Ka ching.

Green Tea

by Dale Ritterbusch

There is this tea
I have sometimes,
Pan Long Ying Hao,
so tightly curled
it looks like tiny roots
gnarled, a greenish-gray.
When it steeps, it opens
the way you woke this morning,
stretching, your hands behind
your head, back arched,
toes pointing, a smile steeped
in ceremony, a celebration,
the reaching of your arms.

My room..

I had been to this seminar once,something on stimulating creativity.It was conducted by a Brit with a cast on her left leg.She never really talked about practical solutions.I personally am of the opinion that scribbling crap on a blank sheet with crayons is not the way to overcoming a creative block.Nor is singing an African hymn at the top of your voice.Love the crayons though, and the blank sheets.Anyway it was the self help shit that jobless people retort to...or people who can't get enough of their social lives.

There was this exercise which asked of you to describe your ideal room.

At that point I couldn't think of much.Except that I wanted a French window that would enable me to see the sunset and the sunrise.

Its lately that I have been thinking of my ideal room,in my ideal apartment right after I find an ideal job and move on with my ideal life and for all of that I'd have to get into an ideal B school which doesn't seem so ideal after all considering the fact that I have an exam two hours from now and here I am at the mise en scène of a brand new post that would be on my blog shortly without being rejected.

So then I started thinking about my ideal room.(I should stop watching Lev's life on youtube.)

I think it should be something like this:

The walls would need a Jackson Pollock feel, because every time you just look at them you would realize that art is  the only thing that won't die and that its okay to make mistakes or be messy because at times something beautiful surfaces beneath all the muck.

I would like to have a coffee machine and a popcorn machine too (I got the latter piece of idea from Rosh)

I'd have a few of those modernistic vases in my room,the shapes of which you can never fathom.They would be empty and bear no traces of flowers maybe a few quality ferns that I'd pick out with care.

My bed would be a little bigger than a single bed to accommodate company for a night only and not perpetually.

No photographs,no memories.

Lots of post-its and deadline dates.

French windows,large and wide,so that the room is lit up whenever I draw the curtains.Don't tell my mom that she'd lecture me on how easily someone could smash it and how I'd be found dead the next day.Anyway getting back to the windows..they should be big enough for me to jump off from if life gets smothered under rock bottom.

I am not a chandelier person lets keep those for the high profile snobs,instead I'd like those tiny weeny lights all through out the room,some on the floor even.

A writing desk is an absolute must.Flooded with stationery of all types: papers,pens,pencils and colours and markers and everything else.Ample leg space so that I can sit writing at my desk for hours together.

That's it I guess.A closet and a rug would complete the deal.

That's my room.

My ideal room.

That I wish to have, right after other ideal things.

Doesn't get any worse than this...

You said that I was a woman with ambition.

I say I am worse than that.

I am a woman who wants to prove herself

and people who want to prove themselves do so at the risk of losing everything they have,

and then they realize they didn't have anything to prove really in the first place.

We call it a dangerous and ill fed notion.

Tiger tiger burning bright..

Flawed perfectionism is enticing isn't it? Wouldn't you want to wake up to a morning with the certainity that even the best,smartest,brightest,most skilful folk screw up (as very loosely put)?
Perhaps not very significantly but they do nonetheless.
One mistake and your tumbling down that infamous disastrous street of ruin.We all have a ruinous aspect to our lives which consist of not so favourable qualities.Accepting them is as hard as denying them.
Tiger Woods you are human.So are you Andre Agassi..and you too Martha Stewart.
Whats worse we are too.
Here's a classic Atwood quote:
'While impure thoughts may make you burn in hell for all eternity once you die here in life, what gets you baked and fried is your inablity to act on them.'
So basically are we wasting time on deciding the pros and cons of morally correct behaviour or are we just living it up and drinking it down?
So this is what I try to do sometimes.
I try to be a good customer (I always keep exact change)
I try to be a good friend (I call you up every now and then)
I try to be a good room mate (I slowly tip toe out of the room to do my work when you are sleep)
And when that doesn't work I say, 'To hell with you..'
And I read,I write,I drink,I eat,I work,I shop,I smoke and not give a damn..if I appear pathetic,desperate or uptight.I mean who cares anyway right?

This one..

This one survived a badly drawn year.

This one crawled out of the bushes.

This one lives in denial.

This one packed her bags and waited.

This one thinks his life gyrates around a fortune stick. (What a magical stick!)

This one is beautifully agitated.

This one was impervious to considerate thought and detail.

This one walked all the way home.

The dark eyed angel..

So why is it that all I can think of

(and will think of through the torrential rains to come and the howling night)

is you,

sighing so deeply in the darkness

you and the smell of you and the windswept curve of your cheek?

If this train ever stops

I will ask that dark eyed angel,the one who hasn't spoken yet

He looks like he might know.

_Eleanor Lerman.

Expressions

• Old man getting off the bus : Health is not the only thing that could fail you.
• A girl painting her nails : Here's to the quality of women we cherish
• The beggar at the side walk : Society successfully floats over the system of the dammed
• Man going back home after a nightshift : Home is my much needed fuel right now
• Girl walking home alone after school : I am not old enough to run away either..
• A boy who has been subjected to unruly bullying : Because I know what its like to not want to wake up on a bright sunny cheerful morning.
• Wife craving for attention : So there I was hanging on to a delicate thread of his affection
• Girl looking into the mirror : Here I was 20 and a half knowing exactly how I'd feel like when I'd be 40.
• Boy staring at the smartest kid in class : He knows of a high,has he ever known of a low? Ever thought of what if it wouldn't go?
• Anoerexic : Not a way to die
  

Her

I suffer from obsessive usage of first person..Its high time I thought, I make a sincere effort to curb this disorderly conduct which is begining to seem very unwriterly (unwriterly? sheesh)
As writers we tend to dwell on very unlikely subjects.The weirder the better we think.What we don't realize is that it is an important process of our own becoming,..that Gulliver was one sixth of Jonathan Swift and the rest was imagination or something that was a reflection of a real life adventure.
So this is how the story goes..
I find a subject.I dwell on the subject.I let go off my subject and initiate the process of my own becoming.
But around this time I decided, enough about myself.The little bright spotlight that I cast upon myself had turned sour.I am tired of knowing what I think,of what I do and what I do not.
So I will talk about him and his thoughts.
He would be the subject.The surgeon has a corpse,the biologist- a frog,the lawyer- a case,the gardener- flowers,a carpenter- tools.
I would have him.But not essentially - just as the surgeon doesn't essentially have a corpse and the biologist essentially doesn't have a frog and gardeners may come without flowers and carpenters without tools.Quite a possiblity.
Here is when I now say that I don't know much about men.But I do know when they are not coming back.It has something to do with the way they walk.This is what they call gifted and stupid.
21 years is a decent period of time to make up your mind.

I am your oldest scar..

I am your oldest scar
I am the one they stare at when 
they look at you
and I am the one they see
when they don't see you
I have maneuvered the details
of my place and being
ever since you questioned my existence

I am your oldest scar
I would be the last to leave
I have known a thing or two
about falling,opening up,bleeding and healing

I am made of broken things yet
I have been resilient and undemanding
I expect you to forgive my existence
I am afterall your very own

I am not pretentious nor am I superficial
My roots dig deeper than you think they might
I will show on naked skin and
in unfurnished houses

Only remember this precious
Your tears are my own
your pain is mine as well
I am your oldest scar
I burn when you do. 

xyz...

and this is my new blog natashaxyz.wordpress.com
so if this burns down looks like I have another place to stay.

Musings of the day 

• Stardust offers Revital piils wit their latest issue
• Reader's digest (India) does the same with sugar free natura packets

which makes me wonder..Are we catering to fat and depressed people these days?
 

Weekly bliss...

Autumn Waiting

by Tom Hennen

Cold wind.
The day is waiting for winter
Without a sound.
Everything is waiting—
Broken-down cars in the dead weeds.
The weeds themselves.
Trees.
Even sunlight
Is in no hurry and stays
For a long time
On each cornstalk.
Blackbirds are silent
And sit in piles.
From a distance
They look like
Something
Spilled on the road.

Happy Diwali folks..

I promise to stop clicking random stuff on my phone..{that is what it is predominantly used for these days} The streets are bustling and the air smells of smoke..my next post talks about what Mark Zuckerberg and I have in common (or not)

Until then keep in touch..

Among the things I love..

As random as you can be.

• I love the excitement of dawn creeping over you when you haven't slept
• I love strong,undiluted wicked coffee
• I love green herbal tea with a dash of lemon and honey
• I love reading in bed
• I love sunsets
• I love moments of silence
• I love the treasured hope of meeting someone fabulously new
• I love sunlight falling on things kept on a table as if shedding light on them very mysteriously
• I love colored pages
• I love sharpened pencils ready to tear through a page
• I love pretending to be asleep on a lazy afternoon all the while listening to my maid's bangles go ssss sssss ssss

• Eco friendly grafitti

Among the things I don't

# Inconspicuous memories......and the path I walk everyday.

# My 'will you write me a eulogy plea' that has driven many a decent folk away.

 

Whore memories..

They're kinky,they're slutty..they are The Whore Bunnies.

They currently reside somewhere on the outskirts of Bangalore..more specifically Rosh's dorm-his butterpaper lined cupboard.Trashed out and sleazy the best stuff we could come up with on Rosh's birthday.

 We spent the entire evening and day after dressing them up in chichi beads,glossy fabric and attaching notes containing inappropriate content on to their drastically ruined soft fur.

Then we smothered them up in some gross mascarra,outrageous eyeshadow and a hideous in your face pink lip color.

Finally we couriered them to their much awaited destination because we couldn't stand them.They hurt the eye.Those scandalous bitches.

And sadly enough this is the only memory of us I have left.

'That is so not true...' Rosh yelled on the phone the other day..

Do you remember the time when D's place was reeking of smoke and you wanted to go home not smelling of it so she brought out a hairspray instead of body deodorant with a cigg in one hand and sprayed the rest of it in front of you almost setting the house on fire?

That was big.

Yes maybe that was big.

I miss the dysfunctional trio.

I miss the eternal morose haters of the world.

I miss Rosh and D ordering the worst food ever and then having to struggle through it.

The world looked so pathetic as seen from a corner table at ccd.

I miss Rosh giggling and D being ever so loud.

Oreganos are officially 'Rosh's thing' now..

Everything about us so irritatingly satishfying.

For we are damaged,young and inconsiderate and it only gets worse from here.

So here's to friend's you don't come across everyday..

and the one's you can't stand for more than 3 hours.

And the one's you cherish forever and ever and ever.

Here's to the three of us.

Ignominies of a different kind..

The air won't stir, not even a bit.I usually 'sit it out' in the evenings, cloud watching being my only respite from my derailed train of thought that I've come to mistrust and regard with much contempt.

The fetor of the sticky air is very suffocating today, the picturesque beauty of it is  unmatched though.

'What part of you is so oblivious to climate change?' I mutter as I pass by a shop selling the usual toxic stash that is supposed to light up this diwali.
Not one soul have I seen, folding his hands up across his chest,face held back in a grimace staring away into an ocean of horizon and calamity and thinking out loud- Is it just me or is it really getting hotter every year?
No I haven't seen anyone like that.
And those that I have known hide behind clouds of discontent.You can't see much beyond clouds of discontent.I've been there myself.

'Up on the roof' is the song of the moment.It suits the mood,not so much the atmosphere,but the place,position and location perfectly.Written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King (The Drifters) it was quite a sensation in the 1960's.
At the moment my roof is an agreeable place to be.Recently cultivated, it accomodates a chair that belonged to my great grandfather,a table with a nice chequered cloth over it (which obviously needs to be washed every now and then owing to bird shit..) but otherwise I think its a perfect place to pour your heart out.
Despite the floundering palms surrounding the roof I took an additional effort to place a potted green Singonium at one corner.
Neat.

My neighbour's house is clothed in irritatingly bright lights.The ones that leave you dazed after a while.He lights up a match and ka boom go the fire crackers..the ones that won't let me sleep tonight and the night after.The ones that use up most of my paracetemols.



Bizz..Zoink..Darkness descends.
The lights just went out.But what do you need lights for when a million people are lighting up the skies and streets?
The glitterati surrounding the house next door has assured me a safe descent down the stairs.No I won't break a leg or stumble down..I would just be up for most of the night amidst the glaring lights.

The chronicles of flower arrangement..

Wikepedia defines Ikebena (the Japanese art of flower arrangement) as a disciplined art form in which nature and humanity are brought together.I call it an obsessive compulsive maniac's preoccupation with conquering the world.
For once I can't stop prattling about 'the wretch' who just happens to be the mainstay of my recent posts.See there is something super fascinating about old age.It surpasses Alzheimer's,cancer,Parkinson's delightfully and subsides into a realm of its own.
(Parkinson's..that reminds me..I always joke about how I think I have Parkinson's because my hands tremble a lot and my recent stint at cracking this joke in front of the wrong people turned out to be nothing short of a self initiated disaster.it went something like this: The guy I told this to actually thought I had Parkinson's,he didn't know what Parkinson's was,the combination of inbred paranoia and smoke made me believe I had parkinson's,so when I finally left the bistro I was more concerned about having Parkinson's than than my recent faux pas pertaining to words and sarcasm alike and waste of boisterous wit that would haunt me for quite sometime.)

So anyway "The right one's," she always says.They all look the same to me.They are flowers for heaven's sake.They consist of a stalk,peduncle,calyx and brightly coloured corolla and they die within a day or two..except lilies she once told me..they could live up to two weeks if rightly looked after.Her flowers are always rightly looked after.

"A rebel like yourself would never understand the gifts nature has to offer."
True and not.
Flowers are essentially feminine they say and I have never been able to figure out why.
D buys flowers for herself.I find that atrocious.But that's okay I guess, people would find buying unnecessary stationery for oneself equally atrocious.

Another aspect of Ikebena is that it employs minimalism.Minimalistic art I adore but minimalistic flower arrangement I cannot comprehend.Plus her arrangements are plentiful and over the top so I am guessing what she follows isn't Ikebena anyway.Maybe this is a peculiar style of flower arrangement invented by her embodying her own theories and thoughts.

"The darker one's go at the bottom and the lighter one's at the top."
Why?
Because the darker ones are symbolic of the earth,ground and soil.They form a base, a stronghold- perched on these are the lighter one's they become progressively lighter towards the top symbolic of the air..the zephyr.
Very symbolic of the world we live in don't you think?
No..I do not.
What about the leaves..?
The leaves can go anywhere.Top,bottom,in between,at the periphery..

One hot afternoon (when the heat seeped through your skin like an invisible toxin) I sat at my desk staring at a blank paper for quite sometime.I must have been 14.
I scribbled some utter random stuff and neatly folded the paper and slipped it into a drawer and completely forgot about it.When I came upon it years later it went like this..

I am the kind of girl who loves circles more than squares and leaves more than flowers .....

My heart skipped a beat when she said that 'the leaves' could fit anywhere - like they didn't have a place or a say or the glam of a flower.Yes, their essential quality was ruthlessly overshadowed by the fabulous flower.
Ask me again why I never liked a flower..because I was always a leaf.

Another thing.Did I ever tell you? The house has six mirrors.
One two three four five six.Six mirrors.
And sometimes I catch a glimpse of her staring into one of them just as she is going about her day.That is when she temporarily halts and looks at herself for an unnecessarily long period of time...and that's when I know we are both tragedies in the making.

A wilted flower lying on the newspaper babbling about global warming and the financial meltdown at a table beside the window that eyes a glorious sunset.Now that's art..and yet you miss it.

Weekly Bliss- one out of a collection of my favourite poems

What I Understood

by Katha Pollitt

When I was a child I understood everything
about, for example, futility. Standing for hours
on the hot asphalt outfield, trudging for balls
I'd ask myself, how many times will I have to perform
this pointless task, and all the others? I knew
about snobbery, too, and cruelty—for children
are snobbish and cruel—and loneliness: in restaurants
the dignity and shame of solitary diners
disabled me, and when my grandmother
screamed at me, "Someday you'll know what it's like!"I knew she was right, the way I knew
about the single rooms my teachers went home to,the pictures on the dresser, the hoard of chocolates,and that there was no God, and that I would die.All this I understood, no one needed to tell me.
the only thing I didn't understand
was how in a world whose predominant characteristicsare futility, cruelty, loneliness, disappointment
people are saved every day
by a sparrow, a foghorn, a grassblade, a tablecloth.This year I'll bethirty-nine, and I still don't understand it.

Book Review : The Household guide to dying - Debra Adelaide.

For a long time I was filled with that arrogant confidence of youth the conviction that you are desired as much as you desire.
- Debra Adelaide.

I absolutely loved it.At first I was vary of reading it in the presence of unbookish conventional company because the title of what I was reading made me look deplorable...but as I sunk deeper into it I cared less of what others had to say.
She reminds me of Atwood and Enright.Sudden,yet precise.And yes..very very obsessed.

'The prospect of death was like a fabled land,a place of griffins and hydras too bizzare and remote to be seriously considered'

I've always hated the way they portray dying on screen..the bright red blood (darker these days),talking in between gasping for oxygen (all the while people continue to crowd around the dead man to be and suffocate him further..) and having to say something important at the very last minute and not being able to say it (worse) How dearly I hate 'incompleteness'.
Debra Adelaide makes dying seem effortless and yet heart wrenching.
Delia is a perfectionist and she is dying of breast cancer.She wants to do this right.
We then travel down the memory lane and glance at the not so perfect events of her life that finally moulded her into the person that she is now..
The haunting memory of her lost son and her exhausting search for the woman who now has his heart beating inside her all the while juggling her time in between two precious daughters and a loving husband and drafting out the perfect words about the unusually perfect death.

(Did I just ruin it for you? My sincere apologies)

Life's a smoke and waiting's a dick..

'If only I had the perfect journal to write in..'
I knew what I needed wasn't the perfect journal- it was the perfect moment.
And it came to me sometimes - in between absorbing city life as I walked past crowded streets or in between enjoying a stimulating cup of wicked, undiluted coffee in the wee hours of the morning when no one was around - just me and my tranquil state of the arch being, staring at my disllusioned self in the mirror, while a twig ruffled outside the window and the leaves did their hitch and no, I never noticed because I could never take my eyes off the mirror,couldn't take my eyes off what I've become.

Punch drunk Ascent

Froth glistened on the surface of a rock.The vines were mist laden and sublime.Far below people erractically dug into their freshly blistered salty corn and generously sipped some scintillating coffee.
I am starting to tire of X but then again I have nothing to hold onto. Waterfalls are grand, even grander when the force of the water is unrelenting. I verge upon one rock at a time with bare feet and a flood of caution.The wet moss turns to dangerous slime.
'Don't be foolish..hold my hand.'
I pretend not to hear her.Shaky and wobbly I grab the underside of the rock above me instead- the one I have to climb next but have absolutely no idea how to proceed as yet.
The grandeur and beauty of the waterfall now forgotten I trudge on with the prospect of just getting through the damn thing without cracking a few bones or breaking my camera. (Ps not mine afterall)
'Are you absolutely sure you don't need a hand?'
She was a feet or two below me and her sisterly affection was nauseating.I haven't felt this nauseated since gulping down neat unadulterated vodhka last week.Don't you vouch for adulterated stuff at such times?
Adulterated love,degraded, depreciated stuff.
'I think I got it..' I yelled back.
But I didn't get it ofcourse.I never did.
Even if I did it was vague.

Days of our lives..

"I'm dying," she must have whispered into his shapely and well proportioned ear on a rainy day (when the lower part of the window fogged up and the upper part of it was mist laden and sublime) or on a not so rainy day (when the sun stood on the horizon inches away from sinking into it,weary,after having witnessed rumblings of an entire day beneath him.Yes it was a 'him' because he only felt tired in the evenings and called it a day.)
And then their lives must have progressively shattered there on.I stood among the remanants of what must have been a warm and inviting abode.From where I stood I could hear the distinct hum of the church choir.The dying tree and the dying house sucked the energy out of each other.They formed a strange sombre pair.

If your life was a newspaper what would the headlines be?

Someone died.The weather blew up in your face.Sordid.The party scene next door got uglier.A crash and then glass fell apart..someone stepped on it maybe or worse fell on it.They'd found a stash of dope stuffed away in his pockets.He was going to die anyway.Trains go off tracks.The swine flu masquerade party might be over but people are still dying.Only that now there is no fuss about it.Only one teeny weeny question that splits open every now and then.What if? What if the flu gets me? What if the flu gets my family? My son at school? My man at work? What if's are such diggers.They could ascertain a variety of catastrophic events that run along the longest coast of the sea.Once they get to the coast they start drifting into the sea.Deeper and deeper in between bouts of nauseatingly salty water.
With that said I'd say some people do not realize how lucky they are. I should be generous enough not to name them.I just wish they knew.I sometimes wish I knew too.How lucky I was
- to have a heart beating inside me,to be able to walk and stand my ground, to be whatever I want.And yet these things, these majestic essentials are overshadowed by those vexing details of daily life.I just wish we all knew.
But we don't,do we? And it takes fleeting images of misfortunates sleeping on roadsides or the failing health of someone very old even worse someone younger to bring us one step closer to reality.A reality that is overpriced,taxed and levied by routine- most ordinary and most obvious.

Something I'd read over and over..

Summer in a Small Town

by Linda Gregg

When the men leave me,
they leave me in a beautiful place.
It is always late summer.
When I think of them now,
I think of the place.
And being happy alone afterwards.
This time it's Clinton, New York.
I swim in the public pool
at six when the other people
have gone home.
The sky is gray, the air is hot.
I walk back across the mown lawn
loving the smell and the houses
so completely it leaves my heart empty.

Unverified Junk..

Long time. I am in the running to officially breaking down this september owing to outrageous coffee consumption,terribly unstable nerves and loads of unverfied junk that i managed to ace up my sleeve.

So I repeat slipping issues of health mags under my pile of clothes isn't going to make me adapt to a healthier lifestyle...Are you listening mom?

The wretch called up my mum to tell her I was sleeping all day..wretch wretch wretch..What is the point in staying away from home if your not going to be sleeping all day?

Least to say the wretch cannot dismantle my vitriolic spirits that are up and running high courtesy high caffine content in my system.

Days do not comprise of much.Either they are spent running around the city or doing nothing at all.And when I say nothing at all I mean nothing at all..the highlight of the day being -- dousing a cockroach in harpic..

I could be spotted at a coffee shop pretending to read a book or write OR a restuarant having lunch by myself or complete strangers.Complete strangers come into the picture when the craving for good food at a popular place overlooks the fact that you have absolutely zilch company to share the delight with.I repeat I do not like running errands for people until I am getting paid for it and especially the older lot of them who get on my nerves.Hence I would not be found at my other stay in from 10 to 1 in the mornings.

You could add working for the UN on my schizo wishlist.

This calls for beefing up my mothballed state of affairs.

The old,the living and the dying..

After watching the two feet long reptilian wonder journey all the way from a shelf containing some very aesthetic tableware to the back of a Turner painting I reverted my attention to the incredibly sassy Betty Sharp in between solving some dogsick math problems.
The clock read 5.30 a.m. not one mintue more and not one minute less.

The silence was broken by the infrequent growling of the refrigerator next to which hung a black and white picture of her deceased husband and his bespectacled charm, taken almost a decade ago, encased in an elegant frame, abiding against a backdrop of the newly painted mauve walls. Next to this is another picture- this one comprised of the couple- his philosopher's nose and her haughty features stealing the limelight.

She began another laborious long haul down the stairs. This was a routine affair but sometimes when her health got the worst of her she slept through the highly demanding and painful endeavour. Otherwise commenced a normal day where the speed of a daily task was one tenth of what it could have been or what it should have been. Like for instance making tea required a minimum of 9 minutes and a maximum of 13 or so. If as a child I was ever asked about what I didn't want to be it would certainly be this..along with a lot of other things.

The oversized buff coloured bath robe hides her recent infliction - Herpes spreading along the surface of her right arm almost rendering it useless. But here is why this spitting image of death is the highlight of my flimsy post: her preposterous desire to live all by herself on her own terms as an amiable entity bothersome sometimes could have been deemed as courage only if it wasn't so shaky.

The sheets are clean, there is more than one dish on the table, the fridge doesn't tire out, water pump... check, fake teeth...check,walking stick...uncheck,a downright calculative mindset...check,if you help the old lady you'd be in HIS good books slogan..check,friends at hand...check,socializing to avoid lonliness...check,countless recipies deemed successful after mild experimentation...check,no children to fuss over...check,relatives to fuss over occasionally....check.
What do you need to worry about other than the clock ticking away and a knock at the door?
I greet her with half a smile.
Good morning.
Good morning...says death with a smile.
And so starts another day..the fragility of which I could never comprehend.

The alphabetical stir..

Y is for youth..when all insanity and craziness can be forgiven and the future still holds hope and hope still holds a future.When we still stand our ground on a chimerical existence..and live through it.

They are young again, back at that moment in life when someone else's body is a path that might be taken, with no chance of return.
-Anne Enright 'The Gathering'

P is for pain and we haven't a clue..We basically don't, and yet they are of different kinds and they can be categorized and sub categorized further and further until there is nothing left.
This is the one feel where standards of comparison don't work and even if they do they can't be trusted to be right enough,justified enough or tolerant enough.But pain does shape you.Pain is the essence of all human beauty,it is the survival kit we all carry with much elegance.It distracts quality.

And even then, it seems we always feel pain for the wrong thing
- Anne Enright 'The Gathering'

W is for waiting after having packed your bags..and the promise it brings along for a better life, an adventure, an untoward extraordinary journey mingled with the anticipation of an astounding discovery.

C is for the closet and the things that define you.
Fancy scarves,photos of your sweetheart,travelogues,an extra pair of glasses,lost keys bundled under an army of clothes,all colors- the blacks,the blues and the magnolias,passport and visas,your grandmother's bracelet that she gave you because she thought being old came minus the ornate and fanciful stuff and you wouldn't convince her otherwise,eyelash curlers and mascara's and concealers - everything that possibly made you forget that you were the same girl from school,a phonebook that contains birthdays,addresses and numbers of people you never call or talk to anymore- the ones you wish to never run into the streets anymore because then you'd get stuck talking to them..hey what's life if you get stuck up at one place? a beautiful trench coat - a Christmas present from your mom that you failed to acknowledge,wedges you wore to your first date after which you tossed them aside because things didn't work out the way you wanted them to,old marksheets that somehow highlighted your smartness but never your completeness and you wondered why you felt so empty when you sat down alone at your desk with a cup of tea....all truly yours

D is for detail..and everything you thought you'd missed.

H is for a half.Half a thought.Half a wish.

F is for fascination and at some point in our lives we always tend to overgrow it.

Q is for quality that you find easy to decipher and Q is for quantity that a few lucky ones assimilate.Its a life long battle between the two.

H is for home - a much needed fuel.

O is for an old woman and she sleeps on her back never on her sides..so close to death.

W is for the writer who is just an eccentric actually.He eats boiled eggs for dinner.He can flush his hard earned dignity down the sink with much ease.

R is for respect and respect respect respect respect what you've got.

B is for bubbles that you sometimes tend to blow in your cup of tea.

to be contd..

They don't laugh anymore when you fall..

I think in the course of our long jaded lives we hit that one particular stone..'The one' that is either kind enough to let you get away with just a fall or a few minor bruises or the one that is remorseless enough to never let you back up again..the one that buries you under forever.

The sky swelled up in an early morning despondent teal announcing the arrival of the monsoons. Savor the melancholic thought and detail.
Present day genre of deranged,maniacal bus drivers sped along the empty streets toying around with their beloved mechanical pets.Beware : the delayed brake syndrome is high and is spreading around feverishly throughout the country..it cherishes the true Indian spirit like nothing else.
Just when I thought he'd hit the pavement or run over that old woman or flipped inside out or driven right into the entrails of another of vehicle, worse masticated a few slum dwellers sleeping on the road sides outside their shacks - he stopped..just in time.Brilliant.

We are just a step away from being really bad drivers and one behind licensed streetwise daredevils.

Then it happened..in the midst of an empty street stood an array of vehicles predicting a possible traffic jam.A traffic jam at 7 in the morning..Jesus.
Damn I should have walked, I would have reached faster..you know how people always say that? I believe 80% of them think that too.
But that's not really true. If you act brave enough and really get down to doing it (ie stepping out of your respective vehicles and on to the road)..well then that's precisely the time the chaos starts clearing out and your not high flown anymore (are you?) infact you are plain stupid standing right in the middle of the street, your feet tightening underneath the classic burgundy leather, the 100 decibel plus racket trumpeting right through your sensitive ear lobe leaving you sore and ofcourse very very embarrassed.

Where was I ? Oh yes - the traffic jam.
The cause: an accident.
The cost: perhaps a life and a half.
His body lay sprawled on the streets..Da Vinci's Vitruvian man.Beside him lay his bag and the contents of it splattered all over the noticeably wet ground - a packet of milk (now diffused and half empty), bread and The Indian Express.Homespun and simple,its amazing how important a role the contents of your bag play in defining you.I might have been wrong there but then again that wasn't the point.He would be missed nonetheless and that's why the cost of an accident always comes at the cost of a life and a half.
His beige pants bore the marks of a probable truck tyre while the cuffs of his grey striped shirt stained blood red.
It was just another day afterall and he was just out to get breakfast.

There wasn't an ambulance anywhere in sight, just a few cops here and there patrolling traffic. Maybe there was one on the way.
'D' is for death and you don't have to go through it to write about it.
The alphabetical stir continues.
Maybe he didn't die..maybe they saved him in the nick of time.

Gone are the days when tripping on a banana skin was considered funny.Whoever called that humor? Fucking sadists.
The fall is for real.

It started with Slumdog..

Reprimanding Danny Boyle for showcasing Indian poverty on an international scale seems like the right thing to do .. but Mr Boyle couldn't possibly be responsible for your scarred sentiments considering the fact that you yourself can throw away 100 k for certain religious purposes and not bother spending a dime when it comes to charity.
However the movie was buried six feet under already and so was the the purpose and crux of it (the one that was supposed to pinch your soul and turn it inside out) and meanwhile you ran to your nearest music store to grab a copy of the 'shady but hyped and extensively publicized ' version of the very popular Oscar winning 'Jai Ho' by none other than the pussycat dolls.
(Wtf?)
Money in the bank for Nicole Scherzinger and her clan..bravo well done!
Zilch wisdom for the Indian audience trying to come to terms with their trendy lifestyles.

A firang,who I was friendly to, once said
Quote unquote 'It must be really hard for you guys to come to terms with what you see here on a daily basis.It has been two months since i came here and quite frankly I've been very disturbed.We should do something about it..'
I realized I hadn't even had the foggiest idea of what he'd just said.It finally struck me when he pointed out to a bunch of street urchins running helter skelter as massive drops of despair began pouring across the street.
So why does Mr white man have to bring to light our ignorance (well mine in this case) regarding a miserable affliction called poverty inhabiting this country?
Answer: We better start looking.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

I would also like to lay bare another trend that has been pointlessly infused into our culture.
An xyz MBA training centre came up with a unique solution to cruise through an interview session and impress the interviewers."Reading" [as many books as you can] happens to be a very impressive hobby according to recent statistics.Never mind the fact that you bungee jump or surf or even cultivate mushrooms - you could mask all of this by undertaking the exhausting task of reading almost nine to ten books (fiction and non fiction included) before your CAT's and selection procedures and finally before your personal interviews.
(ps: for those of you not into reading the task may seem Herculean but hey in a land where unemployment is scanning new heights why take a chance? take note MBA training centres you might want to add this to one of your favorite tag line lists.)

Yes..and for those of you who qualify me as a hypocrite..I would like to make it very clear that I AM one.With that said you could start inspecting yourselves now.

I've been called a nerd,a boring hag,dork,dweeb,geek and everything else that could validate my congenital passion to read,my outrageous desire to become a writer or my impoverished myopic vision.
There it was-- back then, reading Atwood or writing poetry was the most melancholic and choicest form of escapism I could afford.Well if I could,I could have afforded bungee jumping or surfing -but I couldn't,meditation and yoga required more than commitment and I didn't even have the latter,wildlife wasn't really my thing..so i chose what I chose and I think I chose well.
And now a bogus trend is going to take all those years away from me?
Yes I maybe paranoid but I am my mother's daughter so you could blame the gene in my system.
So the question I am asking is- Would four to five months of reading fury truly collasce into a so called impressive passion for the same?
Lets wait and watch.

Wishlist 2009

1. A job
2. Alias Grace (Atwood)
3. Cat's eye (Atwood)
4. Oolong tea bags
5. Hope
6. Playtex tampons
7. Non myopic eyesight
8. True love
9. A pet goat
10. Hope
11. A yoga mat (fuchsia maybe)
12. A new hobby (photography maybe)
13. Bag pack adventures
14. Hope