The one about the job.

I love this time of the year, when the air feels like silk over your skin at the start and end of every day. It makes me want to dance to no music. Life had turned brown for so long in between. But right now, every day is new.

So to celebrate, I'm going to eat cake and make a list. Cake makes everything nice. Yesterday, a colleague was leaving our company after 3.8 years. She seems fairly well-liked in the circles (I've only been here for 2 months). Everyone gathered, made speeches and stared at each other for a while, waiting for someone to fold. But nothing that enthralling happened, so I wanted cake.


The new job looks more promising than anything I've done so far, career-wise. My learning so far:

1. I really should be working right now. But the times when I shirk away from work in my first surprisingly pleasant corporate experience, seems to the best times to blog. Nothing seems more inspiring at this point.
2. I just read a mail at work, which referred to Nandini Layout as one of Bangalore's largest slums! I'm highly disturbed by this declaration, and am tempted to send the Corporate Communications department a hearty stinker, complete with disturbing emoticons.
3. Perfectly sensible, grown up people can have the strangest phobias.
4. I have the weirdest office etiquette problems. How do you say 'no' to someone that expects you to accompany them every time they have to pee?
5. I'm not irresponsible to an extent that it is unacceptable. I can really work hard, when I want to. And most of the time, I want to work hard.
6. I'm pretty lucky, sometimes.
7. I'm presently convinced that I'm not likely to die a poor, lonely, embittered old lady who lives with a parrot with a charming disposition.

Upbeat and active again. Ah, I could get used to this!

Restart

It's been a good year so far. A lot has happened personally and professionally, and I can only see things getting better. So I thought this would be a good time to restart the blog. See, I have a pattern. Every time I want to dust off and restart my blog, I get a bright screaming-in-your-face theme for it. Orange, good. Swirly? Good!
It's all-a happy!


I do have things to say again now, but this is a strange Monday morning. And I really don't want to write about death any more.

But then, there's Tom Waits.

What good is 'Typezriter'?

'Typewriter'.
It's apparently the longest word you can type on a single line of any keyboard. But not on my new phone with a keyboard-like keypad. Oh, no!

Next time you're buying a phone with a computer keyboard-like keypad, remember not to buy one from morons who don't get the awesomeness that is Qwerty keypads.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.

                        - From 'Desiderata by Max Ehrmann

Okay this one's the last, I promise

Misery and love. It all starts there. The two far-famed muse that turn boys and girls into writers, poets and dreamers. There will be a gaping hole in all our heads and hearts if neither did not exist. There is a lot of poetry I have stowed away, and I admit they stemmed for either one or both of the above. But must I subject my readers to such outcomes alone? I think not.

People not blogging regularly only bothers you when you start to blog way more than regularly. When I have nothing else to do, I do the only thing that I know how to. Keep writing. But could there be such a thing as too much blogging? It doesn't matter. Because once I find something to do that is a little more productive than playing with velcrow for two hours, I will disappear once again. I'll get lost in my world of new things, like a child returning from summer break. I'll have all my new stationary and people and responsibilities to play with.
*

I packed light, checked out of his life. No goodbye said. It's not an easy thing to say, when your heart is splashing about somewhere in your stomach. I walked away without a second look; turning back would be impossible.

I was six days and many imaginary miles away from him. A stir in the hard, closed fist behind my ribcage. It pounded like a voodoo drum under my shirt. I sat in silence, as still as I could. Images bounced around in my head, perfumed and prettily framed. He smiled, carving funny faces with his calloused fingertips into my beatific hands. An ominous thud within my insides. I woke up in a ransacked bed, my hair knotted with nostalgia. Running through my mind: an endless silent movie of his hands, his hands, his hands.

Life was good when I didn't care. My birthdays, my skin, my friends, everything was good. It was all there and it was good, but I never gave it a thought. The possibility of anything going wrong didn't even occur to me. And if anything did go wrong, it didn't bother me. Nothing mattered too much. But then comes that fateful time in your life, when you start analysing, reading into things and worst of all, caring. That's when the curse begins. I've never wanted to rewind, but there is a reason people do. Birthdays will just be an excuse to eat a lot of cake, a tiny zit on the tip of your nose could go unnoticed, and relationships could avoid being saddled by unwarranted expectations.

Just as every year, the minutes

leading to midnight were pregnant

with disappointed expectations.

Expectations that carried within them

the knowledge that nothing was going to happen.

“Happy Birthday!”

I knew those words were coming, but

they felt empty -

just like a lame “take care”.

Her intention probably wasn't empty,

but words are like that sometimes.

My “Thank you” was worse,

like a vacuum sucking in the following words,

whatever genuine thing it could've been.

Some thoughts in bed

There is something comforting about complete darkness. It implies a world that is full of possibilities. A world, where different rules apply. Once your eyes get used to the darkness, it is a world where monsters lurk, but so do surprises. The emptiness means peace. You become invisible. You can smell food better and your girlfriend's skin feels more tender than the grass you were lying on. Everything is either good or bad, depending on how you see it. And everyone becomes equal, like in death. You might miss the stars at times, but we could still be so happy. It will be a place where so much is unknown, that we could die exploring what is out there.

Everyday, the Shivajinagar bus terminal sees hundreds of people running about, talking loudly, reading, listening to the radio, mouthing lyrics, giggling, talking to themselves, staring, sweating, chewing pan, spitting, touching and rubbing against people (or themselves). And most of them do some of these things, or endure them on an everyday basis. Yesterday, I was foolish enough to take a bus to Shivajinagar during peak hours. In BMTC bus users' language, it means that while the bus moves an inch at a time through traffic, there will be hoards of sweaty people rubbing against you, trying to fit their foot into the small space between your left foot and your right, all the while breathing in your face like Komodo Dragons. I had decided to be smart this time and despite how much the conductor might yell, not move to the back of bus. Having to miss your stop because you are too small and polite to push through the crowd in time is unacceptable. And having to walk an unnecessary 20 minutes to your destination because of that is even more unacceptable! So I stood at a safe distance from the front doorway, but refused to move any further in.

I was trying desperately to hold my head still in a non-stinky gap, when an elderly man came pushing through all the women and their bags, presumably to get off from the front doorway. He was mumbling something about how people suck (Okay, I polished his words a little bit). But the point is, I supposed he was coming through with the intention of getting off at the next stop. There wasn't an inch to move and he was, with all due respect, a fat man. He was restless, as though he wanted to jump off the bus immediately. Being irritable and annoyed about having showered just before I left home for THIS journey, I quickly said “Naanu ili beku, uncle. Next stop”. Saying that, I managed to squeeze in a tiny smile. He's an old man so he must be nice, I thought. But uncle said nothing and just stood there breathing heavily. I watched him for a few seconds, not finding enough space to turn my head back. He was a tall man, well-built and sturdy. He wore a sort of silky, cream half-sleeved shirt with big brown flowers placed haphazardly on it. He looked like he was right out of a 70s sitcom, only much less happy. His skin was paper-like and spread across his face like a wrinkled sheet. It held two small scribbles like slits for eyes, strikingly black behind thick glasses. A few moments after I'd managed to turn my head back, I felt a sharp push that threw me half-way towards the front door. I swung forward helplessly, my head bonking against the girl in front of me, hers bonking against the support, my foot stamping someone's foot and the strap of my bag getting laced with an aunty's arm who yanked it away angrily. The bus had halted at a signal a good two hundred feet before the next bus stop. The uncle yelled “ili yamma! Hottogu bidatthe stoppu!”, foul-mouthed me and pushed me a little further just for kicks before he hopped off the bus. “Idu stop illa uncle!”, I protested to his back. He paid no attention, of course. Utterly taken aback, I stumbled back into a relatively comfortable posture. All eyes bore into me, and the women displayed the kind of clandestine joy that comes into Indian faces when they're about to thrash a random pick-pocket. And I just stood there, horrified, giving apologetic looks to angry aunties for the next two minutes, before I got off the bus.


Written on 30th September, '10

New post

There is so much poetry gushing in me these days, I can sometimes hear little bits of poetry splashing about in my gut. Or may be it's gas. But I've been spewing out as much of it as I can. This happens now and then. When I've been all parched like empty plots lying in the sun for a while, suddenly I get flooded. And I love them floods! But I'm not an idiot. I know when these floods come about. And they don't come about without reason too. Need for a boost in self-esteem, reassurance, need to please, too much free time, whatever. But the point is, it's awesome. 

So here be some poetry:.

You sit forlorn, mist lining your faces

Your deplorable, despicable faces -

dull promise running through them

like an unobtrusive strand of hair.

The moon melts into an angelic face,

the stars come together to mend your heart.

Bolted to your seats, tired and dazed,

you await 

the perfect sunrise.

But who will mourn your loss?

How will you relinquish your pain?

There are no authors left to

write of such fatuity anymore,

for they're all drudging to pawn off their own pain,

weeping like children, carving into tree barks,

vomiting outside cheap bars, drunk,

penning away in the hope of respite.

So go home, and change that lightbulb.

There is no real dawn.

                                                                                                                                                                I've committed a single crime, far too many times. I hid it in my pockets till it burnt my fingers. I held it inside me, like a mother protecting her child from evil that clung on to him like dust to a ceiling fan. I nursed it within me till it grew, moulded it into its best form, carved it into my veins. But one morning when I woke, my head remained drenched in a darkness saturated with cries. To have held on to a poem until it finally died, escaping my veins, my pockets, my memory. That is a crime. And I have a history of crime hiding behind my ears, like a magician's coin.

I don't know what those lines are. They won't go away!

P.S: I've given up on naming my poems. And trying to come up with creative post titles, clearly.

I cannot write stories. I can write essays even, but not stories. At least not stories that would make for a decent read. I haven't attempted to write a story many times but when I have, I usually get stuck somewhere and then that's that. Several people have told me that when you write stories, you need to write about things from your life and experiences. Stories that have happened to you. And then add little fictional elements to make for a good read. 'How would the reader relate to your story if even you can't relate to it?' Sounds fine. But what about fantasy? And crime fiction? Incredible stories set at far off places with things that you can never imagine the author to have gone through, happening in them? I'm pretty sure Kafka never turned into a “monstrous vermin” during his lifetime. I understand adding things, incidents and little elements from your life to your stories. I'm sure that happens inevitably anyway. But I don't agree that that is the only way to write fiction. I'm still trying to figure out what the other way to write fiction is though. But when I do write a decent story, I hope it won't just be a piece from my life.



On personal news, well, there is none.
Except, my 22nd birthday is coming up in a few days. I don't know how I feel about it. I'm never one to complain about getting older, but 21 just has a better ring to it than 22, doesn't it? Also, I don't want any more 'non-materialistic' friends alright!

I want temporary, fake friends who give me nice gifts wrapped in pretty wrapping paper for no goddamn reason! 

What! At least around the birthdays. Hyuk hyuk hyuk :)

Sometimes you are at some place, terribly inspired and under the impression that if you write something just then you're going to whip up the best shit you've ever written. The sun, the sand, one of the your most favourite people sitting across the table, a constantly breaking heart, the best apple shake you ever had...the setting's perfect. And then you start to write a poem. But it doesn't turn out quite the way you would've liked. In face, it doesn't turn out at all. This happens to me all the time. Sitting at my favourite shack in Gokarna at the most peaceful time to be there (2 days before season started) with my closest friend, all I could write was the shbby outline of a poem. It never came to anything. The moment was gone. So I'm posting it as it is.

Waves crashing against rock reminds me of the fond sound of pails of water being thrown onto cement porches.Weed crackling in the mouths of foreign men. The smell clings to my skin. I touch my face, ear lobe, hands. I feel it all - the sand, grit, residues of sweat beads, salt and already re-surfacing hair roots. A dog with an infected eye sits nuzzled at my foot. He looks at me with one gruesome, bloody, pus-filled eye, the sadness in the other more gruesome. I turn away. Sadness is not on the agenda this time. I sip on my apple shake, exchange awkward smiles with the bearded artist always drawing at the next table. We are two estranged lovers. Behind him, at a distance, a boat sailing is a blemish I could rub away.

Life, the Universe and Unemployment

Uma Joshi ye ye ye
my mother, she told me a 60 years ago

there came an old man knocking at the door

with an ooh, aah, i want some pa

the pa is sweet, i want some meat

the meat is rough (?), i want to go by bus

the bus is full, i want to go by bull

the bull is fat, i want my money back

the money is green, i want some jelly beans
the jelly beans are red, i want to go to bed,

the bed is white, i want to say good night.

Believe it or not, this post has a point. But first,
Last night, I was thinking about the 80s. And then I thought my hair kind of looked like my dad's hair in the 80s for a while. I contemplated wearing shiny bell-bottoms and giant glasses-that-cover-half-my-face while I ride a bike indoors with my head banging in strange ways. But then, I had to discard the idea because I don't have shiny bell-bottoms (must add to birthday wishlist), giant glasses-that-cover-half-my-face, a bike, the knowledge of how to ride a bike, indoors that can accommodate bike-riding, the ability to shake my head in more than 3 ways and thankfully, the hair. I swear, my dad looked like a farmer going to the disco back then. Psychotic!

 
But, back to 'Uma Joshi. It's one of the most popular rhymes/games you play as a child brought up in India during the 80s. Uma Joshi's mother here reminded me of something. Or wait. Is Uma Joshi the mother? So misleading. Anyway, presuming that Uma Joshi is the mother, she and the old man who came knocking at her door 60 years ago reminded me of something. Lately, I've been unemployed. It was great at first, but then it became a drag, and then it became painful and now it's just unemployment. There is just one thing to be said about unemployment. It is EVIL. It makes you stop doing nice things like believing in yourself and start doing unnecessary things like whining all the time. And soon enough, among all the nothingness and frustration and fury and low self-respect and a gigantic zit, you spit out the one decent poem you've written in 2.5 months before you go crying to your blog about all of it. I've lost count of how many stupid minutes a day I spend complaining about my boredom and futility. I'm like the old man who came knocking at Uma Joshi's door 60 years ago. Every day of my life I keep asking for this and that and that and that and something better than that. And then one day, I will say goodnight and go to sleep unhappily after complaining about the colour of my bedspread. We all are. But, your life be yours. The Universe has requested me to shut up now, and I plan to oblige.


Random question: If I write Do-Do would you read it as 'dodo'?   .

The bench

I was playing once. Not winning, but playing. Playing soothed the sores left by the bench and gave me candy every night. I played the paper, highlighted by sun rays and happy members of the alphabet dancing to the sound of every scratch. But now, the books leak bad things. Words of faith and pep talks sound like dry leaves being crushed under angry feet. My pride has gone shopping, for some ink and some new balls may be. I suppose half-time isn't over yet.

I love the spunky new do for my blog! Because blue sky, green grass and dandelions are all beautiful.

Ants don't get me

Today, I bit into an ant. It bit my tongue first because I bit into a toffee that I had left lying on my table some 574849 days ago and it, the ant, was on it. When you find candy/toffee you left lying somewhere 574835 days ago (I swear I tried to randomly type the same number again), check for ants? So anyway, I bit into an ant. And it was crisp.
And then after I was done biting into some yummythings so the yucky feeling on my tongue would go away, I saw one ant. On my pillow! Then I dusted like a maniac for twenty minutes at least, so the one ant or its other crawly companions will not form a rather disciplined line and march into my ear and eat off my brain or something.

Anyway, I've been writing and writing some more and then dying to write when I'm not writing, in the past few days. Love has been ebbing and flowing and overflowing in every direction, so I OD-ied happily, wrote a lot and spread a lot of yellow cheer. Now, the seas are calm once again and I'm back to my happy little hole.
I was DYING to write something this afternoon, but powercuttedoff! And I, shamefully, cannot write too well on pen and paper anymore. Backspace is vital. So then the inspiration evaporated along with my sweat and I sat down with my giant book and coffee to get me through the rest of the day. Butbut my walls are all empty and sad, except for this beautiful thing. Love!

So, will you paint me a funkyfunky poster, pliss?  =)

I'm actually enjoying unemployment this time.
*Blink blink* 
Must get restless soon, before I get too comfortable 
*Blink blink*

Another one

The stereo is vomiting our every song one by one.
But there is a silence, thick as custard
that tells a story of
two lovers and twenty thousand loves.
You are here with me, listening too.
Climbing on to my collar bone,
licking my earlobe and teasing my every sense,
before you settle, lodged between my ribs.

I think always, of how it would be
if we stayed close enough to touch
but not kiss,
to discover what we loved
and hated before we separated.
I wished that in the whiteness of your room,
I found a space next to you,
just by your side -
to see the world
the way you saw it.
Staring at the ceiling didn't
feel the same without you.

Still, I have no regrets.
I am more fragrant now that
I recognise myself as an entity separate from you.
I reek of my own mistakes,
and bloom alone on dewkissed magenta mornings.
But one day, we will bloom together once again,
shaming sunflowers and shutting up glottis.

You are yours and I am mine.

One day, very soon,
I will have words to put out here,
words of promises and pencil tips
and rubber soles and leaky houses.
Words of love -
to say to nobody in particular,
but say nevertheless.
And I hope you will be there,
and you will listen.
You will tell me the things I want to hear
and draw a smile on my teary face
with your finger tips dipped in love.
Just like you always did.

Reboot love! X)

Written on: June 5th, 2010.

Many things

Did you know Blogger does not let you use Italics in the title of a post?

That's stupid. Italics are awesome. So are indentations. And punctuation! [See strange old poem stemming from my love for punctuation here]

But what will I do without

indentations,

punctuation

and italics!

I'm such a paragraph-slut! ^_^

--

 

This too, a love story

She works as a waitress in

that sketchy roof-top restaurant we always thought to be a dance bar.

She visits her grandma and works out crosswords every Friday.

She always wears her hair tied down,

been saving since she was fourteen to go to Paris.

One day, she would say with smiling eyes.

Wants three kids, the oldest being a boy;

she jots down names for them in her little notebook.

He lives in her building, grunts when she looks away.

He chops flesh at a butcher shop every day –

and hangs around outside a different bar every night.

He tucks his unkempt hair behind his collar and

chops it off with a knife every Summer.

The scar on his nape would then be visible.

A while back, he went to jail for stabbing a friend

and today, he says he'd do it again.

--

It's been a while since I shared anything I've written, barring the previous post and the poem above. There is no lack of inspiration (not with all the drama in my life!), no lack of time, no writer's block. It's just been a busy few months and all I really want to do now is keep it this way. May be get busier. I've felt no need for a break through all this though. I've wanted to be at a lot of places and change a lot of things to have them go my way almost everyday, but there have been no 'I need to get out of here's or 'I need a vacation's. Not till I get somewhere with something that pleases me. I'm also feeling slightly anti-social these days. I don't know whether it is the lack of...er...well, society. Or may be it's just a slump. Apparently, I've found new ways to mope around. When at least one aspect of my life starts going the way I would like it to, I will be social again. I will feel like it then.

But I always want a plan, something to look forward to. If there is nothing, I make something up and be falsely excited about it anyway. Like trying to blog more often for the 4 readers I have because I think they like what I write, for instance. I made a lot of plans today, most of which will fail. But it made me happy. 

But, I deviate. I was doing this explainingtoselfandthosewhocare thing: I've been writing. But I've been on an intentional hiatus from sharing what I write with anyone. It all started with laziness and a moody internet connection. But eventually, I found smarter-sounding reasons to give people. Firstly, why must I write itself? Why can't I just feel and not put it down on paper? Why must I string together a bunch of words in an attempt to find meaning in my thoughts and feelings? And secondly, why must I share what I write with people who will probably only just read it and not feel what I felt? Seemed solid and adamant enough for people (including the self) to stop questioning me / bothering with me.

And then, weeks later, it struck me during one of my many rickshaw-journeys. 

I write because I love to. I love writing things, stowing them away, tearing them up, re-reading them, editing them, twaeking them and doing all sorts of abusive things to them! 

I share because I have 4 readers. 

And my 4 readers read what I share and react, because they want to. 

No other reasons; none required.

EDIT >> Oh and nobody ever says "er"! Atleast not in the context it's usually written. 

Oh well.

Black and white

My hands are pressing piano keys,
black, white, white, black, white.
You are there, sitting at a distance.
Staring into the Earth, tall grass and shadows and all,
dirt waiting to get into your nails.
The sun here is always either rising or setting.
This is today and that, tomorrow.
We have no in betweens.

It is as it has been.

Everyone around me has a talent, it seems. Apparently, everyone not around me also does.

When people do a lot of things, there is usually that one thing that they do better than the rest of the things they do. A forte, so to speak. I've been trying to find that one thing I'm good at, that one thing that I can call my 'talent'. I haven't found one. Writing is the only thing I can say I'm good at doing. I at least convinced myself,  if not everyone else, that it is.

I can write. I can also go off into strange tangents all the time, but that doesn't count as talent, I think. I've not written any great truths and words don't spill out of me anytime I want them to. But of all the things I've tried to do, writing is the one thing I feel most connected to. And now, people have started making the connection too.

This is it then.

In true March Madness style

I've rekindled my thing with making random lists on whatever I get (usually tissue paper) and carrying them around wherever I go. And it's still awesome!

I've had a more or less eventful month this March.

- got very busy with work
- thought I was finally working things out in my head about my seemingly never-ending emotional woes, but failed understandably. There's only so much you want to deal with.
- understood exactly how important I actually am where I work and how I can take advantage of it
- spent a fun 2 weeks with one of my favourite persons in the world
- looked forward to having a crazycityexperience-cum-lazy-cum-adventurous-cum-inspiringartsyetc vacation, and ended up having a completely 'city' vacation but loved it anyway
- discovered that I like fast, ruthless cities like Mumbai almost as much as I like lazy, friendly cities like Bangalore and Pune
- re-discovered my love for Stumbleupon, blogs, online-reading and all the fun that internet is
- continued see-sawing between "nothing seems appealing" and "everything seems awesome"
- re-confirmed my doubts on this universe being a bitch and love being psychotic and annoying. But then  there's no Peace and Happiness without Love sittingly stoutly inbetween. So, I'm trying to let live if not live.

But apart from all the random nonsense that's been on my mind, this month has also been painfully retrospective. A new job, lots of new books, new people and may be a new place is on the cards. Just don't know which damn card. I'm sure it'll come to the surface 'one fine afternoon' (ya see what I did there?), just like everything else :)

Till then the job-hunting has resumed full swing, I'm reading like a maniac every chance I get, I'm writing and stowing stuff away secretly again and I'm beginning to like what I write again. I think lots of varied writing will pop up in here and everywhere else very soon.

I also think that it's funny that I find this on a T-shirt to be freaking hilarious:

(Like a blog post is ever complete without a)PS: You see what I mean when I say the list-making thing is back?

With some people it's always either drown or soar. Never moderate.
I always prefer moderate, whatever it comes to.

But then, am I confusing 'moderate' with 'mediocre'?