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.

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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

Here's a good one..

Death is a door knob made of flesh

Death is that angelic farm girl gored by the bull
on her way home,crossing the pasture
for a shortcut
In the seventh grade she
couldn't read or write
she wasn't a virgin
she was 'simple minded' we all said
It was May - a time of lilacs and shooting stars
She's lived in my memory for sixty years

___Jim Harrison.