Bhor

Onek din pore shara raat jege. Shala ekhono ghum ashchhe na. Ekkhuni chheler daak shunte pelam. Oneek oneeek juger opar theke jeno. shei chhotobelar Graham's Land-er bari theke shona jeto: nijhoom dupure chiler shreiks. Cheeler daak signifies ekakitwo for me. But not in a bad way.

Horns of Dillemma OR Tanaporener Gutoni

I'm leaving for Cal tomorrow. I am nearly as pissed as I was radiantly happy yesterday. I'm going to miss the Delhi Bookfair. The Kolkata Bookfair with its increasing political paglami* doesn't somehow appeal as much. I guess it's the appeal of the novel over the age old (which do not often happen to me: I'm a conservative purist when it comes to buildings/architecture for instance). Before the going was decided, I was upset about not being able to burn midnight oil at Seagull, not being able to go to Singur, not being able to sterilise the male dogs, etc.etc. Now I'm apprehensive (and by Murphy, I know that it will come to pass) that I might miss a KLODBE walk, miss meeting a few Couchsurfers, miss a movie-lunch, miss this wonderful weather perfect for walks, etc.etc.etc.

But going to Singur, getting things started again, will be so good. Hoping fervently that nothing goes wrong THIS time.


*Buddhadeb Bhattacharya: We are concerned about our environment but it is very disturbing that so-called green activists of our state demanded that the book fair should be banned at the Maidan. Actually they wanted to stop the age old prestigious book fair which has been part and parcel of Bengali culture.

Rant

I feel like saying with Salieri that I'm the king of mediocrity. Everywhere there are people gushing on trite poetry, triter prose, sloppy photography, crap music and crappier films. Gah!

My room (read bed) is a mess. I promise to clean up after I shift to a new place (a new mess, more likely). I have wayyy too much stuff (esp. books) for the space allotted to me. And can't download movies. And now with the bookfair round the corner... Waaah!

Yesterday was nice. Spent a lot of time sitting on a sun warmed park bench with a friend licking at our (respective) ice cream cones, occasionally feeding bits of waffle cone to the passing chipmunk. The chipmunk was carrying a load of fluff (possible coconut coir) in its mouth and preening the stuff like it was his/her own daari! So my friend renamed it the sikh-munk.

I am pissed at having to spend 3 days in Lucknow (the temperature at least 6 degrees lower than in Dilli) and not being able to see a thing (literally: 'cause of the fog) or get a whiff of chaat. However attended party with free booze flowing (had red wine, vodka and old monk: not mixed together) and slept in a four poster bed in a house with two dogs (Pugli the pug and Kabuli the Afghan hound)and things dating back to the nawabi antiquity. Shit! I just remembered I didn't take a snap of the delightful stained glass chandelier (similar to, but grander than the ones at Khidderpore in what remains of Wajid Ali Shah's Calcutta residence). Naaah (and other words ending in 'ah')!

Amar shontan jeno thake dudhe bhaate

The prodigal beral returned after 24 hours.
I pleaded with an unnameable something all night for him to return (though he had already returned by 3 am, my parents didn't immediately call me and I found out at 7 am).
I guess I don't count as an atheist. But I couldn't care any less.
Amar shontan jeno thake dudhe bhate. More universally true wishes are hard to come by.

Food

I'm amazed at myself. I basically eat sloshy crap everyday. But I don't complain much. Complaining is a social bonding thing in our PG. Funny, I just realised I never wrote about PG before.

Anyway, as I was writing, Food. I don't touch much of the veggie stuff prepared back home. Though, when I was back for a (oh.too.)short while I ate palongshaak-sheem-koraishutir-r torakari with gusto. At least on the first night home. Then there was that eternal hankering after restaurants. And thanks to Romila I discovered one more reason to run to Mocambo whenever possible: the asparagus risotto.

In PG we get crappy food: one sabzi/daal with rice/roti for dinner. In the mornings it's oily paranthas, which I often skip for delicious lunch at office. Weekends, I try to eat out.

Yesterday we had besan ka sabzi with rice for dinner. It's is basically lumps of half-cooked besan in a curry. Yesterday for lunch there was awesome kaali daal with hing, oily but very tasty cauliflower and peas sabzi, rice and roti with the jhola gur I got from back home.
For breakfast today I had crappy oily aloo parantha with stone cold phulgobi and peas sabzi.
People back home expressed surprise that I hadn't lost weight away from barir khabar. In fact, when I complained about PG food, a professor said "Mithye kotha bolo na. Khabar ta je tomake khub-i suit korechhe she to dekhtei pachhi".

Possibly most of you are crinkling up your nose at my description of a 'delicious' lunch. Yes, there was a time when I couldn't do without meat/fish. But I have learnt to live without them. At first by consuming upto 6 eggs a day. But where I live now, even eggs aren't cooked. And I have no regrets re. not being able to eat meat/fish. And I love vegetables, fruits, carbs, pulses:

I love rajma, kaali daal, chana, chhola, roasted soyabean, multigrain bread, soy nuggets, pasta, mushrooms, bell pepper, broccoli, cherry tomatoes, pita pockets with falafal, fruit juice mocktails, feta cheese, delicious salads made with rajma/chana/veggies/fruits, fried eggs, pineapple and orange marmalade (Fabindia organics), muesli, baingan bharta, lassi, muri, roasted peanuts, cashews and pitachios, roasted bajra and jowar, roasted chhola with hing, roasted soy snacks, vodka with nimbu paani, Kingfisher Premium, Tom Collins, Pineapple Blossom, frozen yogurt with toppings, brownies, chocolate muffins, lemon tarts, unusual flavours of ice cream, champagne....

I have gained weight since I turned vegetarian. Partly because of overindulgence with cream-cheese-ghee-butter. Partly due to a regular diet of beer and peanuts. Partly due to overeating. Yes, I'm the quintessential lobhi.

The best place to eat in Dilli till now is Cafe Turtle. It's also very very very expensive. But they have fresh salads and fruit juice mocktails and hummus and nachos and falafal and soups and brownies and carrot cakes and lemon cakes and muffins and sandwiches. Also 'tis completely veggie with an open air, roof top space and a (bad) library. But you can always take your own book and sit and read for hours :)

I head there after book shopping at Darya Ganj and stuff my face with delicious non fried food stuff and my heart like a soaring balloon of happiness after the haul of new old books :)

No wonder I can't save up 'nuf for the camera :(

Winter and Delhi

It's cold. Dhnoya comes out of your mouth even during the day, inside the house.

I'm going to the NSD Theatre Festival. I couldn't procure tickets for the most part: missing out on The Caine Mutiny Court Martial (dir: Naseeruddin Shah), Rajnaitik Hatya (dir: Saonli Mitra), Kamdev Ka Apna Basant Ritu Ka Sapna (an adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream dir: Habib Tanvir), Hamlet the Clown Prince (dir: Rajat Kapoor), Broken Images (solo performance by Shabana Azmi; script: Girish Karnad) and I also missed an IPTA performance (in spite of having a pass) because I was attending the NSD production of Jaat Hi Puchho Sadhu Ki (script: Vijay Tendulkar) about the same time. Anyway, chhite-phnota is good enough for me. :)
Jaat Hi Puchho... was very good: entertaining, funny, poignant, great use of sets and great acting. But, possibly because it was an NSD production, youngsters in the hall was shouting, clapping and cheering so much (after every line of dialogue, almost) that you often missed out on the dialogues. It was like people cheering (by clapping and whistling and shouting 'guru cholbe' etc.) after a happy ending (end of Les Choristes) at the KFF 2005.
I have a play to go to today: Odysseus Chaoticus by an Israeli company in 'gibberish' not Hebrew. Wish I had a better camera: that is one that can take better photos (or take photos at any rate) in the dark. :(

Cancelling Agra plans for the weekend. The train will inevitably be delayed (possibly by 5 hours) due to the fog. So, no thank you.

I miss the Novel and Modernity blog muchly sometimes. I think I have most of the posts printed out somewhere. I also miss winter sunshine. Funny how we talk lovingly of winter sunshine: England has none of it (nor does Dilli): so it must be a native metaphor, rooted in our actual experience as opposed to being an imitation of foreign cliches. Imagine someone in the city(or even here, in Dilli) borrowing a line from Bill the bard and describing their gf/bf as 'a summer's day'?

Haven't finished Even Cowgirls Get the Blues yet. But what a novel! It's choc-a-bloc with pithy, ironic, inventive, crafty, delightful lines and passages. Some instances:

"It was there that she once shot up one half of an old pair of sneakers. "Self defence" she pleaded, when her parents complained. "It was a outlaw tennis shoe. Billy the Ked".

Like many italic sentences, this one has Mafia connections.
This sentence maybe pregnant, it missed its period
This sentence ran off with an adverb clause.
This sentence suffered a split infinitive--and survived."

I should work now.

Crib

So office. Need I say more?
Yes. Dilli too: gray, cold(that's a fucking understatement), dreary.

On the other hand it's nice to find poems being written about me on the blogosphere. Even if they are not written about me, I can always pretend they are (mwahahaha). And I don't mean love poems dedicated to the eternal feminine or summat.
*snort* I just tried imagining myself as someone's (not any particular someone but a general somebody) feminine ideal. *snort*

I'm waiting for some colours. In search of which i ended up spending some more money at People Tree. This way the dream of owning a DSLR (a D 3000, maybe) will remain just that: a dream.

I wonder about the etymological origins of the word crib and how it came to signify two such different things. Maybe not so different when you consider that all babies do in cribs is cribbing. Only it's called bawling when a baby cribs. 'Cause the baby can't speak.

Ok dammit! why can I not write prettily like you, you and YOU?
I have an excuse: My fingers are frozen.