads. Wanna save tigers, sharks and olive ridley turtles, get stung by a harmless jellyfish. Wanna play the bass guitar, play the veena, and sing! sing! sing! Wanna make chocolates and desserts like Vianne Rocher from Chocolat. Wanna crack knuckles of those who litter and throw stones at otters, thwack apathetic people, yell gibberish at my dean. Wanna dream, catch them lil pixies and move on. Wanna a real awesome romance, with wedding at a church in the lake district, a daughter, adopt a son, a dozen dogs, an awesome library, lots of love and cuddles and contentment that makes it all so atwood like "I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed & that necessary" and of course with a smattering of squabbles...friction makes life interesting.

I have an estranged relationship with the last wanna. There's this constant doubt if that's conditioning. Sometimes I can't justify my phobia of conditioning but then it's a phobia. The other thing that plagues me is whether I'll be able to do all the above wannas and more if the last wanna happens. Being a total sucker for love, happiness and One fine day movies (this is a serious problem...addicted to the drasted bubble gum of a drug and this is such a clever ploy of the creators play...there is no AA no Ataraxia Annonymous to run to) I am worried that I'd turn out to be a Violet Beauregarde and chew on it and chew on it and chew on it. And never move on. Never live my dreams unless the jelly fish incident happens by default when we're off on vacation. oh fie!

Singular, alone-liker, unfettered dreamer is gonna have some serious issues with moma and papa and the bledy hordes (relatives who swarm you at every family get together and rattle of questions about getting kicked out of your very own home asap!)

Is there a love that can let you be? Aah well, or else p'dner we could stick to our plan ;-)

United Colors of de Gerrymander

2006-03-01T12:25:00.000+05:30

Feel like a work of fevicol. Having been passed through a shredder seems like I've been glued back together. So many mes! Each one comes upfront puts forth its portion of the grey and then recedes, vanishes, blanks out or is usurped. Another comes up. Like multiple needles on a sewing machine. One at time and sometimes switch so fast that one seems continuous.

Apart from the known Joplin wannabe, mama freak, gloop foody, spacer-outer on bent out of shape spock, there are more pinstripes. For instance, the karuvad lover who sniffs at anything that smells even remotely close and goes on a trip about central station with marina wafting through its pungency.

Hmmm who decides what? It's all a majority. Inky pinky ponky...

Been trippin on this revelation for the past one week. Guess I saw tell-tale signs of shrivelling glue giving way to hariline cracks on the face in the mirror. And no I do not have mpd. I'm aware of each and every strip. And I'm harmless.

Blatherings from de haart

2006-02-28T23:58:00.000+05:30

Ack! Bumped into this one again. Felt it all over again. My mother of a paragraph written ages ago...

This is the heights! Can’t go out for a freaking walk! I mean what’s the harm in that except that it’s 7:00 in the evening (am rolling my eyes). Could’ve been done with fresh air and a break by now if it hadn’t been for that monumental argument over why I shouldn’t go out for a walk (still no reason by the way). The outcome is that I figured that I am in fact fucking mad! Actually hypertension. Who wouldn’t!?! I mean, would you agree to stay within four walls for more than freaking 24 hrs!!! I think this episode would establish my future- writer of brilliant books cause I’ve finally got trauma to back me up! But come to think of it, this isn’t really a problem…not the worst. Nothing earth shattering really. Just four walls that cling to me. But that’s definitely good enough to start me off on “A room for whom???” I would go onto figure out original symbols which mock Angelou’s repeated use of the “caged bird” image. I did probably talk of a stripper in a cage who has freedom to flaunt her body and tease herself but can’t ever cum. There would be strains of Gilman’s yellow wallpaper though. And that bastard Rousseau’s “return to the noble savage”. What frivolity man! I’m born into the world after a freaking nine-month pregnancy of puking, fattening, and labor pains that could kill a man. To do what??? To conform to time, dress code, to eat at the table during breakfast, lunch and dinner; to study hard at something which bores you, or something you couldn’t react to within a span off few hours cause it’s so mind blowing. But who cares? You’re dumb if you can’t cope. You never learnt anything from anything if you don’t have numerals above the pass mark. And why do I study geography in school? Just to put me in my place of course. To show that all those lands are inaccessible to me, that I’m stuck in this southern port city. And to probably justify the existence of the educational system by saying “look if you don’t study hard you won’t have money to see the world”. What clever manipulation! And if I don’t have an aptitude for science, I’m hopeless. I’m a misfit; I shouldn’t have been born if I can’t marvel at it. But I do marvel at it. I marvel at the phone, the fridge, the mixy, and so many other things. I’m happy marveling at them and know how to work them. That’s all. And ultimately what is all this science put to use for? Marriage and progeny. To promote it and propagate it. “Look, get married and give birth to children. Only then can we think of stuff to keep you all pleased.” Minds work, and the economy depend on progeny. A clog in the wheel? Naah…you’re the all important axis. Being a female it makes you even more important- oh mother! No wonder they’re against gays and lesbians. The economy would crash. The mind would rot. The world wouldn’t exist. There wouldn’t be any concept of economics, people to propagate religion to (even God wouldn’t exist? Wow!), no buildings to build, no need for historians and theoreticians to come up with some crap to fill in textbooks. We would all be jobless. So I’m supposed to keep them entertained??? That’s my life’s goal? To enjoy sex and then grunt a few months later? And does it stop with that? No. I give birth to the kid and tell him/her his/her duty. And what is that? Sex. Don’t use condoms. Keep population control in mind though. (Cant even enjoy sex enough) oh but don’t jump. You have to legalize it you see. Get married. Then only they can put you down in the records and calculate the future citizens, growth of economy and mind work. Laying of new roads, malls, air traffic, why even the security of a nation depends upon you. Progeny man…that’s the key to your existence. Nothing would exist without it. Think about it. Food for thought? Ohhhh I’m going green! I hate statistics!

Bloody hell! Mighty pissed with the HR in office. The loos been out of service for nearly 2 weeks. And yep I'm pmsin and which means I need the friggin loo too work. Like p'dner says I could sue them for discrimination or worse comes to worse roll them pads in wads of paper and leave them in a corner just so that they pay attention. aaargghh! If it's not fixed by tomorrow I'm considering telling the HR guy that my periods are due. Not that I have any queasiness telling just that I have issues with the scandalized look that I'll be faced with...ugh! Bledy loo...mens loo is a perpetually wet one. I want the nice sunshiny, tin doored, sky blue, dry ladies loo on the terrace!

sheeesh!

2006-02-28T23:44:00.000+05:30

How do they figure this? How? A lil while back my friend at an MBA institute got her curfew shortened cause a bunch of losers on bikes ragged a girl from that insitute at 7 in the evening on a lane right outside the campus. So what does the insitute do? Shorten the curfew for female students. That's the answer? What about increasing secutiry? What about police patrols? It's their duty after all. No one wants to do anything about those losers. They'd rather say they have it all under control by stuffing the girls back into the building. It sucks! Wanna clobber all those men and women who think if women want equality they gotta have their womb removed.

"Reverse culture shock is a pain!" I get u padner...

2006-02-28T16:28:00.000+05:30

Your hairs bristle up in annoyance trying hard to be spikes that sends one scuttling in pain on contact a lot like a puffer phish. From pale green, veins turn emerald as they visibly pulsate. Your ears shut down with a howl as the air rushes out and the passage is closed to cocoon you from the upcoming onslaught, the you-are-a-fledgling-and-therefore-a-retard session. One sharp intake of breath is all you have time for to sustain you when the creepy crawly voices wash over you. It begins. You hit the fastforward. The squeaky voices rattle away, hammering you with supposed concerns, their all-knowing words result in gashes, wounds ooze a slimy green – a defense mechanism the body undertakes to get rid of the sludge. Forcing your cheeks to yield to a dumb thank-you-now-I-run-to-the-loo kinda smile you walk away telling yourself to breathe in breathe out. First thing you do is get into the bathroom, stand under the shower and scrub it all off with your dead epidermis.

As annoying as such talks are there’s no point in focusing frustration on the boring conforming do-gooders. They actually are the sober metamorphosed from the once bitten twice-shy horde. But what the heack...they are part of the popular system...one foot here and one foot there case.

Point is what is reputation. Reputation is a social construct so that all of us can adhere and live in sordid social freaking harmony cause it’s easier when you have rules cause you’ve always had rules. Staying in is always easier than running parallel cause the parallel road aint in existence...supposedly. The biggest shit of all is that this reputation thingy is not for maintaining political correctness, to truly be secular or anything worthwhile. All that jazz remains all that jazz…ideal. What they need this so called reputation for is to keep us all freaking tied down so that no one really gets one-up. Not even one-up in social life transition from daily morning visits to the beach to daily evening visits for kadalai. You can’t say you drink, can’t say some wild thing cause you’re in a wild mood, can’t talk openly of having tried out bisexuality…even if it’s only in your head. I go down = we all go down = reputation

Culture is trivialized. Culture is a metamorphosis of principles, attitudes and not bickering boxed ideas! Think we should start off by spelling B-E! Stop crapping about those who can have a bloody good time apart from their work and can do work as work and a damn good job of it! Stick to your periphery and don’t enter personal life without permission. Get your manners right! Trespassers will be prosecuted! Don’t allude. You’re not good at the finer qualities of rhetoric. Cause one, you’re stuck; two, you don’t know how to help yourself BE; three, you’re boring; four, you’re pathetic at being the model guardian cause you've got your priorities wrong!

I have dark lips and therefore I smoke. Wrong. You going out for a smoke? You wanna smoke? Well, this I got from people who eye girls who smoke with a lil derision, label her flighty, easy, etc. I appear to be a lil hoity toity or so it seems. Not once have they taken my No for what it really is. I don’t smoke cause smoking is deadly and you have to be so gone in the head to make a habit out of it. But they take my no to be NO! I’m a GIRL!

Sick and tired of sex determining lil miniscule things like visits to a tea kadai! Bugger off sexists, token women, jealous snapping guppy fish wallowing in shallow pools of waste!

What's in store for me in the direction I don’t take ? - Kerouac

2006-02-27T17:54:00.000+05:30

Cowering in the musty balcony seat at melody from the rattling guns aimed randomly all over the 5 guys of RDB, spattering assured with smattering, shattering shins, stuttering on gushes of blood, all smothered by giggles at the crescendo…a denouement that never happened. This movie left me on the peak…teetering on what could be if anyone or I supposed an If.

Pondered over the point of their deaths. Would it have been better if they hadn’t died? No. The impact they left behind, had, would’ve never been possible without their dramatic deaths

What would they have been or done if they were alive? Political unrest? Definitely. Coup? Maybe. Revolution? Yes. Or would they have just simmered down to a fund? An organization whose big picture gets chipped away with time? Chances are.

What about them? Them? Micro lives really lose out in the big picture. They would’ve served time probably, tried and what not. Media coverage is all that will be. But that’s what makes movies so amazing…art and literature. The viewfinder can escalate from the micro to the macro and keep both within their periphery or mix and match. These are a few lives. Macro makes his history. Macro instigates.

From the storyteller’s point of view I understand why they had to go. They just had to die. Or a lot would’ve been in vain. Guess a lil juggling around can invert positions. We watch them come and go. We find the flare when we pass them by while surfing. Well we can’t have Dylan or Marley glued to our ears to keep us at it. Neither can we plaster the beats or Marx to our eyes. All them greats can spin indifference around to take notice of itself…its sickly pale, bland, blanched mangle…bleached clean of life, dehydrated of anything worthwhile. We can’t keep sniffing at sewage. We can’t keep spacing out on the blood on tv. It’s amazing the amount of wickedness and cruelty human beings are capable of. But somewhere it’s better than apathy.

In this stage where everyone gets their turn, where audience turn to props, props turn to audience…rationed theatre appreciation, only a few get the lead role. Well, if nothing the creator’s definitely fair. There’s a will. There are choices. Survival of the fittest. Yes, there’s also willful suspension of disbelief. We can either keep getting shuffled around to periphery roles of audience or a prop and fill in the scene. Or take centerstage, twist the spotlight our way, grab the mic and deliver.

I don’t like the previous paragraph. It’s clichéd. Guess it’s cause its an oft repeated thingy. High time…been a long while.

In a weird ass way narcissists make a difference in society.

2006-02-24T11:26:00.000+05:30

Feel like a work of fevicol. Having been passed through a shredder I've been glued back together to make me of many ones. And like musical keys that come alight with flashy colours when fingered each me comes to the forefront, fades, vanishes, recedes, withdraws and fuses out to let another one come upfront.

Zonked

2006-02-18T18:05:00.000+05:30

I've got nothing to say...none. Though every second sentence in the spiralling namelessness of feral thoughts, the only thing that attempts to make its presence felt through the void of utter scatterbrainedness, begins with the word shoot. And that's all I detect in the flitting matter spinning in self-possessed orbits like in the cosmos. But that's it. It begins...is heard fleetingly and then dies out like a wannabe echo in a dingy room that would never know acoutics more than its pile of dusty musty old newspaper, rotting cardboard boxes spotted with rat droppings. After that one word there is supersonic noise that I can't hear and therefore feel it's all a balnk. Something important flits away and just the word remains...shoot. I so want to get it over with. I've held my breath long enough.

A souped-up para...(my take off on dream deferred)

2006-02-05T22:34:00.000+05:30

Prostitution of dreams

Versatile, 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 bend oozing a sordid waste of time
in curvaceous gutters
of grey
speckled with history
stinking
with all the incompleteness
debris of attempts
swirled thick
by the fast flitting /by a feeble rustling
will.
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.
What’s in a look?
Why you turn yourself into a closet?
Why you want to be an urn
Of Vegas’ scraped shimmer?
Flushed
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.
Never made it to a reading
Never been really
Flux
Now more sober, assimilate,
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.
Glean
There’s time still
Instead you nuzzle
In the nook of vanity
State your twisted way with a pomposity
make you a cult
wallowing
in cardboard sets
of what could have been
dressed in wine red
with a dash of more discerning faculties (?)
A kushy life for your pedestal
When will you ever let them all be
Out of rut

A vetti day occupation

2006-02-05T22:01:00.000+05:30

Road of diametric opposites – The road to theosophical society in Beasant Nagar. Treacherous, well-paved, smooth ride with deadly curves and juddering rumblers, tree lined and streamlined traffic, steady drones, dying moans, rising wails, skid marks, spaced out – adrenaline pumping succumbs to composure as green exudes O2 enticing a pranayama quickie.

Sputter into theosophical society’s old gates and roll on a died down engine rolling till you bump to a stop under a tree. Sweet smell of flowers with highly nose pinching sticky sweet smell of rotting flora and fauna. All natural. Lemon yellow butterflies, pretty sedate moths, shriveling fungi, chameleons sunning themselves, sparrows looking busy, pigeons emitting their signature guttural talk, parrots acting like hoity-toits squawking and zipping all over the place. And then there’s the library, comfortable, co-existing and non-intrusive.

Musty books are guarded zealously in large rooms. The only place a reader knows is the shiny slippery smooth glinting mosaic and comfortable reading tables and wooden chairs with 2 parallel racks stacked with magazines of theosophy, philosophy and the environment in English, French and Polish and Space! Breathe easy. Mind space expands to gigantic proportions. Time lapse. The sun never looked prettier in any room…personal.

Getting back to the possessiveness that is the core of theosophical society apart from the things it is generally known for, the reader has to go through catalogues, scrawl numbers with a blunt pencil on lil squares and wait for 45 minutes to an hour for the books to be tracked, dusted and brought down. Well, one can enjoy time lapse but to assume that it’s a norm is a lil unsettling.

More cribs – Firang-sucker hatred takes root quite strongly. Borrowing membership is selective. Walking membership is selective. Apart from the theosophists who live there you see just firangs…mostly. Got nothing against them. Cross my heart. Just the management irks me. A walking membership requisition letter is necessary. Fine. But it’s not just a requisition. You gotta state why you want to walk there and why not the beach. Now really people got their quirks you know. The fact that the place is beautiful isn’t enough?! And then someone there decides if it’s reason enough, then you get to tread on those lovely dirt pathways with mango groves and the famed banyan tree, footsteps hushed by fallen flowers, sun streaks winking at you, and alternating gaps of warm and cool which surprise you every four steps, smothered by tweeters and crickets, sweetened silence.

As I was mulling over this, over the unfairness of it all, that I who live in this city, down the road from this personal space would have to wait for a whole freaking year, The Wasteland came along or so I thought. Turned out to b a criticism of The Wasteland. Happens when it’s just numbers and not books you’re thumbing through.

Fell in love with a freaky passage likened to psychedelic rock and got mighty troubled by its roots.

Here it is…

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are
those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked
earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only.
What is the city over the
mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling
towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
A woman drew
her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those
strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat
their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside
down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And
voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden; and the waste
and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced and are inhabited…
Ez.36:
26; 34-5; 38
The last bit bothers me…more like nudge nudge and pops questions. Who? What? How? And just why? Why?

Strode off on a lil tangent after this and had Never ending math equation by Modest Mouse on a loop. Check them out…

I'm the same as I was when I was 6 years old
And oh my God I feel so damn old
I don't really feel anything
On a plane, I can see the tiny lights below
And oh my God, they look so alone
Do they really feel anything?
Oh my God, I've gotta gotta gotta gotta move on
Where do you move when what you're moving from
Is yourself?
The universe works on a math equation
that never even ever really ends in the end
Infinity spirals out creation
We're on the tip of its tongue, and it is saying
We aint sure where you stand
You aint machines and you aint land
And the plants and the animals, they are linked
And the plants and the animals eat each other
Oh my God and oh my cat
I told my Dad what I need
Well I know what I have and want
But I don't know what I need
Well, he said he said he said he said
"Where we're going I'm dead."

tap tap tap

2006-01-29T04:36:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-01-24T11:08:00.000+05:30

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.

2006-01-15T01:57:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-01-09T13:14:00.000+05:30

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.

2006-01-08T00:45:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-01-06T01:20:00.000+05:30

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.

2005-12-19T12:32:00.000+05:30

Tranquilizer!

A white water rapid that shivers its way through the saliva and reaches all nerve ends in a swift tingling sensation. It rolls on in mouth, soft, mashed...accentuated cheek hollows sucking on every fresh icy moment not wanting it to dissolve but only when it does do you get that darned absolutely scintillating taste of fresh ice.

Mint. It’s like porn. It gets you off slowly, it builds up, you want it to prolong but it’s got a mind of its own. It decides when it’s going to vanish off the roof of your mouth and leave you sucking in air, de mint hangover –lisped noises like uncouth slurpy soup ladler till you’ve exhausted the last draught of cool air.

Weirdly they say an overdose of mint can kill your potency but it’s so sexy! It’s like wet sex on beach…soft, cool, hot…that’s mint. Devil’s fire…tantalizing. Dunno what to call it…it is such a mind-blowing flavour, especially with chocolate.

'Buzz' maybe cause it really does give a high. Or maybe 'Jezebel'…mint’s like her you could say. Or maybe just dot…the symbol dot…cause it puts a period on all other senses, everything is focused on making it last, on dwellin in it.

It’s like that line on Jack Daniels in the movie Scent of a woman…dialogue goes something on the lines of
Get me a John Daniels.
Uh you mean Jack Daniels.
He maybe Jack to you son, but when you’ve known him as long as I have, he shall taste the same.

2005-12-18T16:26:00.000+05:30

Can a cookie aspire to be a renegade?

Mmmm it’s a lil soggy in the center…kinda chewy and doughy…crumbly crisp all around…sweet. Soft tongue lapping about amidst the 32…that’s what a half-baked cookie =

Do half-baked cookies make the display? Do half-baked cookies gel with the palate? No. Half-baked cookies are for the taster, to be chewed well and dismissed and dispensed…a watery turnout…out with a sputter.

Well, I got time to rhyme so…aside *How on @#$%^& earth?!*

Gingerbread boy was a hero. Hmmm…but then of course tis just fantasy. Half-baked is subjective.

Would it be termed defensive to fantasize that there is an Island as in Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ for the queer ones, the ones out of line, the ones who ‘think’. Or that ‘half-bakeds’ are in fact a highly intelligent species grappling with myriad things and non-things just cause they got a humongous appetite to do so. Sounds a wee bit like schizos (?) Or is this all just escapism? Or is it assertion of individuality?

Or maybe I’m blowing it out of proportion cause the half-bakedness I’m referring to is pockmarked…has craters of indiscipline, lack of focus, fragmented drive, dreams, muddled assumptions of means and ends (maybe, maybe not), irresponsibility, impulses, fear, insecurities…man the amount of words that start with the letter ‘I’!

Maybe Time will tell. Maybe it’s still in the oven. Maybe the electricity just went kaput…maybe it will be back in 5 minutes and it will go on baking till it’s brown and brittle in the centre. But till then, if a half-baked cookie = tongue among the 32, it’s definitely something to reckon with. Maybe the next will be Jack-of-all-trades.

Amateur baker! Stick a fork in and check it out! If baked (gradations vary…maybe this one’s a chocolate chip) then fucking be.

2005-12-09T15:13:00.000+05:30

!KcoT!KciT

I don’t understand patience. Patience, I believe is a word used in retrospect. You gotta run! Run! Get the marathon over with, reach the finish line, burn your lungs. Of course no one told you to sit on your ass. But no one said that they would understand your patience either. Patience can be acknowledged, understood, given space for only when it’s over with. Its usage is determined by convenience...after you're done shooting across fire.

When you’re pumping adrenaline, breathing hard, sweat trickling down steady you don’t want to think gosh! It’s far!. It’s a similar mechanism that doesn’t want me to believe or acknowledge what I’m saying...anything not to induce the feeling that time is running by or maybe even running out.

Sexist upbringing leaves you with certain sensations and notions. Well, I really can't freaking clamp my legs together just cause i'm female and maybe it helps accentuate curves and yes i got nothing in between but i still can't so lay off! Born female there’s a posture, colours, design, interests impinged upon. Choice comes much later, especially if you get lucky to figure out the unsaid, that we are in fact persons.

So what I’m up against is a sexist attitude at every turn, which is escalating, as I’m 22, a campaign that has to be cracked by tomorrow morning, a whole gamut of emotions cause I just don’t know what the fuck I mean to him and left with expectations as low as ‘can you please not bark at me’, that others are zipping by to Sao Paulo and I’m having issues with getting to Thiruchirapalli, that now all I want to do is sit down with The Mahavishnu Orchestra and discover ‘the unknown thought’ and meditate on relevance, Pearls before swine taunting me, my insipid gray marshmallow teetering on a rounded bottom of extremes, and oh yes the blasted weather that’s all gray too. Where the fuck is the time for patience!

Patience is privileged.

2005-11-26T20:12:00.000+05:30

Treacle

PMS or post-menstrual syndrome? Well, it’s the other P for me - pre. Yeah, a week before you get the trickle of stickiness between your thighs or the matted touch to your vagina, you get the hints of an impending a well, well ‘spent’ days.

A battle on the premises of five minutes, a battle fought with renewed resistance every five minutes, I sleep on, a true controller of senses, sphincter and vagina muscles tucked in. I put the mute on busses rolling by; I merge shades of my sheet to blot out the sun; I put the stopper on the torrential tap thundering down plastic buckets down the corridor; I place a non-resonant glass in between me and my roomy who’s blow-drying her hair; I squiggle around and curl up like a foetus to win the biggest battle- the urge to pee and drain myself.

But like rodents, which make their way into the teeniest place inconspicuously and rampage you, my nose begins to itch. Somewhere I think we are predestined to do the things we do. Fate does play a role. Our genes have evolved to synthesize an accurate human being- my hand shoots up and scratches my nose. Very robotic I must say!

Now I’m plagued by conscience- yield to the warmness of the itch. No! Restrain! Restrain! Aah but Mephistopheles doth thwart me-*scratch scratch* the trapdoor opens and I slither into a runny nose.

Rudolph the red nose reindeer aint had no fun in a long while. Go figure!

The itch works its way into my heart and my head, disorienting me. Sneezes that garble my curses; the tingling sensation all over my face, which makes me erupt volcanic white foam with no effect on my teeth; the itch in my scalp leaves my fingers sebum-greased and faint hopes of no lice and no dandruff.

It seeps into my murky blues. To be precise I blend in with the gray of the drasted skies pinching me with drafts. I think it’s the cold but my legs go rigid and ache with every step. Visuals of nerves turning blue accost me and I stare blank into the white board with red veined eyes. Cold blasts nudge me. Ouch! My nipples perk. Yikes! Sleazy guys eyes will be frozen to one spot. The cold air seems to bloat my boobs. Every brush against them makes me wince. Purgatory- get teased and released. My day is damned!

Those are what you call symptoms. But there’s one more thing - the knife just aint plunged, it’s twisted. PMS makes you a sadistic, masochistic depressant.

2005-11-26T19:50:00.001+05:30

Hah this U guys gotta read! V&J u innit!

Can’t get any worse can it? Nothing happening on the professional front…I got an internship after a 4-month wait and a 6-month extension relies on the unveiling of my genius. Crank crank…work dammit! Aah but My love life…my love life you said? I’m a noname lover. Not here not there…wallowing in a quart of uncertainity and ideal convenience spiked with question marks of what ‘am I now?’ as it's fermenting into something else altogether. Limbo ain't always a bad place. Actually, what the fuck, I pick holes in it only once a month...it's the kinda relationship tween a toothpick and a fleck of food hiding in those ridges...you know you can pick it all out. You take your time about it and it doesn't hurt when it's wedged in either...it happens all the time, you don't stop eating. Escalating expenditure has my parents asking me to account. It’s me for Christ sake! No, it’s not that the simplest of calculations elude me; it’s just that I’m a complication addict. I spend on petty things like calls. Calls to my friends mind you but I end up staying mum anyways. I’m an inexplicably clean person who can spring an instantaneous thought in anyone of ‘Is she on something?’

There has to be the goat, the scapegoat, something to point to, something to purge yourself off on, some unheard of planet sending psychedelic rays to my being and successfully twisting my gray cells into greater vices, or Feng shui or Vaastu; by the way Ma can I have a potted cactus on a ledge of styrofoam next to my headrest, 4 inches on all sides, at a right angle to my head and sloped at 45 degrees pointed at my footrest? But I choose my college C to barf on. My expensive mistake that shall go down in columns, or biography or most probably my autobiography when I make it big! Thanks to the potted plant! (‘Unaddled’ my brains with a bang!)

My woe of Rs. 1,40,000 + Rs. 5,000 x 18 months + Rs 300 x 18 months has dunked me with a couple of surprising things, all intangible like all education is supposed to be, things I’m happy about, stuff I’m happy I’ve discovered. Here’s the jumbled blessing of fate and circumstance:

A good friend to my shrinking-by-definitions friends circle – J. Sharp, cherubic devil, tipsy over the slightest signs of delightful things, terribly cute, and yeah all those things that go into a good friend, always around…always.
One kickass partner when it comes to brainstorming – V my Pandi. My unassuming genious! The moron who doesn’t know what she’s about but can unearth brands and strategies and trigger you off simultaneously. She ain’t diplomatic she’s so fucking giving! Space and spaced out...god I love her!
Branding concepts and strategies. Yep, the apriori put in words
A winning ad pitch
Brilliant strategies for NEPAD, an organisation V and I grew to love passionately. I still believe we could’ve won (‘cept that we forgot G8 was behind it?) And that brings me to my next point…
Indians are freaking geniouses! We’re supertechy compared to the rest of the world ‘cept for those inscrutable Indians all over ze world
That I am a supertechy
That I can live with new people, that I wouldn’t exactly ever be the hermit crab
That I can go without food for a week
There are so many things I can do without, like coffee every evening, breakfast, toothpaste
Space and choices and never afflicted with the Hamlet syndrome
The hallucinating effect of running money
People who aren’t all tamilians or malayalis
1gb of songs
A pair of Platypus like flat chappals. It is intangible…comfort is!

Rs. 2,35,400 plus miscellaneous expenses and all the above…tis been worthwhile in its own weird ass way methinks.

2005-11-26T19:13:00.000+05:30

Pop de mumble!

You feel like your walking on silvery cold fish bellies. Everything is wet. Nothing dries. Your nose sprouts a leak. And that’s when you know the monsoon is in for good. Well, Joni Mitchell said, you don’t know what you got till it’s gone. A burst through the gray, a week yellow pallor spots your yard and out you go to bask in it, turning every inch of your face and body as though under a blocked sprinkler choking water out in spurts. Just as the imagined meager warmth filters through you epidermis, plop! You go colour blind again…the gray belly delivers ferocious lil gray monsters.

The monsoon’s were fun you know. When pollution was yet to be a concern, before we found out about acid rain, before the roads were raised and all the piddles of men and dogs swirled around in some catalystic formula of liquid manure and stagnated around the bushes in the garden; before our moms got wind of all the dengue, malaria, cholera and family and kept us indoors and stunted our immune powers for good. We’re old before our times and we ain’t going at it gracefully ;-) Really, with absolutely nothing to do when you’re marooned on an island (thank god for raised foundations!) and perpetual power cuts and swatting yourself silly and turning yourself into a polka dotted canvas of dead squashed mosquitoes, you just gotta look around. Well, it certainly is the greenhouse effect! Literally…man you’ve seen so many shades of green before; all the emerald glistening with dew, rustling in the breeze, sprinkling you with fresh oxygenated water? The traffic’s on a low. Not a murmur of a thanni potta exhaust trying to sputter to life. You learn to breathe in deep. So you begin to listen. You feel a lil Elizabethan with the mufflers around your neck like a cruffed up high collar. And in keeping with it, life is shortened with every sigh. That really can’t be helped cause you do begin to listen to all the beauty you clogged your ears and eyes to with a diagnosis of ‘cold’; to your own breathing, to the buzz of insects, the croaks of frogs whom we thought long gone, the slick trails of snails, the sky in the water, the bristling wet crow, the huge cute bandicoot sheltering in your verandah shrugging its patchy coat, the moist-laden silence.

That’s the upside. There’s beauty in everything. And of course asymmetry is the rule of being beautiful. Your nose is a sprinkler, your throat sounds like a cross between Doby and Hagrid, you want to shove your back scrubber down your throat and get that itch, you hate stepping into the bathroom cause it’s perpetually damp, you wish you can go without a bath or a brush but risk end up smelling like a mouldy piece of cloth, you slip and slide with your rubber chappals after every cockroach that wants to snuggle into your room, and the Hit you sozzle them with never outgrows its pungency, your mom keeps ordering you to blow your nose (very embarrassing), you can’t be without the fan but you freeze even at three, fever’s on the way, power cuts leave you with no option but to sleep, you fall in love with your bed but every time you get up you got a blasted headache cause you’ve overdone it, ice cream is elusive and just kashayam at regular intervals, weirdly you come to like it.

Yup, it’s a world of black and white. We all need highlights…contrasts. Just shut up and look around. And when you think you’re tired of waiting, when you think you’ve had your share of monsoon beauty, go look at yourself in the mirror in the half-light. You want to be out there! Watching it all.

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got till it’s gone…

2005-10-11T22:41:00.000+05:30

Phew!

What's in a name they say. Well, try figuring out a suitable name for your blog!

Finally decided that I should let all the chatter in my head out. There's a very human and convenient proverb in Tamizh which says 'may you share my same set of unfortunate circumstances' or something to that extent
;-)

I shall however filter all the prattle...Here's an inkling - Why is androgyny impossible? Why definitions by sex? Is conditioning any good? For instance, people down in the villages get by with good ole sex whereas we feel cheated without foreplay. Why do we Indians have a time-table for life i.e. oh you're a 24 yr ole female, do you want the pic of you in the pink sari on shaadi.com? Why the concept of women needing protection? That's all a lot of 'me' oriented issues, but there are others...Reincarnation (?), concept of necessary evil, herden mentality in spite of the fact that you're essentially alone...Beats me!

Hmmm this is easy i.e. when you're writing to an omniscient entity (the blog or the blogging community). Guess the entire queasiness arises only when you identify people, connect, and make space for impressions.

Later then, till the next bout of insane, mundane nonsense plague me.