The Miscellany Manifesto

Random Musings of a Transient Soul

coming up for air

25.9.08

I've always believed in signs, read into the little and big patterns in the threadwork of everyday life like they were metaphors to help me decipher the larger meaning of things. I used to do it constantly; play it like it were a game.

-x-

A few months ago, it felt like everything around me, in me, came unraveled. What happened was large in my scheme of things, and I felt winded, like the spaces in my chest had just become hollow. That's what it felt like. Perhaps it sounds melodramatic, that's ok too. It wouldn't have been a big blow for other people, but ever since I'd left home, I'd anchored my life onto the people around me who showed me care and affection. Without even realizing it, I'd tried to build something of a family beyond the one back home, create a safety net. I suppose we all do it. I'd woven relationships with my friends into this fabric with more care and love than I have ever acknowledged or given myself credit for. I guess I've just never pictured myself that way. Sometimes, strangely, it's hard to see the best in oneself. But then, a few months ago, this little safety net unraveled and I felt suspended.

While the why and how of it were all important until a few weeks ago because the blame and wound were both fresh, it hardly matters now. I went from feeling like the luckiest girl in the world, to feeling absolutely lost and wretched. I was lost about myself, my life, the course it was suddenly taking. I haven't been that low in a long while and it bought back some horrible ghosts from the past. I realized what someone had told me once was so true, I felt my joys and sorrows, my peaks and troughs fully. When I was happy, I was truly happy and when I was sad, well, God help me.

This time around, when things went pear shaped, I couldn't even hold myself from tripping over. I just plain fell flat. I cannot, do not, want to put into words the strange thoughts that traipsed through my mind the last few months, because that would just be too ugly. One thing after another kept pulling me down, lower lower lower. I really haven't been myself these last few months. Haven't felt one bit like me. Infact, I realized at some point when I was thinking half-sanely, without heaping blame, anger, dirt on myself, that I'd forgotten what made me me. This realization only pulled me deeper down. I can't believe the things I was thinking, all the complaining I did, all the shoulders I sought. I couldn't even console myself. At one point, I wasn't able to recognize who I was anymore. I just couldn't figure out why it hurt so badly, what were these aches about, why did this stuff matter so much? Couldn't I just dust myself off and walk along once again, the way I knew I had done so many times before?

I tried things to make me feel better, but this load, it was just too heavy. I felt despicable because I could feel the people around me sour on my bitterness, tell me, "Pull yourself together woman, there's more to life than this." I just kept drowning in it all though. To each his own. Well, almost.

But it's true. There is a time for everything. And now, as the seasons slowly turn in the air and in the earth, I'm coming around. Finally. Nothing "happened". Time is just taking its course and bringing me to a point where I can safely look behind me and say, "Well, that's that." I'm not quite there yet, but I'm out of the dark. I'm not drowning anymore. It's been overwhelming me for so long now, this terribly ugly feeling I've had sitting like a rock inside of me, and now, it isn't there any more. To me, the feeling inside me today, it feels a little like magic, wisdom and simplicity braided together.

I know what I need now. And I know I'll find it, I know I'm on my way already. Just to realize that for all this time I've sought my worth in my relationships with people and not inside myself, that I've been looking to the people I love to make sense of my troubles and confusions for me, to support me in my small and large crises because I didn't trust myself to do it alone, that I built that safety net so carefully from the relationships I built with people, but I paid no attention to first building a relationship with me- do you know how sweet these understandings are?

I am figuring things out. Piecing things together, my own knowledge of me.

I can't tell you how good it feels suddenly to have that rock of feeling lift away, to not feel like I'm drowning any more and waiting, in need of rescue. Because rescue and consolation came, and it came from just the right place- from me.

I re-started this blog in an attempt to make myself do one of the things I like doing best, that keep me centred, writing. And I just haven't been able to put my thoughts out of myself, mould them into words and sentences. They've sputtered and coughed and made little half sentences on the screen. It felt like there was a plug jammed somewhere that wouldn't let the words out of me. But I knew the moment I felt myself again, the words would flow.

I'm writing this on the blog tonight and the words are swimming out of me. Smooth and unhindered like before. I don't care if this makes no sense to people, I don't care if it sounds like melodrama, I don't care because it was all real to me and I felt every inch of it. And now I'm done feeling that darkly, feeling like I were drowning under the weight of my own murky thoughts and unsaid words because it finally, thankfully, amazingly, feels like I'm coming up for air.

...and just like that, its all good!

8.9.08

(Thankyou Mr. Storyteller!)

Labels: storyteller

warm fizz

Confetti coloured homes whiz by the windows on the east and a sun warmed breeze blows in from the west. Cruising on a zipper thin road cleaving the everyday careworn civilian lives from the frolicking, vacationing gentry on the endless sand, the little bus beetles down towards the golden south, where living is forever good. Atleast in my head. The hair on brown sugar arms turning golden under a beating sun, salt water sizzling off a bare back, toes catching a fleeting grip on watery sand, torsos bobbing with the waves, and everything blending together as if there were never any seams between skin, surf and sand.

I shuffle off the bus and then straight onto the sand. Four o'clock remains my favourite time of day. Grains of sand spraying on the backs of my legs, salt on my tongue. The sun is still high. I tease my backpack off, and stare at ocean. Here, finally. Then one warm palm closes around my waist, the other pushes itself just right into my own hand, I lean my back on a warm chest. This is a homecoming. And all of a sudden, there is nothing between me and a long bout of contentment but city life melting like fizz and one long sigh.

Labels: goa

Rip. Tide.

31.8.08

Just like that, the hand of something large, something momentous and unfathomable, not seen but merely felt, like time or fate, comes over and picks you up from wherever you might be to deposit you to where it deems it is suddenly, unfairly, fair for you to be next. Like the needle abruptly shifting from one record to another, or a drop of ink sucked up and dropped into a clear bowl of water, the newness is sudden and whole. Everything just changes without the need for explanations, dues and pretenses of fair and unfair.

The poetry of past patterns jerked into new designs, cars swerving into each other's lanes, trains jumping tracks. Before you've blinked and your senses have come to their senses, the warp and weft of the net that holds you everyday has ripped and you've fallen through. The edges of everything blur, so new, unrecognizable. And before you know it, the edges of You blur too and you can recognize neither yourself nor where it was you fell from.

Labels: hangover blogging

Bored Chocolate-y and Waxy

22.8.08

So grand plans for Kasauli fell through the roof before you could say weekend. And now the next two days are yawning before me with the prospect of too much free time and little activity. Still, it's ironic that it should be worrying me considering how the weekdays pretty much yawn at me in the same fashion. Anyway, there now exists a plan B, which I'm a wee bit alarmed by, but the depths of boredom and self-loathing have been plumbed to such an extent now that I'm honestly willing to do anything just to do something. So a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

And apparently this girl's gotta do a facial. And then some.

About a month ago when I was quite literally sky-high on my first salary (which has now gone "poof") I decided I'd buy myself anything and everything I wanted just to know what it felt like. Gone are the days of saying "It can wait another day", I thought to myself and commenced on what can only be described as the grandmother of all sprees which eventually led to that hollow, painful "poof" in the bank account. But not before much, much retail therapy was had. Frankly, I have no regrets about that part. But an embarrassingly large portion of that therapy included beauty products and treatments and other beauty what-nots, most of which are lying shamefully unused in my little wardrobe in the PG. (Yes, I've actually thought about returning them. No, Body Shop is only sympathetic towards exploited farmers in poor nations, not greedy, hasty yuppy women with a debit card that has come to life.) Also note, you are not allowed to say mean things about how none of this expensive shit has helped, in case you have seen me lately. (Yes, SM that's meant for you.) God only knows why I waste money on make-up and related crap because that goo rarely touches my face! That might have something to do with aspiration, self-esteem and childhood issues, but it probably has more to do with the fact that it always looks so pretty...

Anyway, so one part of that beauty related retail therapy was a small bomb that I spent at a place alluringly called 'The Beauty Workshop' close to my PG. I don't know what that woman at this salon had put in my 'Welcome Drink' because it sure as hell was responsible for me signing myself up and PAYING IN ADVANCE for some sort of Beauty Bonanza that included things like a Chocolate Facial and a Pedicure with some scary hot wax. No really, I don't know what I was thinking! Considering the fact that my last and only facial bequeathed me a pimple the size of a small country and that I sweat profusely (like, ugly profusely) during pedicures from concentrating REALLY hard on not giggling when women are kneading the soles of my very ticklish feet, it is inexplicable that I would choose to put myself through this- especially when the words chocolate and hot wax are also associated! I insist, it was the welcome drink that made me do it.

Anyway, the deed is done. I've quite literally been avoiding the very thought of these looming 'procedures' for the last month. But I can't avoid it any longer- tomorrow is the day. Nothing special, apparently 'Beauty Bonanza Treatments Must Be Availed Within 45 Days of Payment Being Made'. Who knew these things have expiry dates! So I must now choose between the risk of losing a large chunk of my money or the risk of having another small country bequeathed to me, plus having my feet cook slowly in hot wax. Hmm...

Chasing Creases over Edges

[You know when the bedsheet has a hundred creases running criss-cross over its skin, and you sit down and smooth a hand over them, chase them over the edges with your palm and the surface is placid once again? Well that is what this is about.]

I have an urge to begin with, "I havn't been writing lately..." But I won't even bother. As it is, those words have made an appearance on this blog one too many distressing times. If you could see me now, you'd see shrugged shoulders and both arms raised, hooking the air like question marks, because it just defies me! Like physics or people letting numerology decapitate their names, why I let writing slip is beyond me, especially when I love it so much. It's beyond me. Be-yond.

All those little epiphanies it bought everyday, the bit-by-bit catharsis, that magic feeling of words coming together in my head at the merest hint of something to share on the blog. That feeling one gets when a complete stranger writes in to say a post made their day, or simply "Bless your heart". Or how the awkward patterns of everyday fit together to make a more beautiful picture. Just the simple joy that creating something everyday gave....I don't get why I stopped. So, like I said, beyond me. Which is a far far away place.

So I'm starting again. Because I need to. Like, really.

---

I was contemplating "junking" (bad karma, bad karma) this blog altogether and beginning another. Total abandonment. But then some more thought about that and I realized that it wouldn't be any good at all. I'd just be running away from my poor neglected blog, unsung stories and a heap of heaving guilt. (Yes, I know, I have a complex relationship with The Miscellany Manifesto. Told you, really not funny how long I've been meaning to begin being the regular, average blogger again.)

I began writing for me. But soon enough, there were enough eyeballs on this blog to really encourage me to keep going. Now, greedy me, I want that again. Which is what that e-mail/ping was about. It was also about me needing a sharp elbow nudge between my ribs if I fall off the wagon again and stop writing. So help me out, ok? Also, comments solicited on new outrageous template. (Green much?)

adrift

25.7.08

Sleep floats towards me on a little barge of words. I read them as I watch it drift closer. Soon I shall put away these pages and embark upon my barge, waiting. Travel to a dreamland upon the riverways of my mind-

sometimes a broad gush with land on neither side
sometimes
a
mere
trickle
tickling
the
pebbles
beneath

But always, always traveling steadily into the depths of my mind. Sometimes,

I emerge through the nets of light to bank onto a lush meadow;
sometimes caught by those very nets, hauled
into the recesses of some cavern.

But always, always steadily towards the depths of my mind, upon my barge of words.

Ignite?

28.6.08

Sitting in my old bedroom in the 'ancestral' home; windows thrown wide open, a fine drizzle outside and a wet breeze carrying upon it the beautiful smell of wet earth and warm, freshly baked biscuits. Feeling the gentle satisfaction of having finished a well-written, if somewhat long book- 'Any Human Heart' by William Boyd. But given my shameless infidelity to so much reading material in the recent past, I think I've done well enough. I feel like I've skated across the surface of Logan Gonzago Mountstuart's life...

As always, my lament, I've been meaning to write. Clogged with words, but somehow, still unwilling. Amongst other things, the book definitely has motioned me forward towards my untended Miscellany Manifesto. Perhaps, I need this self-indulgence once more. Is it time to jot down the random musings of this transient soul once again?

Manana

7.8.07

Another year of longing begins. A new year and new faces abound. The sky is still the same brilliant blue, the canal steps just as eager to receive our musings, the pathways as keen to nurture new love, the little hushed spaces between the talk as quiet with new secrets as with the old. They discover our private corners- bustle in wanting to make them their own. They discover the familiar joys of grass between the toes, a cold bench at 3am and the warmth of a good conversation that can linger for a good few days.
For us, old pleasures are rediscovered. We savour things with added keenness as the piquancy of loss becomes sharper on our tongues. We will abandon this home soon, and this home will abandon us quite readily. Our memories will fade as newer faces rise and set. Soon, we will leave. After all, eight months are nothing at all.
Still. There is much to be done. This is our little harbour for the coming months and we anchor ourselves here for now. The wide open sea and the big beyond of all the tomorrows, the manana, awaits us. But for now, our anchors have fallen deep and steady.

Swing- for Us.

18.5.07

[Look mommy, two posts in one day!]

We began walking the day we met each other. People who know us would think this is a lie, a blatant lie. I know they'd accuse us of being indoor-sy people, but only we know. We began walking the day we began with each other. The words flowed back and forth between us, like a pendulum. A stroke for every moment. We talked and walked, walked and talked. We lost track of where we were headed before we began walking together. Old tracks were long lost.

And it was on one of these walks that we encountered an empty swing. Children that we really are, we couldn't help but sit ourselves down on the plank. We reached down with our feet and pushed, off the swing lifted. We flew through the air, back and forth, like a pendulum. A stroke for every moment. It gathered momentum, we were scared. Suddenly all we wanted to do was stop. It was a bit much for both of us. And just like that in that cold month of November the swing stopped swinging altogether.

Suddenly, the rhythm was lost. There was neither the motion of the swing, nor the bridge of the talk. We tried to stop walking together, but our paths had already grown a little too intertwined for us to really walk apart. Soon enough, the words too began to sputter between us. Not the casual swing of sentences they used to be, but mere shoots of things we wanted we could say.

For two months we tried to walk apart. We almost succeeded, but never quite. And then before we knew, the paths twined together and led us back to our swing. And can children ever resist a good swing? We clambered on, and gingerly, swung ourselves off the ground. Before we knew it, we were swinging back and forth as before, a pendulum.

Winter turned to spring and spring to summer and we swung high in the air. And though we may stall now and then, sometimes like the hour hand of a watch, like a pendulum or a swing going back and forth, you can't help but end up where you began.

City Life

Waiting in the big city for some love and salvation. Everything tastes of the bittersweetness of the blues and struggle. We ride towards the horizon of beautiful people smiling down at us beatifically from their giant hoardings. The night sky has no stars, no hope of the cosmos and none of the sweet romance of counting bright things in the sky. We only lie beneath the upturned bowl of ink watching the pigment slowly flow away towards the edges as morning approaches. The night colour passes and slowly the glare of day fills the glass of the bowl. We bake quietly beneath, all the while scenting our lives with our hopes for love and salvation and staining it with the blues and the struggle.

All Fool's Day

8.4.07

I've always bemoaned my painfully slow realization of the events of my own life. Their size and capacity to twist the contours of my life into new shapes never ceases to amaze me, but I do wish I were a little quicker at understanding the magnitude of the change when it comes upon me. Size up its capacity for havoc in advance, so to speak. It's not for nothing that I'm called The Tubelight. Bright, but a little slow with the light. However, I am happy to report that there seems to be some real development in my general incapacity in this area. Some shedding of light, if one may call it that.

About a week or so ago, the first year at MICA truly came to an end. It had ended in several ways before that day- in terms of classes, hard work, exams and other similar trivialities. But on the 1st of April, All Fool's Day, it truly came to a close. I worked my room, my beloved Kachnaar 21 into boxes capable of holding material belongings, but pathetically incapable of enclosing any of the memories that wonderful home has brought me. For a whole year it has held me and my moods, kept safe my belongings as well as my unbelongings, harboured my joys and sorrows, welcomed new friendships and most of all, moored love between all its four walls and kept it always, despite everything, in place. With it's little space, it was generous not only for and to me, but also for and to my A. It wasn't just mine, a new possessive pronoun needed to be used- it was ours.

As I watched my home dissolve and disappear into those boxes something began welling up inside me. By the time I was done, it was like a massive knot within, somewhere between heart and gut. I realized I wanted to cry, but no tears came- Tubelight as always, I thought. Finally, after hours of labour our home was empty of everything but me. Kachnaar itself was deserted and I know that on any other day, it would have unsettled me deeply enough to make me run for company. But I stayed, I didn't run; I suppose I am thankful for those final quiet moments in that beautiful hostel with its lonesome courtyard. All around me rooms gaped with their doors wide open, ravaged of familiar faces and familiar voices. If ever I've seen something hollowed out, it was that day.

I prepared for the departure- shower, some last minute packing- and then the last of us gathered on the steps outside. It was almost as if we were drawn there. Not quite inside the hostel and not quite out. It was almost time to leave but we still wished we could stay back. Inevitably, memories were recounted- some were laughed at, some made us silent. It was an odd time. Finally, the time for departure arrived and I went up to our room one last time. I sat on our bed, looked at the view beyond our window, our door which barred so much and allowed so much more, and the knot finally dissolved. It really was time to go. But thank God, there was some joy in this goodbye too- the tubelight had finally switched on at the right time. On time to realize just how large this change would be, just how it would change the contours of my life. Ironically, just then, there was light. [and thank God for friends, if not for them, I doubt I'd have dragged my luggage to the parking lot in time at all.]

I touched everything one last time, kissed our door goodbye and AJ turned the lights out as we walked away. I cried all the way to the parking lot, then some more as I hugged our Seniors goodbye. But I cried the hardest when PS halted us all on the path out of Palaash-Kachnaar and said, "One last look." I kid you not, never had our hostels looked so achingly beautiful. The sky was a dark ink blue, the first stars were out and a near full moon shone right upon our patch of sky, right behind the hostels. I think we all cried a little.

All Fool's Day, so far, had been the day when we made a fool of someone else. Where we played the prank. This time around, we played the fools. Us Juniors left our beloved twin hostels, and the Seniors MICA itself. And somehow, although the joke is lost upon me, I feel sure that we are the fools.

Still, we have another year to go, new rooms to grow into, bigger shoes to fill. I look back upon the past year and if I could wish for something this coming year, it would be to be a little more aware of the hours as they pass us by. The days of the last year seem so tightly woven together that I fail to truly find a significant beginning and end to each of them. It's like a singular beginning and end separated only by the commas of significant events in our collective and our personal lives. Next year, I hope, shall bring days and nights that are separated each from the other; if nothing else, it might just slow the year down and give us a little more to savour. God knows this year has given me enough memories to treasure, it's only made this fool hungrier for more in the next.

Arriving- Work in Progress...

5.4.07

The conductor delivered the luggage on the street with a sudden menace that seemed entirely out of place in the soft lilac mellow of early dawn. Everything was subdued: the colours, the sounds of the street, the birds, even the raggedy paraiah dogs observed the goings on impassively, acknowledging the sudden screech of the bus and appearance of strangers with no more than the twitch of an ear. It was as if the peace of the fields the bus had passed on its way had extended its green tendril fingertip over the lips of the little town and hushed all of its sounds in that early morning. Not a sound, even the bus engine was quiet. The conductor clambered off the roof and joined the driver, they spoke a while and walked away. Suddenly Moshumi was alone, without even the disquieting presence of those foul mouthed men to keep her company in that dawn peace.

This silence was idyll for some, especially those who sought the tranquil lull of rural India as some sort of salve for their urban sores. They were the ones who'd had enough of the cities, who'd given up on the rush of every small battle fought in the city landscapes. Moshumi hadn't had enough. Infact, she had just about begun and had much to win. The steel hard taste of city success was still sharp and recent on her tongue and it had made her eager for more. This strange quiet was eerie to Moshumi's ears. She did not seek it. It signified retirement and pensions, inactivity and boredom. Strange. Until three years ago this place had been her home. Now, the absence of din immediately made her weary of Koshy.

Moshumi dragged the load of their luggage from its resting spot on the street onto the pavement and waited for her mother to return with transport. Her family lived on the other edge of town and since her father wasn't aware of Moshumi and her mother's arrival- it was meant to be a surprise- he hadn't come to pick them up. With no autos or mother in sight Moshumi began to get a little edgy. She knew the street well, she knew where her mother had gone scouting autos and still, the quiet set her nerves on end. It was the practiced yet sudden nervousness of a city dweller transposed onto the limited boundaries of a town. There was no sprawl, no activity, no desperate change for distraction, for cover. Here in Koshy Moshumi knew well how apparent things were, how earnest and truthful the people were. It wasn't as if Koshy didn't harbour its secrets or hide behind crafted pretences, it is the nature of people to do so. But the scale, the purpose, the noise and crowd of the city compared to this small town made its simplicity shine almost demurely in contrast. She knew it well and yet now, she didn't.

A silhouette appeared a couple of hundred paces away, someone walking towards her rapidly. In the city she would have been defensive being a lone woman on a quiet road with a stranger pounding the street towards her. And though she was unnerved by the Koshy quiet, there was no menace there. She wasn't defensive; keen on avoiding an early morning, pre-coffee and brush meeting with an old neighbour-yes, but not defensive. The silence was pervasive but never dangerous. The silhouette soon turned into a discernible shape, a face, arms swinging energetically, canvas shoes and cream coloured hair- Paiappa.

Moshumi watched as he walked vigorously; he hadn't noticed her presence. Seconds later when he did, his creased face unfurled in warm greeting, "Moshi! Ammu, when did you arrive?" His gruff voice had that tobacco softened edge, that strangely pleasant wheeze which old smokers often have. Paiappa owned the jewellery businesses of Koshy- a grand total of two shops- and considering the impotrance gold held in deciding the weight of one's carriage on Koshy's social ladder, Paiappa also held a position of high esteem in the town's scheme of things. He carried himself with a certain jauntiness despite his 70-odd years, derived perhaps from the casual and easy friendships he had forged with the women of Koshy on account of the gold business, or perhaps from the good fortune which his widowhood accorded him to make those very friendships. Because one could rest assured that if Paiamma had still been around, Paiappa would be as henpecked as they came.

"I just arrived Appa. How are you? How are the knees?" Moshumi asked. "Ha! They're alright Ammu. Past their expiry date but they're still holding me up!" Standing next to her on the pavement, Paiappa peered at the mass of Moshumi's luggage and asked, "Don't tell me you've come back for good! All these bags! Has your mother finally convinced you to come back to Koshy for good?" There was genuine alarm in Paiappa's voice. Although there were many, her mother included, who had reservations about Moshumi moving to the city for her post graduate education and then work, there were many more who were as thrilled as she was. Paiappa was one of them. "No, no. No such plans yet Appa, though Aai would much rather I quit and come back here. How is everything?" Moshumi asked, peering at Paiappa's face. He seemed older somehow.

Defining The Elbowroom

18.2.07

I spent most of the day wondering what I could blog about. Still surprising how this seems to have become harder work than it used to be.

Surely, there's as much to share now as there was earlier, if not more. The dimensions of my life in Bangalore bordered on claustrophobic, but there were still moments of modest consequence that quickly and surprisingly turned into posts on the Manifesto. Why is it harder coming by words now?

My scene has changed now. The scope of my everyday interactions has broadened to include people of alarming variety and temprament, situations that never quite manage to attain a balance between placid and violently hurried and far too many powerpoint presentations. Ofcourse, I am more involved here than I was in Bangalore- so my view too has changed. I don't feel like the cynical outsider looking in any more. Infact, I don't much feel cynical anymore.

In a way, although my view has broadened, the dimensions are more compact than they were. The campus is a welcome home. I've grown surprisingly attached to it over the past eight months. And it is a generous environment, responsive almost. I've seen it offer in abundance to whoever seeks it: refuge, company, enclosure, exposure, friendship, courtship, laboratory, family. It is what one will make of it. I'm still figuring out what it is that I seek from it.

But though the campus is generous in offering what we demand of it, it can be equally and very frustratingly enclosed at times. We're so far from everything, it wouldn't be much of an exaggeration to call us some sort of voluntary pariah camp. No TV, some news, little non-electronic contact with people from the city and back home, limited mobility beyond. Perhaps I make it sound pathetically secluded- it isn't. But when you go 'home' and feel odd when you pick up the remote, trust me, something has most definitely changed.

It's like everything is more intense, a little more dense than it was before. Like although my immediate world includes a veritable mob of people, the world itself seems to have condensed. Emotions and opinions are more intense, friendships more accelerated, conversations more random, frustrations more pronounced and addictions more vivid. We bounce and feed off each other, our little community. Come to think of it, my view hasn't really broadened all that much, has it?

Anyway, this is the new elbowroom; minimal in size, scanty with privacy, but generous in tolerance. I'm still struggling with exactly what emotions, frustrations, loves, addictions, conversations the Manifesto can provide a safe outlet to without violating the elbowroom of others. It will be seen. For now I suppose I have enough cause to be happy. It would seem that the words are making a comeback and the writing may begin.

Untended Garden of My Thoughts

17.2.07

Dear Manifesto,

Of all the relationships that have come, gone, stayed, grown or shrivelled and turned into prunes, my relationship with you remains the most conflicted. Your untended, comatose state has troubled me for long and despite filing a few apologies, the odd excuse and the random flash of verbosity herein, the guilt lingers. I remember how lovingly I began writing, the hours spent moulding your contours, drafting posts, finding photographs, the frequent visits to steal a greedy look at the visits meter, the curious friendships that you brought me...and then the sudden hush. It is like winter suddenly descended upon you.

It wasn't fair. It still isn't. The flow of words is still curiously hesitant, they won't come to me as readily as they used to. I can't weave those stories as easily as I used to. I miss the joy of spending a good hour turning sentences around in my mind to see if they fit the shape of the thought in my head. I miss the slow, lasting satisfaction of a well written post.

Its time for a change. I'd hate for you to go quiet, dim your lights and fall silent. I'd hate for the words to shrivel like prunes, pucker and rot. I need to write and I will- feed you with words once again, sow more seeds and tend to you, as lovingly as I used to. I promise I will.

It's time for winter to yield to spring. There are so many thoughts, so much to write about, share, so many curious new bypassers to talk with. What better season than now? What better time to share the first sprigs of the new spring?

Me.

Going home...

11.12.06

Its almost the end of term and it's two weeks until I leave the campus for a week's break in Mumbai. This has been a strange term- too full is some ways and simply empty in others. I wonder over and over what I'm taking back home with me this time around. And although it sounds a little like The Pessimistic Trip of The Disappointed Soul, I am taking home a heavy heart, weakened resolve, tired body and empty mind.
Yes, I know, quite the list.

Its also that strange and inconvenient time of year when it is tradition to regurgitate the past twelve months so that one can chew the happy times over like cud, spit out the disappointments and digest everything in between. I've always thought it a slightly unnecessary process, though I have to admit, almost inevitable as well. Its almost as if nostalgia and December end were intrinsically linked. Or maybe its just all the celebrations and alcohol.
I begin to think of the happenings from January upwards and stop almost as soon as I've begun. I realize that this entire recall process has certain prerequisites- a little bit of happy, good friends, the proper holiday mood (shorts and vacation reading included), a total break from the campus and fat textbooks looming on the desk (poor things, unwanted and unread), and finally, and most importantly, I need home.

Like I said, this term's been a little rough. The simple thought of venturing to an unknown place nearly scares me right now. All I want is comfort- the comforts of home, of familiar things, the little certainties of friends and loved ones. I guess I just want to go home. Strange, isn't it? I stepped out welcoming the chance of an independent life away from the very same certainties I yearn for today. Teaches me much- one just wants to be taken care of when tired and lost. I'll save the independence for another day.

Waiting Rooms

8.12.06

Now is the space between a little too late and a little too early. The silence of the red campus is punctuated by the occassional happy drunkard. I sit in my room, intimidated by the space between all that I want to say and the wordlessness of a blank screen. Still, some consolation now that slow words are single filing in, filling the space in.

The early morning headache plagues me, I still feel the alcohol from three nights ago lining the sides of my stomach. I recall that drunk night- blurred, sad/happy, the cold 5am chill on my bare arms, the escape and the chase, giving in. I remember sitting with my near empty glass on the balcony, feet swinging over the parapet. I remember peering at the final dregs in my glass- I could almost see the knots from the past month in my drink, polluting it.

They aren't just polluting my drink though; the knots are all around me now. The debris of a worn out love. The remnant questions that linger after an abrupt end. They are in my room, they are strewn across the campus, they hang on to the lyrics of our songs, they even pollute my dreams now. And that final breach, the final decaying crusts of old feelings littering my dreams, I will not stand.

My dreams are my own creations- incomprehensible and unbound. The bridges between the end of the day and the beginning of another, the consolations for the absence of colour and fantasy, the answers to the pointlessness of everyday reason and rule. And for such wasted feelings to invade that space, the insult of it is both sharp and unexpected. My dreams are my own creations- I apparently don't take to their being abused at the hands of junked emotions very well. And its a good feeling, this sharp insult, I was beginning to wonder if I'd stopped standing up for me.

My dreams are my waiting room before the next day: the same way that the campus is the waiting room before I am admitted to the real world. My dreams are the fancy, the flirting with reality before reality itself: just like this campus- a strange version of reality before reality. My dreams are like rejuvination, a clinical break from almost all things certain and plausible: this campus is similar- it too is almost antiseptic at times, free from all the hurt beyond.

And now both- dreams and campus- are littered with wasted emotions. It is a sharp and unexpected insult. My waiting rooms polluted by the debris of a worn out love.

But then again, they are waiting rooms. I need only wait. Wait before the debris are cleared, the junk removed, the crusts swept away. And of that I am more than certain- I need only wait a short while before all things return to their rightful nature. All things; me included.

Of Dams and Learning to Ride Again

5.9.06

What got in the way of words? Where was the dam that preserved them from the Manifesto? Was the dam so large that the words simply found no way to push through onto paper or screen, one alphabet at a time? It would seem so. For days now words in jagged ended sentences have welled up within me, pooled in ever growing puddles whose depth only increases and whose surface only grows more stagnant.

For days I anguished. What had halted the course of my words? Why had they pooled and why wouldn't they flow? I found no solace in answers, only excuses. There's no time, there's too much to do, there's nothing to write about, (and the lousiest of the lot) there's no time to think. There's been enough to write about, much to think about, time to write as well- though none of it has been written about, not much has been thought about and time has most definitely been wasted.

I must confess, there has been much to get used to over the last couple of months and I've taken my time with it. The Manifesto was pushed to the corners of my memory. And I feel like a bad mother for it...

I've been crazy restless for the last couple of days and I had no clue why. I took long walks, listened to music, worked hard at ungodly hours, spoke to old friends, wrote on my walls, discovered the terrace- all to calm the restlessness. Nothing worked. Tonight, all efforts having failed miserably, I paced the terrace looking for something, someone to blame. What was it? Why was I so restless? Was it stress? Was it a project? Was it a person? Was it homesickness?

Then finally singular words peeped through chinks in the dam. Soon, sentences. Nothing coherent still.

I feel like I'm wobbling on an the old worn seat of my rickety bicycle. I'll fall off a few times before I ride like I used to. It is comforting to give the restlessness a cause though. And to feel the words trickle again.

Tubelight-ing

14.7.06

Comprehension is a weird bugger. You think you could cope with the things going on around you on a daily basis, like every other normally functioning human; but sometimes so many things happen all at once, comprehension abandons ship. Precisely what has happened to me right now.

I should stop being so cryptic, comprehension is at such a premium right now. I still find pinching myself on a fairly regular basis a good way to realize that I'm actually at MICA now. Finally. I should ideally have been done with the pinching bit about two weeks ago, but then again, the Tubelight is the Tubelight because she takes her time. For example, after a late night session at the Library that lasted until 3 30am last night I walked out into the cold, quiet campus and thought- now this is it. After two plus weeks here, I finally get it.

Everything seems to have gone into super fast forward since I got here. Friendships, working relationships, intuitive gems and intuitive glitches seem to be coming at me at a never before speed. To say that the people here are nice would be the nice thing to say- except that most are nice and all that. However, intuition is currently doing overtime and I'm figuring things out far quicker than earlier. A refreshing change for the Tubelight. Should this be taken as a symptom of "The Growing Up"?

I finally have a place that is all mine now. Well, sort of. That, apart from the classes, is the best bit for me. I love the fact that it's all mine. It's home. And it's so good to come back to it at night. Just last night I walked in after a 4am snack to a warm room and my bed- and I was home. My happiest moment here.

Classes are amazing. I can quite honestly say that, so far, I've found each one interesting. I cannot begin expressing how thankful I am to be studying here. I hate feeling drowsy in class- there couldn't possibly be something more disrespectful in a classroom. I've been trying hard to avoid the sleeps in class- success for most part. But Accounts? Pass me the Stimulant.

I think about it and I realize I'm happy. This is where I wanted to be. I'm lucky. Because this is exactly where I am. And damn me if I don't make the most of it. The Tubelight switches on.

Gmale Comes To Town

16.6.06

Remember watching Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak? Remember the hero and heroine's friends, those disposable cupids who helped them elope and be naughty? Yeah, I almost turned into one this weekend and I didn't even know it. Here's the sordid tale of the Gmale, the to-be Gfemale and their untrustworthy sidekick.

Sparse readers, you might have encountered a certain creature called Aunty G in my previous posts. I shudder already. Yes, its the same Aunty G of the "Ladki balik hai, shaadi kab karegi" and "Upar bhoot hain? Accha? Main jaaon?" fame. G force is back with a bang; and if you look past her big bang you will notice her son, the Gmale, running behind her tied duly to her apron strings.

Gmale and I have had a lukewarm Hello-Kaise Ho-Goodbye friendship over the last 2 years. Mighty clever fellow and one of those Yes Mummy types. Not that it's a bad thing, but I feel like shaking his 6'4 frame silly, squeezing all the Navratna Tel out of his hair and telling him "Get a life boy, you're 23 for God's sake!" However, since we are only lukewarm with each other and he's almost always away at his hostel, I can't.

Gmale is doing some sort of engineering course on the other side of town and rather than commute for 4 hours everyday, he lives on campus. Now we all have Gmale figured as the posterboy of the SeedhaSadha variety. But ha! Things are never the way they seem, right? Right! Twist in the tale, sting in the tail- by Curious George, I love it!

See, Gmale went out and got himself a life- along with a girlfriend (Gfemale), a bike his parents don't know about and a warning for expulsion from his college. Oooh, sordid sordid. I only found out when he called me, of all people, and told me about it. Since he calls me didi (because he's 2 years older and calling me didi makes a lot of sense that way) I listened him out patiently and made all the appropriate um-hum, yes yes, ofcourse and no absolutely not sounds when required. All the while wondering alternately, are you serious? and, so why do I need to know this? Things became terribly clear very soon.

Gmale and the Gfemale want to get married. They're sure the parents won't have any of it, lingual barriers and all. I feel really bad for them, as bad as I could feel when I'm jumped with someone's dirty laundry and asked to become a last minute dhobi. You see, Gmale wants me to be a witness at the Registrar's.

Now this isn't me washing their dirty laundry at the wrong ghat, I shouldn't be talking about his personal stuff here, but what to do? This is as crazy as things have gotten in Bangalore over the last 2 years. Imagine, 2 years and no madness and now, 2 days before I go, huge dose of madness. Such is life. And I am clueless.

I'd love to say I consented to becoming their witness and I'd love to say that I approve and it's soooo cuuutteee or something equally airy. I refused. I couldn't do it. Chicken. Quite apart from the fact that Aunty G will hunt me down and strangle me with her loose apron strings, I cannot become a co-conspirator in this escapade. This sidekick abandonned the sidecar even before the motorbike kickstarted.

Gmale was audibly upset but gracious. Thank the Lord. I don't have a clue what they'll do next. Hope it's nothing as stupid as asking me to become their witness. I wish them all the best, whatever they do decide to do.