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

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

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...

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?

...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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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...

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...

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!

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

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

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*

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.