Monday, December 11, 2006

I Miss Me!

I miss Delhi. every waking moment I miss it so heart wrenchingly it makes me want to run away. and to hide in the bylanes watching my house which now has strangers inhabiting my favourite corners.

I want to stand on my wide terrace and watch the fog recede and the trees and buildings come alive after a smoky illusion.

I want to shiver in my pajamas while my fingers clutch at my coffee mug so tightly trying to wring out some warmth through its thick impermeable walls.

I want to cuddle in my "rajai" and look through the little slit near my eyes at the weakened sun as it wrestles with the winter breeze trying to spread some cheer and heat.

I want to feel the wind in my hair as I shiver and snuggle while the auto driver dances through the lazy traffic.

god I miss Delhi. I miss me in Delhi. I miss being me in Delhi. I miss me.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

I want to be KNOWN!

Passion is the element in which we live;without it, we hardly even vegetate. Byron

As I stepped into the train, the darkening clouds and the fading skyline of Delhi made me weep like never before. I was leaving my home and the job I was really good at and anyone who cared for me to enter an alien land, to make new acquaintances and to hunt for a job, that might never give me the high I had always wanted from life.

Though the rewind seems scary, the fact that news might go away from my life for good has made me sit back and evaluate what is that one thing that I want from life? And Irealizee that while I shudder between the sheets, turning page after page of often read novels, trying to seek meaning and inspiration, what I am doing is burying my dream of being a hot shot reporter on the move!

I want to be on the move, to be in the news, to live in the moment, to be able to come back dead tired and flop down on the bed with my shoes on, to wake up and see my name/face all over making a point. I want to be known for what I know.

That dream seems like an illusion I am chasing sitting within yellowed walls. Why don't these bricks fade to let me out into the open land where I can try to holler and make a difference?

Almost Famous!

A completely new high I must admit. Though the actual high would be seeing my name in black and white....there for all to see. But I assume now that this first step has happened that aint too far away. Anyhow here's the reason for my celebration....

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VE9JQkcvMjAwNi8xMi8wNCNBcjAxODAw&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom

Thursday, November 02, 2006

She Stares Alone

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning....a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be.
Joseph Campbell



Seems like ages since I was confined to this little house overlooking the traffic. I watch cars and scooters pass by with bustling passengers….trying to get a sneak peek into their lives….trying to understand why they alone have been chosen to be the ‘busy lot’.

I married for love and now am confined by my love. They told me marriage is all about sacrifice, adjustment, termination of individual egos and what not. I dutifully obeyed them and here I am…..a pathetic shadow of myself.

I watch from above and see this lady, cribbing, watching TV, perfunctorily cooking dinner, lying on the bed gazing at the roof hoping or maybe praying that someone or something come crashing down to bring her life. She cleans and hums, makes love and fights, socializes and sleeps all in rhythm. And in the stillness of the four walls she sobs out loud. Wanting all to hear and save her from this anonymity and dependence. I put out my hands….but her blinding tears keep her from clutching my fingers….

Suddenly she hates the world and everyone inhabiting hers. She wants to break free, yet the choices she made strangle her and tie her down like a block of iron. She is talking to me and asking me to intervene. To play with fate, and to erase these moments that are making her seem like an outsider to herself. She doesn’t understand the shackles she has built for herself. And still amidst the drowning waves she loves and calls out for him. Wondering if her love might not shake him awake from his self possessed dream…. hoping if he might not put out a hand to prevent her from drowning in her pool of tears.

Alas not even her Gods seem to be listening in on this aside. All at once she feels betrayed by her loved ones…for not stepping in, for not pretending to care, for not being there….. For leaving her all alone to stare.

Friday, October 27, 2006

Crippling Fear

I have always patted myself for being fearless and unshaken. But I am scared. Of the unknown, of something that I cannot define. It follows me with a knowing and evil eye. It has made me fear every whisper in the breeze, every shadow that crosses my window, every added breath that comes along with the wind, every creak emitted by the doors, every frightened glance I make over my shoulder half expecting the figure that will in short answer and sum up that fear.

What is it that maketh fear? They say the only thing you need to fear is fear itself. But then what about all those things you cannot name or define, you cannot control or overcome; you cannot abolish or live with? What other emotion do you extend to those unnamed things? What do you call the emotion that they evoke? Awe? Or simple, plain undefined fear?

I am crippled by this unknown force…that I believe is watching me and studying me without my permission. Making decisions for me and marking me out as its prey. Transforming me into a puppet that is enacting the verses put down by “it”. I have become an actor, a slave to the thoughts and provocations of someone, something unknown. And I have no hope or means of redeeming myself.

Why choose me? The solitary reaper? With not a sense of drama furthering her existence? Why not pick on a much celebrated or revered being, whose eye lashes keep furtively blinking so as not to mar the perfect snap? Why poor mundane me?

I have been forced into hibernation by this unknown and unwanted fear. I don’t like being held hostage by things I cannot even hate or blame in entirety. Why not have adversaries that you can holler at? Instead of echoes that merely surround the empty walls!

I have always been claustrophobic and this new form of containment will not leave me human for long.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

My new found love

E E CUMMINGS

i carry your heart with me(i carry it inmy heart)i am never without it(anywherei go you go,my dear;and whatever is doneby only me is your doing,my darling) i fearno fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i wantno world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)and it's you are whatever a moon has always meantand whatever a sun will always sing is youhere is the deepest secret nobody knows(here is the root of the root and the bud of the budand the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which growshigher than soul can hope or mind can hide)and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars aparti carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Irritating Tongues….

Her nasal overtone is killing. The lady is pretending to be oh so prim and proper….the epitome of class and sophistication. Christ, I would infact buy it if only she would stop alternating between tongues….why is she so confused about the origins of her accent….someone told me she is from Coorg.

So why does she alternate between every continent she has traveled through? Why not retain a Kannada twang native to her part of the world? Is it that every week spent in one continent has rubbed off on certain parts of her much limited and affected vocabulary, that it tends to never undo itself….making her look like a mixture of cultures the minute she opens her mouth?

Ah the travails of a star…one who has not an ounce of acting in her mangled anatomy….but has oodles of attitude to make up for all her misgivings….

Someone should tell that woman that merely flitting in and out of other worldly productions will not in any way prove her capabilities as an actor. Instead she is merely trumpeting to the entire world how dispensable she is in a world of talent. One cannot spend hours staring at her plastic countenance when someone beside her is enacting a well scripted role even as she uses her multi-accented tongue to make innumerous grunts and pouts.

The “Mistress of Spices” is stirring violent spasms of dislike in me. Someone switch off that TV!

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

You Lied to Me!

“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you” Friedrich Nietzsche

Despite repeated reminders in that one split second he had changed our entire lives. He said a "white lie" to save face and avoid confrontation. Was it worth all the pain and the accusations that followed. All the trauma and the nonsense. The depletion in trust and in unshakeable belief? The living hell that both have to endure till memory fades and time selectively relegates this aberration into the back chamber? Was it really worth anything?

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Too Much of Nothing is Too Bad

So Sang Bob Dylan...............................

Now, too much of nothing
Can make a man feel ill at ease.
One man's temper might rise
While another man's temper might freeze.
In the day of confessionWe cannot mock a soul.
Oh, when there's too much of nothing,
No one has control.

Say hello to Valerie
Say hello to Vivian
Send them all my salary
On the waters of oblivion

Too much of nothing
Can make a man abuse a king.
He can walk the streets and boast like most
But he wouldn't know a thing.
Now, it's all been done before,
It's all been written in the book,
But when there's too much of nothing,
Nobody should look.

Say hello to Valerie
Say hello to Vivian
Send them all my salary
On the waters of oblivion

Too much of nothing
Can turn a man into a liar,
It can cause one man to sleep on nails
And another man to eat fire.
Ev'rybody's doin' somethin',
I heard it in a dream,
But when there's too much of nothing,
It just makes a fella mean.

Say hello to Valerie
Say hello to Vivian
Send them all my salary
On the waters of oblivion

Bored of Myself

When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored. Eric Hoffer


It driving me nuts....this feeling of being worthless and silly. Of existing as a non-thinking being who merely dissipates the conundrums of other thoughts as her own in an attempt to disguise the lack of activity in her upper floors.


What is it that holds me back from freeing myself from this exile? Why have I chosen this over the many more ridiculous methods of existence? Do I crave life and joy no more? Do I not want to enjoy the pleasures up for grabs in nature? What is it that ails me? And makes me want to hide beneath the sheets all day long? To pretend exhaustion when all I really want is to go out there and let the sun shine down on me, holding me aloft in the public eye.


Why do I fear company? Why do I shun contact with the world? And the chance to engage in meaningful conversation? Have I lost the capability of holding my own? Or is it that I no longer enjoy the nuances of argument which have always taught me insightful lessons and the truths of life?


Maybe I am a bit bored of the routine. I am bored of the same faces that greet me day after day as I wake up and smile. I am bored of the same things they say in varied tones and accents. I am bored of the silly mails that remind me that those beings that I have been running away from still exist and care. I am bored of the noises that creep in through the pores on the walls making me shrink into my blanket. I am bored of the way the maid walks in punctually at 1300 wanting to do the clothes and vessels. I am bored of the weekends that mean nothing but a movie and a dinner. I am bored of weekdays that mean nothing but cooking, waiting for hubby, soaps on TV and a quiet dinner together. I am bored of everything around me. I am bored of life, of predictability, of togetherness, of this town, these people, of myself.

Monday, August 21, 2006

The Leaky Cauldron

The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force, and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
Elizabeth Drew


I sit at home day after day...waiting for the phone to ring or the mail box to beep....with some good cheer. That someone has found something that will keep me occupied for the upcoming months....while they throw in a little something to keep the debtors away....

Alas I wait in patience...Wonder at every little loud whisper that crosses my window...whether it aint someone wanting to have a conversation....to share my misery....to tell me the light at the end of the tunnel is so bright it will burn to ashes these moments in the dark....

For the first time the prospect of what many a woman goes through or willingly accepts stares me in the face....I shudder thinking how one can voluntarily surrender to a life which has no meaning, no consequence, no use, no art, no beauty, no music, no laughter....when everything in your life is borrowed?

The two rooms and their little furnishings don't keep me occupied enough ....even if were to re-arrange the house and its things ten different times, showered five times, ate another five, and watched mindless soaps for 4 hours, I still would be left wanting. So how can I plaster a smile when someone walks in tired after the trials and tribulations at work, wanting to crib....how can I lend him my ear when I am sobbing inside as my little upper floor leaks out through those thin black strands each day as I stand under the shower pretending that the water flowing down my cheeks is but the one from the tap......

I live a lie...A forced lie....

I no longer feel like I am me....I am an apparition of my self....somewhere lost in transit between the two abodes....my home and this temporary settlement....

Why is everything eluding me alone? Am I suddenly so untouchable? Should I have then left the comforts of my home, my friends and everything I consider dear to come to this alien town that treats me like I am a leper?

Something inside sobs. I dare not let the walls hear....They stare at me in smug satisfaction. They are slowly succeeding in ruining one more thinking being. Save me from this torturous world of mirages. Throw me the life-line. My eyes are so used to the darkness I will not miss the little clink.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Jobless!

The bustling maid
The shrill milk whistle
Towel clad husband
Bread burning wife

Perfunctory goodbye kiss
A slammed front door
Still yellow walls
Empty windswept bedrooms

Lunch-break call from friend
Abrupt end
The call of duty
Alas a jobless wife!

Boiling tea, hot cakes
Clean beds, steaming hot dinner
Ironed shirts, washed floors
Smiling wife, dog tired husband

"Goodnight wife", lights out
Reverberating silence
A deafening road!

July 14th 2006

Shifting Home

Stained coffee mugs
Soiled, sweaty clothes
Unopened suitcases
Space occupying cartons

Small paw marks on the dust
Little feet running by
Screaming mother on the top floor

Arguments with the agent
No more green bucks passing hands
Vociferous land lord on the landing

Tenant absorbed by woodwork
Memories wiped out by strangers
Little boy sobs in his bunk bed

Sweeping strokes of the broom
Lives, histories swept away
New stories being crafted
The traffic goes by.

July 14th 2006

Back in Action!

Finally after the deafening silence, sound waves have crept into my life. I am alive and there is some validation for my existence on this lonely planet. Someone somewhere wants me to magnify my presence for all those sundry mortals to see and envy while I bask in the glory of inertia…..

This truth negates the vacuum that had engulfed my upper faculties in the last few hundred hours….


I am alive and the universe is crying for me to make felt my little being in this vast expanse….


It’s good to be back!

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

The Inevitable Change!

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~Anatole France


Seven years of anonymity, freedom, independence...of fun, frolic, danger, adventure....of fear, fearlessness, never say die....of lovers, admirers and mentors....of song, dance and death....of weightloss, weightgain and obesity....of spinsterhood, of coupling and marriage.....

Many phases that made me....the places, the scents, the people, the skies that made me....I have to let them go....I am married!

From my small nest, I have to flap my wings and spread out into the next world....full of dangers and unknown abysses....for I am married!

I have to change me, my spaces, my dreams and my life....I am married!

I have an extension, a partner...to share and care....to hold and push.....to smile and love, to cry and loath....I am married!

My smoking persona, my dangling smile, my killer instincts, my on the move intellect, my tapping toes, my painted hands, my battered clothes, my wet shoes....all in some dusty box...I am married!

My stupid friends, my dopey partners, my genius admirers, my faceless lovers...at the bottom of the ocean...I am married!

This white world...full of magic and serenity....I am married!

The moments of puritanical insight when adjustment and higher love ring true with every thump of the heart....when every little jerk of the eyelid....translates into poems of understanding...when every cough means a zillion complaints...when every smile means absolute acceptance and approval....when every wisecrack means an invitation....I am married!

Purity and loyalty...the key ingredients of this coupling.....talk and song....walk and dance.....fight and slap.....kiss and make up....all about love....

I am married!





Thursday, June 01, 2006

Unnecessary Musings?

"It's Not Every Day A Fat Cat Brings You Flowers...." wrote A M Homes....

I wondered as I perused her writings on the net...the consequence of a freak search on Brad Pitt...Why hadn't I heard of her...me who prides myself for knowing every single writer who had strayed into literature...and I had not read her...leave alone know her...I had sinned...and now I had to undergo penance....

The dreams were scary....cats filled every little clean spot on my floor, on my curtains and furniture...I was petrified to say the least...and I didn't in any sense want to imitate Halle Berry....but I was beginning to crouch like I shouldn't...and my feline senses were buzzing....was that a plate of fish fry....passing me by on the floor below? mmmmm..........YIKES!!!!!!!! I was awake...Me, this puritanical brahmin iyer, dreaming of fresh fried fish? my grandmom would churn in her grave and order a bath with cow dung!

I could not afford to get fishy here...and that meant I could not sleep...for Halle Berry was now the woman of my dreams....and I liked jumping off rooftops in search for a nice stance.....hell Homes had corrupted me...

but I like tigers....majestic, unafraid, royal.....no I did not want to spend a night in the wilderness frightened that I might wake up and find myself staring into those shining slits of gold....or be worried sick that I might be grabbed by my leg and dragged along as my hair gathered leaves and sand and I screamed myself hoarse into the dark skies with nothing but an owl to respond...

but what is the purpose of what I am writing...I am lost here....

ah I wanted to do penance...but homes was away and couldn't care a damn whether I knew her or not, or I read her or not, while the rest of the world was anyways celebrating her success and her writing....

so then why am I bothering? to make up enough dough to fill this space...or pretend that I was clued into the major movements of the literary world? ah the question I am trying to answer even as I am typing this nonsense...

to be precise...Its just me trying to understand if with every passing month I am losing my touch with the language and the art of stringing together some meaningful words.....

can I continue with writing even if I woke up from a coma that lasted five years....maybe not...my fingers would be dead and sore....but I could complete a sentence in my head and make myself heard if not read....

so then should I waste time and energy....should I write?

Monday, May 15, 2006

Confounded Confucius!

The chill is piercing...an aberration of sorts....here in the middle of May, at 43 degree celsius, I am shivering inside my sleeves....

The drab office colours are blinding me as I wander through the corridor holding aloft a bottle of "chilled" water in order to cool down my senses! And there on that hideous woman's table I see the lines....Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life....so said Confucius if I'm any bit wiser...and he has made me ruminate yet again....

I am stuck in this abyss....rolling out news bulletins day after day....dumbing down all the bits of information for that jobless viewer who has tuned into my channel....freezing inside the PCR and cursing all the powers that be for mesmerising me into this medium that excels in lying and hoodwinking! What am I doing here? Changing the world? Bringing them the truth that is out there? Making the layman's voice echo in the chambers of power?

I am doing nothing remotely close...I am merely giving silly old farts time to make their voices heard, rich obnoxious politicians more time to spread their muddled up ever changing ideology, and converting into a joke anyone who tried to make a difference by questioning every pure thought of mankind....

I am ensuring that every story that pleases my boss goes on air, every time he wishes to enlighten the lesser mortals I eat into the precious ad breaks to allow him to let his creative juices flow in an uninterrupted fashion....I am doing nothing worthwhile and feeling even more worthless with every passing bulletin I roll out in an attempt to lay bare the happenings in the corridors of power!

My job sucks...and I want a change...but what should that change be? Something in me cries out against doing something that is unlike what I currently pursue...after all this post here had its share of obstacles and sacrifices....then again having to put up with this monotony for the rest of my life send shivers up my brain stem....I will end up being a vegetable.....Do I risk that? If not should I go back to academics...add a few more degrees and churn out names and quotes in the time you bat an eyelid? Or should I sit at home, take a sabbatical...work on my love for writing and ensnare the world into reading what might make for some good bedtime scary story? Options and then again lack of options...or rather the fear of being financially unstable and forced to live within the four walls of the house I run from every morning for the silence is killing?

I am confused....and lets hope Confucius might be able to bail me out this time round!

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Silence Is Killing!

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction, said Virginia Woolf....

And here I am hoping my new found hubby will replenish me with resources to sit back, chew on my pencil and scribble while the rain patters down on the window-sills across which I have drawn curtains for fear that a fly might disturb my delicate balance....

For death, pain and the macabre fascinated me and the world shunned me for being wonky upstairs...my love stood by me...watched me mumble in silence at the blue screen with little words staring back in complete meaning, hoping I would hit backspace and make the silence grow in size...

he stood by patiently as I scribbled, mumbled, swore and cried....I was a lunatic....I needed restraint...yet he let me out...to smell the wet grass and the white daisies...while the wet sand caught on to my sandals and made impressions on my his favourite carpet...yet he watched in silence...why this sheer love? I ask again...do I return it? I don't know...my words are failing me...I don't want to be silent....I'd rather die!

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Wholly Matrimony!

For years my wedding ring has done its job. It has led me not into temptation. It has reminded my husband numerous times at parties that it's time to go home. It has been a source of relief to a dinner companion. It has been a status symbol in the maternity ward.

So spoke the bible...

And now on the threshold of marriage I wonder like Churchill, "how many torments lie in the small circle of a wedding ring"....

Eerie....those little adjustments which will always be mine to make voluntarily...those little pains that I shall cry for in the pantry, sobbing lightly so that no one might hear...those little smiles, I will pass on at strangers at my dinner table while I serve them the choicest wine and meats...those numerous fights, I shall want to win, yet have to lose...those innumerous times I would look at him while he slept peacefully as I ironed the pile on the ground...those numerous times while I cooked and cooked and waited for someone to come, smack her fingers and say this is not my poor boy is used to....those many times when the other "daughter" cooked better meats, and baked softer cakes....those many times I broke into a tune and was told it was interrupting with the cricket match commentary...those many times, I wished life had been full of roses and he came back reeking of liquor....

I shudder....mine may or may not be the one that makes fairytales....yet something in me hopes and prays it s something I cherish and never cringe at...something I will want 40 years from now....something that will put a smile on my face even when memory has failed me....something that will make me go pink even when my wrinkles are larger than I can make out the difference....something that I will love....

Let the heavens shower their choicest blessings on me.....

Amen!

Monster of Ingratitude

Ingratus est, qui beneficium accepisse senegat, quod accepit: ingratus est, qui dissimulat; ingratus, qui non reddit; ingratissimus omnium, qui oblitus est.....Lucius Annaeus Seneca

He denies me the basic courtesies.....out of sheer love.....it was to be expected he claims...I am a couple....

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Undoing My Anonymity

Poetic justice...You are tied to a pole....a man has your legs dangling over a little fire....and someone else is tickling your ears....the confusion makes your eyes sob and your mouth laugh....you are not you anymore...while the audience hoots, and throws a paper plane with BITCH screaming from it....another whispers, she deserves it....the witch...she made me chop off my fingers in disgust...i was but a budding writer....

Life's a fair game of troughs and hillocks...i learnt wave motion when my lanky professor danced across the classroom floor, enacting the up and down movement...and now i realise that the sea merely mirrors our existence...and the calm is just another prelude...while the pages are being filled up by that man up there, hidden between those bluish blobs....sniggering at the futility of all those rubies and diamonds that decorate those hapless human fingers...

what was going to hit me? would i become another gollum? live on for another 589 years...trying to capture the essence of my life? as i became even more wretched in my upper floor?

would i merely shrivel and die unloved, unknown rather despised and disgusting?

i fear anonymity........

I dont want to be just another woman....who is unconventional, complete, anonymous.....



Wednesday, March 08, 2006

THE UBSB!!!!

Behold....there she comes...she is UBSB or the Universal Byte Supplying Bitch....

for a lay man that simply means that SHE likes to help any one from the MALE SPECIES...minus a genuine cause or request....and offers to accumulate bytes from all and sundry so that in future if he is in need of them, he will not have to roam about in the sun....

an absolutely pontific thing to do....

and the repayment mode smacks of sheer lust....

ah the travails of someone who is trying desperately to ensure that there is something hard between their legs and it stays there week long too.....

tch tch.....

but surprise surprise....she is not just about bytes....

she exhibits traits that need to be chronicled for future reference by behaviour analysts and their kinds....

her very curious aberrations manifest themselves only when the opposite sex steers anywhere close to her...or is ready to catch on to her perky comments or her hormone induced stench/mating scent....

curiosity killed the crow...

but here I am wondering what it is that goes on in that brain...a vacuum filled zone....

and those scary wrinkles and silly grin and badly wicked hair and horrendous dress sense...God save those mortals who cross her path and look even remotely helpless...

hmmm do you need a byte my man????

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Resounding Silences

Its deafening...and I wonder if its just me.....he sits there perfectly at ease watching things happen and pass us by without blinking and I wonder if his heart is emitting those little rhythmic beats....


I am on the balcony, watching the multitudes in different shapes with wheels passing me by in a heady rush....to get somewhere, to be with someone, to prove a point, to make a presentation, to buy something, to catch a train/flight.....everyone has a definitive purpose...one that defines their existence, makes them what they are.....knowingly or unknowingly we are all slaves to this "purpose" probably forced down our throats...in most cases by family, fortune or society....very few happen to flap their wings and see the world the way they want it...

No, I am not one of them....here I am trying hard to come to terms with a career that is strangling...where I see nothing but darkness at the end of the tunnel...where I have hopped around like a kangaroo nursing the hope that the further I went I was getting closer to success and fame....yet I am so many floors farther from anything that even resembles my choice of life or career or success....I am on the verge of denying my entire existence in this planet....


it is suffocating....to be in a position where some envy you, some look up to you, some want to be you, some don't understand you, some think you are doing wonderfully well, some others cant understand what it the problem in the first place....but all you want to do is show all of them your finger, scream till your lungs feel alive and then run....to reclaim sanity, freedom, creativity and yourself before you fade into a delusion that was not created by you in the very first place.....


am I a failure? it keeps occurring to me over and over again in the dark nights, when I sweat despite the cold and tell myself that with each passing day my alien attributes seem to creep out making me scaringly inhuman....is it just me? I do keep hearing these stories of how everyone gets into a rut the minute they have been in the same job for too long...but I am hardly 27, have been in more than 5 jobs and pretty much hate all of them with equanimity....am I crazy? will I never be satisfied? Christ the neverending questions make me swoon...and yet I like to go back to them and keep pondering, it makes me kill time....makes me look at life with a difference, like an intellectual would and then you can sermonize as to how you realise the inadequacies of the world surrounding you and yet you have succeeded in remaining not only sane but even maintaining your environment the way you want it....


ah here I am going over this rigmarole all over again and wondering if it is just me....one who has so many unanswered questions...with so many glaring blanks, blips and dots in her life.....


I wish that silence would answer me but once.....

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

The Collector of Hearts

In a long-ago time when I didn't know Yes I was happy, I was myself and I was happy. In a long-ago time when I wasn't a child any longer yet wasn't entirely not-a-child. In a long-ago time when I seemed often to be alone, and imagined myself lonely. Yet this is your truest self: alone, lonely......

So wrote Joyce Carol Oates in the Sky Blue Ball part of a compilation called Collector of Hearts, New Tales of the Grotesque....

In reality, I was collectorofhearts@hotmail.com. And my new boss was shocked, intrigued and scandalised imagining the possibility of having to pass on this address of one of his team members to the Big Boss....
"Why on earth do you have such a ridiculous id?" she squealed at the lunch table...The woman who kept all my boss's secrets and had vowed to go to the grave with them in return for occasional other worldly pleasures that he offered her/himself...Well debatable in itself but lets move on to the actual story...."Because I am one." Full stop no more questions, answers, smirks, sighs, sneers and whatever else they could come up with to counter my little world....life, name...
Ah those years when I reveled in seriously collecting hearts....me the object of absolute devotion, someone they couldn't miss, but someone who would make them feel like a piece of dirty slimy algae you want to sweep off your the corner with the dirtiest muckiest broom for fear it might spoil the one you clean your indoors with.....Someone they could talk to and listen to in the silence of the night or even compare to the dashing waves that were going back with a little piece of the land each time they touched the shore....destructive in every measure one could think of yet so appealing one could do nothing to shy away from that vast expanse of charm, calling out to you in some unknown tongue, making you want to give up everything you hold dear, just to be a part of that mystical and magical experience....
I was not good for some of them...they still hate me with all the ferociousness they can muster when they stand face to face...some want me dead for having trampled all over them and then walked off humming their favourite tune...some want to possess me for the sheer magnitude of my existence which they understand they will never fathom even in the next nine lives given to them, some want small parts to be happy and boast about it over a nice drink in some shady pub while they watch other women cling on to partners and rolling their tongues on the dance floor...
But I am unattainable unless I let myself be taken...and taken I was one time...badly too....for once the collector got collected and I pondered over adding eggonface.com to it...but then the glorious queen had more than met her match and I merely ended up hiding blue-black bruises with long sleeves and cried into the night over a nice smoke...the only thing I believe will never let me down in the face of adversity...but that was an aside...
back to the story....and now I pray that he rots in hell and cries out in agony each time he shuts his eyes when those images flash by him and make him want to cry and repent but even the gods don't want anything to do with him...and his family that egged him on and ate out of my dad's savings with absolutely no shame and till date merely revel in bad mouthing the only piece of luck that went their way, I hope they rot in penury even as they search for the source that will give them their next meal and a roof to hide their shameful faces in their tattered clothes.....
I hold absolute wrath in my heart as I sob at times in the middle of the night imagining him sitting by my bedside, with my hands tied behind my back, beating me with a stick and ensuring that the marks were made where the public couldn't see and thereby managing to look good in the sun....and each time I gritted my teeth and watched in absolute fear mixed with resolve..not to give in, not to be the one who lets out a sob, wanting to hit him back and hoping someone would walk in and then hold him back while I lashed him with that stick...zoopppp...........and he threw me against the cot, my neck got hurt...am glad I am alive...writing this, thinking about what all could have happened....
And I want revenge at some point in my life...I would not want to turn in grave imagining the many ways I could have inflicted harm on him while I was still walking the earth....
But then I am not competing with Joyce Carol Oates ...she writes grotesque tales....so I shall remain mute for now...but what goes around does come around they say.....so I shall for now bide my time before nature's fury turns on him and his family..


Tuesday, January 31, 2006

All His Whores...

Gabriel Garcia Marquez termed his muses, his whores...and aptly so. Unfortunately the ones I am breaking bread with are no longer that useful....Mere corks that are obstructing the movement of life breath...and of sensitivities towards the beloved....

But one needs to ponder about the existence of such whores....do creative juices flow courtesy their appearance or disappearance....do they make sense of the hazy words forming the unending puzzle that finally peters down into letters that grace the page? do they stylize the lingua franca that one prides over even in the mildest forms of sleep...or do they merely make for candy that pre-empts the taste buds and makes glucose levels soar, thereby creating the perfect illusion to necessitate higher brain activity that thereby culminates in some sort of art.....and then also manage to walk off with all the applause?

Food for thought if I may so say....

Mine unfortunately served the purpose until they ratified my theorems of the existence of a lesser planet within the primary one inhabited by all the scum of the earth that could give a duffer a run for his money...and then while they stared and guffawed at their self found superiority, one could simply erase them from immediate and long-term memory...and move on in peace....

But here's the obstruction...sense and rationality eludes a choicest few...and then they become the phlegm that you try desperately to throw out, but sitting on a bus there is the threat of it hitting you back on your face given the air speed....then you can but sit and wait....what if patience eludes you too and the phlegm is growing in size and you simply need an alternative solution to spit it out...Bingo...that plastic bag hidden in the recesses of your little carry bag...oops it has a slash down its face....

so now either the driver pays attention to my gyrations and halts the bus or he lends me that little white scarf he has around his face to let me use at will...I prefer the latter...so well I need to smile...and tuck in my blouse tight and make my tits slightly visible...

EUREKA...now let me implement it in real life....

what will his life look devoid of these whores????

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

All About Smiles

Its not too late...if I were to take an example from Runaway Bride, but the whole idea of being at my best and sweetest and smiliest (if there is such a term) behaviour is sure giving me cold feet...

Imagine for the whole two or three weeks all I will do is be polite, politically correct (meaning never say FUCK, BULLSHIT and MA'FUCKER etc etc) and smile no matter how obnoxious and irritating the suggestion might be....SO then do I want to run for my life while I still can?

Dunno....the wheels are in motion and while I ponder, it suddenly struck me that maybe I should think ALOUD yet again..

Frankly why do I write these things down for public perusal? Am I satisfying my ego, am I trying to prove to the world that I possess absolutely enviable linguistic skills , am I looking for some more adulation and ego boosters from strangers so then I do not have to be polite to them for the rest of my life merely for paying me a compliment, am I looking for unknown critics so that I needn't hate them for being so unkind while they tear my text apart, am I merely venting my need to write, am I looking for some sort of reiteration that I am good with this form and so I can still reinvent myself and become a hell of a success story, am I looking to satiate some other unknown need that surfaces only in my subconscious, or whatever else.....

Holy God what and why am I writing this?

It would be but great to know.....

And somehow it makes me feel immensely good to have done this...maybe it feels better to have something written and tucked away in some space where I cannot tamper and do away with the evidence and something that I can hit a mere button and relive for however long I choose to...and better still i do not have to hold on to all those little pieces of parchment that have faded from the foul sweat that my hands spew forth...(not exactly foul but kind of fitted in and sounded nicer and more dramatic to be precise!)

whatever the cause and effect be I think I have now successfully proven that it aint that hard to write a piece without actually having an actual reason or need to write...

ah ciao....

Monday, January 02, 2006

Hurrah!!!

After long months of anticipation and frustration, finally the Channel's test signal is there for all to see...and for us to watch and convince ourselves that after all its not some sort nightmare....

Anyways moving away from that momentary high which was shared by more than hundreds across a few states lets get down to business...

Another year passed us by and we are all smarter and wiser for the experience gained and we move on to greener or maybe graying pastures with the hope that all things shall turn out for the better....

I ushered the New Year in sitting in a chai place...listening to absolute knuckleheads singing alongside a karaoke machine...while some others cheered them on.....for the sheer bravado with which people exhibit their failings, made me sit back and smile in wonder as my fiance looked out at the crowds that thronged the place ready to jump up and punch the sky the moment it struck midnight....

We had just finished watching King Kong...an absolute waste of money and imagination...and were killing time, not wanting to spend the moment in an auto stuck in a jam while the moment passed us by....for one it was far above the wasteful experience we had the last year...when we remained rooted to the same spot on the road for more than 2 hours waiting for the car in front to make one slight movement....

The hullabaloo around New Year's eve has not ceased to amaze me...Is it the happiness at having locked away certain bad moments in some recess of your memory and the excitement at what is in store in the days ahead that has us partying away wildly into the night, or some other absolute feeling at having existed and successfully too on this planet for one more year given us the reason and the energy to party madly and energetically....of course one can always concoct up some sort of answer...but then the truth is somewhere out there...only no one has bothered to look at it the way it should be....

I have moved onto another year and now looking back there are lot of things I sure am going to bury in the darkest recess of my brain..but the point being there were some turnaround moments when I wanted to scream at the highest my lungs would allow and celebrate those inane oddities that have made my 26th year of existence even minimally memorable....