katndawg

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!

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

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'?

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

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

sod off!!!

MFWho'sane?

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

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

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

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!

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...

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

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.

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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


Dream Deferred

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

Langston Hughes

I love you gray!

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

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

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

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

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

Burp!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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