dis.com.bob.u.late

Sunday/Funday

2012-02-12T13:25:00.004+05:30

A hot shower can put a new perspective on things, I find. Unfortunately, you can only take a finite number of hot showers per day. The environmental costs can't be scoffed at [and away] either.

I'm typing with my left hand. Dunno what implications that'll have on ze back.

Just 3-4km of walk yesterday and i still feel like daggers are shoved into my spine. Doesn't bode well.

Neither does the weather. Unremittingly gray with the promise of sleet. Wish I'd risked my fingers and taken snaps of the snow covered, sunlit woods.

I can already feel the pregnant promise of another fruitless day.

Stommach's complaining: but since the dorm doesn't have a venita cucini [though looks like a modular kitchen] it's hard to motivate oneself to cook. Hard enough climbing out of the duvet into an unheated room.

Think I'll lie in and dream my fragmented dreams a bit more.

PS: Circumstance has got to be one of the worst films I've seen in a long while

Random Rambling Rant

2011-12-26T20:44:00.003+05:30

Don't know where I'm going..with this post, with furniture rearranging or without studying. Seems like I'm in a limbo: treading dark womb waters but can't wait to be born and also, in some ways dreading that moment. Whattodowonly, life's so complicated sometimes.

My thoughts are in disarray. L was right when he pointed out how much my travel quotient has whoooomped in a year. I fear I'm falling into the same trap of ticking lists: Paris, Beirut, Barcelona...Never will have enough time/money to live in ecah of these wonderful places I think. And even if I did, with every second a thousand priorities tear at me. Cats, work, Kolkata, Dilli, Europe, Palestine, Kashmir, strays, veterinary nurse, research, composting, cooking, photographing, fabric-shopping. Our possibilities are inexhaustible. Yet each day lasts only a few hours here (literally: sun rises at 9am sets at 4pm). And most of the days go buy obsessing about lack of studying and watching episodes of House M.D. Scrubs 9 sucks big time, btw.

I think the lack of posts here are also indicative of a reluctance to share and a confusion about what to write. I feel overwhelmed by new impressions. Most of them are lost in mazes of memory the rest I fear will be lost in translation.

Spoke to PC today. Took a long walk along the woods to Scheveningen (didn't go all the way, of 'cos). Procrastinated,-ing.

I'm bad at short travel trips. Still cannot make my mind up about Paris or Sao Paolo. Most people would enjoy such things. Somehow I just exhaust myself. Such a weirdo I am. Thoughts go round in loops. Maybe it's time for automatic writing. Or just plain getting down to and finishing those bloody papers.

Paris

2011-11-17T04:31:00.002+05:30

1. Peekaboo
2. Avenue

Autumn

2011-11-16T02:05:00.007+05:30

It's my first autumn. Never seen one before. It's beautiful. Also, right now, here, cold. And sunny. And early morning mists.

But this time of the year is always such periods of upheavals in my life. Beginning 2008 maybe? I don't remember 2007. But I remember the following year onward. Going through the archives would prove it. Three years.

I should write a post on Paris. Maybe I'll say it with photos for the time being.

Pity there is no Multi Drug Therapy for the ravages of time. (Click for bigger size)

Internet permitting I'll be able to post more photos in bigger sizes. Inshallah!

On Lonliness (?)

2011-11-15T01:26:00.000+05:30

I'm glad FB is not there. There's still a circuit that emits sparks sometimes: that would be nice to post etc (and it's been all of twelve hours I've been off it: yay me!). But it's good to come back to actual writing. Not meaningless clever (or not) one liners to the applause (or not) of the general 'peanut crunching' audience. It's such a performance. So is this of a sort. And a part of me had been afraid to write here (as opposed to the secret blog) because the address was so visible on FB. I like to think of this space as a cosy nook where few friends come to visit me occasionally.

So he was sitting at the corner table. Small eyes, high cheekbones, stocky of build. Strong jawline, knuckles and veined hands but not in an unhealthy way like that thin man in tram the other day who spoke too loudly). He wasn't especially dressed up. Neither in suits like the baled man at the bar stool nor subtly underdressed (though speaking volumes/enough about their social status, I presume) like the more casual younger frequenters at Murphy's Law. He was drinking tea. In a bar full of stout drinkers. With LOUD live jazz performance. Our table was full. He kept glancing at us. I guess it's not very polite in these parts to stare/glance/observe? Anyway some people thought of inviting him over but he was embarrassed and averted his gaze. The others resumed talking but I was observing him. I felt a sort of affinity for him. Maybe we were the only ones not drinking alcohol. I had finished my orange juice five minutes within serving. Maybe that's impolite too. As well as toasting with an empty glass.

He looked lonely. I felt a bit lonely. Somehow I couldn't stop jerking my knees non stop the whole time I was there. As if waiting for an ordeal to be over. But it was pleasant enough. The music, the people, the conversation. While I was gathering up my coat and preparing to pay a 2.5 E bill with my card (I have had no cash since the day I went to Rotterdam. Only functioning through credit. Hah! neoclassicals) I heard him ask the saxophonist where they were for. I liked him even more. It seemed like such a pathetic half hearted attempt at small talk. I might be imagining all this of course. Transposing my feelings.

However, I often enjoy being alone. In fact the most tranquil moments, moments of delight at discovery, of joy has to be somehow experienced alone. Not just the joy (not) of actually seeing Van Gogh self portraits in a crowded museum but also the excitement, torment of falling in love, for instance. The feel of a new city. The sound of a shutter clicking and looking at the display screen to find a perfect shot.

At the same time my unhappiest moments have also been the loneliest. This awareness of lonely, alone in the world sort of orphaned abandoned feeling is also probably the crux of, the most rarified form of unhappiness. Paradoxically reminds me of the advert from a Bangla newspaper going viral over FB right now. FB: that continuous immersion of the self in the collective.

I'm glad to be back here. The white blank blogger template and me in front of my keyboards filling up that space.

Facebook

2011-11-14T20:56:00.002+05:30

So I deactivated my account. I feel liberated. But now obviously I cannot (after such a public announcement) get back on before at least a month. Hopefully the addiction will be gone by then. And won't be there to distract me right in the middle of exams. Woohoo!

On the negative side, how am I going to let people know about the film screenings and so on? Guess will have to delegate that to someone else. Don't see that working very well. The control freak that I am. :-/

Goodbye world! Well, I have been told the world will leave me far behind as a result of my actions. Also that I should go into anger management and group grieving sessions (whatever they are). As long as it's in a group the insurance pays for it. Gawd! Group counselling? Reminds me of that sketch from Big Train where Simon Pegg plays a therapist and asks his group to let outall their anguish through screaming. Then he goes behind the room opens a hole in the wall looks at them groaning around the floor and says "you fucking twats" (or summat) while sipping his hot beverage (not sure if tea or coffee. also assuming that it was hot).

Post: after a while

2011-11-12T04:18:00.002+05:30

Hmm. Haven't visited this patch in a while. Meanwhile Paris happened. In full technicolour not Cartier-Bresson-esque grainy b&w or even A Bout de Souffle. Disappointed, must admit. But reinvigorated and bitten (haaaard) by the travel bug.

So favourite places in Paris would be Pere Lachaise (didn't spot any famous dead ones though and kinda upset about missing Wilde) and the Mosque(e de Paris). Also some lesser known musuems. And the 'manifestations'. And the people I met. My generous hosts and Camille and her crowd (including her cat). Met a number of Bangladeshis and one racist South Asian who in the 19th arrondisement asked me in (Hindi/Urdu) "itne sab kale kale darr nehi lagta?"

Went on photography overdrive. Especially in the musuems I became obssessed with recording every detail more than seeing things. Need to go again. Also to Berlin. And Bosnia (can anyone tell me a cheap way of getting to Sarajevo there?!)

Walked around Rotterdam today. Liked it very much. Missed cammie (camera). Want to go spend a night in the tents with Occupy Rotterdam peeps. Lessee.

Now let' sjust hope Begun gets well soon and my visa comes through *fingers crossed*

written in a state of slight inebriety

2011-10-24T04:52:00.004+05:30

So I filched some filter paper and marijuana (left unattended) at bar top at the oldest 'coffee shop' in Den Haag.

And I'm very happy :)

Slightly sloshed kind of happy. But yay! for TJ and all the flash mob ideas. Feminism zindabad!

What else? It's kind of fun to observed stoned people in a legal, normalised setting. Come here and we'll go to coffee shop together and just drink beer and have fun at the expense of the junkies and junky-drunkards.

I mees you Kaichu, Bob and Ani. Wish you were here now. *bear hug*

PS: Got invited to a random Halloween Party. will upload photo of (v. interesting) invite, later. Must.Go.Sleep.

Porikkha

2011-10-24T02:11:00.003+05:30

Ki apod! Shukhe thakte bhute kilono jake bole ar ki.

I remember earlier this year waking up one fine (probably sweaty)morning in a sweat about having missed an exam. And then remembering "chhor aye hum woh galiya'. I marvelled at how pervasive the anxiety about exams were that I was dreaming about them 2 years after having been there, done that.

The why did I not think of exams before I applied for studies once again? Why did I not think of not taking the scholarship or something? Boohoo! (a.k.a Obelix). Also: Toc! Toc! Toc! These Madhuras must be crazy!

I hate

2011-10-07T18:02:00.001+05:30

constantly having to reduce my expectations. How am i supposed to be engaged with/to something/one if I constantly have to practise being detached?

I miss Dilli

2011-10-02T11:55:00.003+05:30

Got up early to study. But video Ani sent me nostalgia tripping down the lanes of Nizamuddin from Humayun's Tomb to Inayat Khan Dargah accompanied by smell of sizzling meat...

XYZ

2011-09-28T14:51:00.003+05:30

Things I bought yesterday at Sunderban Supermarket:

coconut oil (produced in Sri Lanka and with 'narkel toilo' written on the label in Bangla)

posto

Lijjat papad

muri (E4.9)

Haldiram aloo bhujiya

cumin powder

whole masur

ginger-garlic paste (from Karachi. labelling in many languages including Dutch. also, 'halal'!!?)

red chillies

What I'm doing now:

Reading MJ biography on wikipedia and watching This Is It instead of studying Foucault.

What I miss:

People. From back home.

Cats. Dogs. Stray animals.

Eating out. JNU. Bougainvillea.

Films at IHC. Khan Market. Lodi Gardens.

Old camera.

Composting. Home cooked pasta. Baking

Mountains. Monuments.

What I'm glad of and upset about:

People not writing stuff like 'Madiiiiiieeeee! xoxo' on my FB wall. Same thing really. I'm kinda upset people don't do it and kinda glad that people don't. 50-50.

Is wondering

2011-09-22T19:49:00.006+05:30

Why my gums are acting up....

Also not coming from an academic background can be a serious hang up I think? Or maybe coming from one is. I had so much difficulty in explaining 'controlling women's sexuality' was an important part of monogamous family formation and capitalism. How do I put in everyday language? I really do not know and before today never stopped to think. It's not really jargon. But its is academese, at its most basic. Certain things I have only learnt through very academic channels. Or even when it has been lived experiences, academic theories have put things into sharper focus. And those are my basic tools then, (the academic language), when I try to express these ideas: because that's how I understood them: through the mediation of academic theories, etc. which also brings me to this bubble filter (no algorithms) but I myself have created around me: where i just hang out with people who think alike, have similar backgrounds (economic, linguistic, class, cultural). And I'm not sure if I can even venture outside of it, whether i even want to. Constantly being reminded that you're in minority, an elite minority can be fairly unpleasant. I have heard so many times that I'm not a)like other Indian girls/Indians b)my pronunciation is different/I don't have a strong Indian accent which makes me comprehensible c)I don't look Indian. So there you have it: I don't behave like, look or speak Indian(s).

.............................................

The transience of happiness is so hard to get used to. Nobody ever gets used to feeling depressed or lonely, I suppose. What about the homeless man outside our institute? Haven't seen him in two days. But saw an old Asian lady begging on Spuistraat today. Am I going to be a witness to the European autumn/winter/spring/summer revolution? The food riots in Europe? The ultimate un-making of the West that another prof (from home) predicted: will I be a part of that? And after all, does it mean much? Anything? I will probably never really suffer from hunger pangs. Just chickened outta a trip and feeling kinda shitty: like a non risk taking wimp. And that's a greater problem to me than homelessness. R was right: a world without conflict and poverty would make me career-less. I need a miserable world to survive by selling my intellectual capital in posing solutions. At the same time I reserve the right to be cynical, to be dismissive, vent my anger self righteously on social networking sites, etc. And obviously be self reflexive, critical in blog posts while listening to Thievery Corporation (Lebanese Blonde). As if that was an excuse for everything. As if that explained away everything. As if it could be a replacement for real emotional warmth, for human companionship, this continual seeking validation through online constructed selves. Am I even aware of wearing these masks? Can I take them off when I want to? Do I really know what it means to be in 'the emperor's new clothes'? To be really vulnerable? But yet no armour is enough and sometimes you will be touched to the quick. What a bundle of contradiction this awareness of self brings!

PS: Background music, now, very appropriately (smart iTunes): A few of my favourite things =)

End of another day

2011-09-21T01:53:00.002+05:30

So fresh spaghetti is nice. Enough. Only added too much honey to the sauce. Tomorrow am relatively free. So must sort out the jungle that is room and the forest that is the fridge.

Went for a film on the eve of world peace day. Didn't like it much. Dunno why. Except that I guess I'm a cynic inveterate.

Bought halloumi (from Kelly's and a mini Turkish market. The latter was cheaper). Mint plant, thyme plant. (somebody stop me from buying more plants. I now have about 11 I think). Tampons, perry (pear cider), dried dill, potato, Quorn, two pens (bright pink and bright turquoise ink), double sided sellotape. So Piet Hienstraat is very nice. It has an Iranian resaturant with kookoo sabz for 6E I think. Also Crunch cafe (as recommended by M.A) seemed nice and cheap-ish. Here's the menu: http://www.crunchcafe.nl/menucrunchsept2011.pdf

Also their coffee seems ethical. Not that i drink it, but that's a huge plus as far as I'm concerned. Just if I had books enough to read. I would go there and spend my afternoons. Sigh. There's also apparently a park on that side of the, erm, neighbourhood. Also I bought a hanging pot from a second hand store today: the first time I've seen them open. It was 1E. For my ivy :)

I've been hanging up some photos today (more like sticking them up). It's so strange to think Hulo's no more. He's been such a presence: so stable, always there. Not like the others: getting into scrapes and all: just there. Almost like a benevolent presence. The most well mannered cat, the most motherly of all toms. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to bring all these photos. So many absences in my life when I look at them.

Yes, I'm all PMS-y and weepy this week. Just weepy I guess. PMS is the easy excuse to foist on it. Never been very PMS-y. I'd really like to write about my classes as well. But hmm...then I'd have to make it a more private blog.

I haven't written much about the sort of inner life, mindspace since coming here: just the externals, things bought, seen, etc. Maybe because i hadn't much time to sit and reflect. It is a huge change. But usually i don't feel their impact so. Dilli for instance wasn't this humongous transition that I was sweating and panting under. Somehow. It's easier for me than most people. Of course sometimes I miss things, people most of all. I had this idea that I would want to have a life separate from the institute, I was coming live and work (and study) in Europe. And ISS would only be one part of it. Well, I guess there's no escaping it. Might as well try and go out evenings in a group instead of trying to study and failing miserably. I'd really been keen on inviting people over for dinner. I must work on that and set it into motion. First step, is cleaning room.

Aaargh and readings! I should really get together and form a study group. Otherwise I'm just trying to wade knee deep through academic muck and sinking deeper in. =(

Feel a little sorry for me folks and do leave some replies? *sniff* I feel forgotten *bawls*

Cats and other things

2011-09-15T19:40:00.003+05:30

So met such a snooty cat today. It was happily washing itself sitting inside a closed art gallery on top of a pile of canvases. I was watching it for about a minute when it became aware of my gaze (I think it was a she: hulos are less snooty, I think). It looked up and looked at me through narrowed green eyes very offendedly, like some royalty having caught a voyeur in the act. We were in a staring match for at least 5 minutes when she decided she was paying me too much attention and stared at another direction. And she just refused to look at me again. after a while she changed her position, came to rest n her front paws and closed her eyes very decidedly. I mean i did notice that occasionally a little crack would open to check whether I was still there or not. Clearly wins the award for the snootiest feline I've encountered.

In the other news Howard's economics class was pretty fantastic whereas the potato soup at the canteen was...Well, it was like watery and lumpy mashed potato. Oh and someone praised my outfits, so woohoo!

Hague: Secrets

2011-09-15T01:58:00.002+05:30

Was walking randomly around Grote markt today. And discovered an art house movie theatre (but they have dutch subtitles *makes face*), a small grocery store with a cat called Dinko in it near Spui (so obviously I had to buy stuff from there and ended up buying stuff--i don't know exactly what it is--imported from some middle eastern country for four euros), a Turkish shop that stays open from 5pm to 4am (though falafel at 4.5E is a bit too much) aaaaand a Pakistani french fry (burger, ice cream etc) shop that stays open till 2am on weekdays and 5am on weekends just off the Plein.

So after a very unhealthy dinner of french fries and mayonnaise (1.85E) I'm going to bed now with tired (but happy) feet, slightly burnt tongue and no readings done for tomorrow's class.

Hague

2011-09-06T12:12:00.004+05:30

So I'm here. My body has started acting up. Guess first two days was too tired for it to matter when I went to sleep and all. Don't have much time now. But will try to make some sense/inventory list of the barrage of sensory (mostly visual) inputs I've had past few days.

Getting out of Schiphol was like getting out of the IKIA(! Tehran) airport. It's funny how so many cities/airports look the same. Underpasses with same kinda concrete blocks as in Dilli. The same kind of road dividers, miles of empty fields, punctuated by factories here and there as in Iran. It's depressing that becoming a 'world class city' entails giving up all the idiosyncrasies of a city.

Anyway but the landscape soon changed. Pretty houses and inviting wooded areas with biking lanes going through them cropped up as we sped towards Hague. In the meanwhile our van, from the church of Tabernacle of David kept playing songs with refrains like 'Alpha, Omega' 'everybody make the noise together: Hallelujah' 'Jesus is a mighty god', etc.

And fairly soonish we were at the ISS registering, eating raisined buns (I didn't drink coffee or carbonated drinks but brought back an apple and a can of 7Up for later use. They're still in the fridge). At the student welfare office we got a reusable covered plastic coffee cup: it's come in quite handy for me as a drinking glass. But I suspect I'm drinking less water than I should be because I don't have a bottle yet.

And so to hostel. My room was a pig's sty full of plastic wrappings etc till yesterday evening when I cleaned it up. I also bought plants (basil, rosemary and little pink flowers that I had in Lajpat and which later died in my absence) from the open market (which should be a whole new post with photos). So now most of the mess is stuffed up in closed cupboards and with plants on the window sill the room looks more inviting. Will have to buy tape and put up photos.

Sorry reader: I guess this is a pretty lame post. But shopping and cooking will have to be another post. And that pretty much comprises most of my activity here.

So.

2011-08-22T02:06:00.003+05:30

Another 6 days left in the city as I write. I was mostly feeling nothing. But having just gone through photos from a hurried photo shoot around the city (no walking leisurely this time, camera in hand) I am feeling...weird. First of all I'm trying to let go of the mad desire to document so many things: from the Jorabagan police station to Lovelock Lane, Mocambo to VP, JU to Howrah and the list goes on. By the time I come back god knows how many of my favourite houses will have been pulled down on Hindustan Park, Purna Das Road, Strand Road...When next shall I get time to truly explore the city: go visit the Greek Orthodox and the Armenian Churches, the ghats early morning, Red Road, Victoria, Sudder Street, Middleton Row, New Market, Botanical Gardens, Mcleod Street, Mirza Mehendi Lane, Elliot Road, Lake, Princep Ghat... The list goes on.

Such a strange relationship I have with this strange city: so much fierce love and protectiveness coupled with such strong desires to leave.

Someday Calcutta I'll come back and claim you as my own. A city where the LIC building still has it's Stained Glass windows, where buying home made wine at Bow Barracks isn't a big deal, where Bourne and Shephard archives are still intact, where Nahoum's retains its former glory, where Kalman is given its rightful recognition, where Chinese New Year festivals aren't an oddity, where the Scottish Cemetery is well maintained, where College Street isn't overrun with text books or Bornoporichoy, where South City doesn't exist, where dogs, cats and horses are happier fatter and neutered, where trams are reinstated with with full respect....

Nothing Post

2011-08-05T19:28:00.004+05:30

I wish I could compose an angsty or Regina Spektor-ish (outlandishly brilliant) song out of the half-thoughts and almost-emotions that are running amok in my head right now. But words, as usual, fail me.

I wish I could stop. Everything. Bad health. Anxieties. Anticipations. Packing. Introspection. Reading.

I want to curl into a ball and fast forward to the bit where fun things are happening. Where future isn't uncertain. Where blue birds fly. Etc.

Another death

2011-08-04T22:47:00.004+05:30

So i was smelling of maggots since last afternoon. In spite of repeated baths.

The dog died last night. I was being lazy today all day thinking I'll go when dad comes so I'll have some help while injecting and so on. Guess he must've been very dehydrated. Or that people actually killed him like they were threatening to do (while at the same time entreating me to cure him) because of the smell: all very na pak during ramadan I suppose. And yet there's babai-yer ma who has been diligently pouring black phenyl (like I taught her to do last time maybe two years ago with another dog) and feeding him in spite of her neighbours blaming her.

The hardest part is knowing that this will be another face in the fast fading gallery of dead animals that I'll have a hard time recalling afterwards: those I treated and were unable to, those I saved, adopted, hand raised, gave away, looked after, had operated and so on. So so many. And so few care like I do and can do something about it. Yet, this cannot be a full time occupation, ie not a career.

I know I'll end up travelling more than cat sitting and volunteering at vet practices to train as a veterinary technician in europe. And who knows when I'll be back on familiar turf where I'm ready to fight my battles with human indifference and cruelty, where I can buy injectible calmpose without batting an eyelid. Because I cannot do the same in Dilli. I know from experience. It has to be right here. And while I'm away I'll hear of more news conveyed over the phone. Nothing's ever right in the world and I feel so impotent that I cannot even set the smallest parts of it straight.

Another day, another post

2011-08-03T23:04:00.003+05:30

So today I was composing a blog post in my head while the gari drove through 'mirza ghalib street' and into park street. A post about Kolkata. I was thinking about photos I must take. This weekend. Fo' sho'.

I have bought cocoa powder, aluminium cake tin and vanilla essence. From New Market, no less. But my parents have no oven. But one of the neighbours does. Dekhi, permission-termission an' all.

Spent most of today running after dog with humongous magotty wound. My hands still smell of rotting flesh. And eucalyptus oil. And the dog refuses to eat mishti/chicken liver with medicine. Ooof!

I wish I could just curl up and read without a care in the world. Instead there's work, there's one's sanity to think of and ma's broken leg and dogs and cats and a thousand other things. How do people prioritise? Their 'causes', their anxieties? Kashmir or stray animals? Singur kids or the environment? I'm exhausted. And I haven't even begun.

PS: watched Food Inc. today. Oree baba go! Hope things are different in Europe.

Confused Rant

2011-07-17T20:16:00.002+05:30

So it's better than last but one post: i know what this post is going to be about.

So I don't miss Dilli. I see my erstwhile flat mate discovering stuff and feeling comfy. I had that phase. Dilli has exhausted my curiosity.

Whereas Calcuttta, whether out of nostalgia or habit, has so many things that are just so...Calcuttan. Like the newly painted concrete Lion holding football beneath forepaw on top of a decrepit and non descript entrance. Maybe I'm romanticising. I don't know. Haven't been to Park Street Cemetery yet. I haven't explored Calcutta like Dilli. No Time OUt guide here. Plus, pride about knowing by city (which BS as on the day I discovered the synagogues).

All around me bad things keep happening. Such as a friend losing her father. But some respite occasionally. Such as meeting Kali and Lalu (and Elvis) after sooo long. Felt very guilty for not having food on me. Poor Shuji. Moving out of the goli and now no more. Lalu was so happy so exuberant and whiny and jumpy and head-rubby. And Kali actually ran upto me and wagged tail incessantly. Which is like writing the whole series of poems dedicated to Maude Gonne in her [Kali's] world.

It seems Calcutta is celebrating Shab-e-Barat today as opposed to yesterday (as seen in Howrah). People on Anwar Shah are dressed in their best and the Tipu Sultan Mosque is bedecked with light and the homeless are getting bhaat and labra in terracotta malshas. And of course the illegal noisy crackers.

I feel kind of vague and insignificant. Worse than a flaneur. Almost wispy. Like someday I'll vanish in a puff of smoke. My main anchor in this city (and a mainstay in life) is away. Until the 31st. I feel vague dissatisfactions and vague appetites and vague desires. I realise how I cannot be around sane people for too long. I infect them with this disease of pessimism, bitterness, and confusion. And most of the time I want to be away from myself. Not be aware of a self. And only today on the walk back home I realised that that's what I did the last years of university when I incessantly watched films. And that's what I'm doing now by incessantly reading books.

I remember this dialogue (probably the character was trying to be clever) from Before Sunrise about wanting escape from oneself, of being so tired of oneself because one has never been away from oneself: never been in a kiss in which wasn't participating and so on. Losing oneself is good, then? In what exactly I wonder. In cocaine? In relentless devouring of books films? In hard physical labour? In looking through a lens? In mastering something?

Sometimes I feel so tired. Everything seems a charade. something to distract yourself wit for two months or six. And always, always the glass palace comes crashing down. Everything you invent to be away from yourself is after all just as fragile as the butterfly's wings, as transient as the rainbow reflection on a soap bubble.

Look at me waxing eloquent. Trying to create some illusion, some semblance of 'sense' in this utter chaos. Where random chances bring illusory happiness and permanent losses and both scar you, mark you, warp you. And you begin to recover and start playing at this game all over again.

Soon, soon to fresh pastures. Goodnight and good luck to me.

Stress Buster Post

2011-07-14T18:49:00.002+05:30

Don't ask me why now. It's somewhat akin to a near-panic!-attack right now.

So this will be a list of books I've read in the past month or so (or am reading) in no particular order:

Sea of Poppies

River of Smoke

To Kill a Mockingbird (re read after maybe a decade)

Nilkantho Pakhir Khonje

The Unwaba Revealations
Interesting Times {read this back to back with River of Smoke with the latter coming second while in McLeodganj. Interestiing times :)}

Summer Term at St. Clairs

East, West

Phyataru Collection

The French Lieutenant's Woman

Eva Luna

I Shall Wear Midnight (ebook)

Jonny and the Dead

Mostly Harmless

Adam, One Afternoon

What is this post going to be about?

2011-07-08T15:48:00.003+05:30

I don't know. I like to surprise myself sometimes. Ergo: rant.

So am back in ye olde hometowne, and ye olde alma mater (but-of-course) soon-ish.

And I not just hate packing. I loathe it. And run from it like the beubonic plague or ye irritating coconuts (a.k.a abcds).

So another end and another beginning. But. As always: messy. Well it stands to reason you see: you're pushed outta the womb covered in muck and blood (yuck!). And when you die, bodily fluids ooze out and therefore the nice Hindoo (heathen) custom of plugging the nose of the dead with cotton wool.

So I was writing in McLeod a lot (in a People Tree notebook, no less. and no it was gifted to me, I didn't buy it). And I kinda hit upon a sentence (that i'm privately very proud of but will be nonchalantly dismissive of here) as I was listening to the sound of rain on the roof of Out Of The Blue in Dharamkot. The sentence, ahem, is this:

It's like yesterday again...propah downpour and tin roof an' rain drops makin' love!*

Ahem!

Moving on, I think kitty has found himself a forever home. I'm still not entirely convinced that it'll be the best in the long run as opposed to being permanently settled in a spacious, nice shelter.

Also Annie Hall is certainly a very big reason to go on living and laughing. Even if your partner falls asleep (sacrilege!) half an hour into it.

*in my head I hear it in a drawl (I could've written southern drawl or something accent: but I don't have much knowhow of accents and their whereabouts). and it seemed kinda, er, superfluous, therefore, to put a 'g' or a 'd'

Life...dramatic sigh

2011-07-01T18:15:00.002+05:30

So yesterday was a cocktail of bad news. Including Shuji passing away. She as one of our downstairs dogs (in Cal).

Anyway, this isn't about that. A few days ago my younger and (lots more) wiser friend advised me to haffun cuz that's all you remember three years down the line. In the similar vein, the most venerated one (who's also suffered a great loss very recently) also said THIS is the time to have the most fun. And an older and not-always-so-much-wiser (:p) friend said time flies by and she would give anything to be 26 (eughhh! old!) again. In fact it's her pep talk, a small dose of Traitor Ghosh and a loooong loong night's sleep that made this morning better (including an early morning dream with Scrubs characters). So yes, this is my second day at McLeodganj. And I've got a looooot to write. And I'm not going to dwell on any negatives. Because there's death for sure but life has a way of creeping up on you and pushing you forward (this a little Pratchett-esque, non?). The Dramatic Title of this post is supposed to be a reflection on that because as I opened the blog to start writing the topmost post was about a very unfortunate passing away, a very sad moment in my life.

See, not having a camera can be a good thing. Now I can describe to you the painting of a grumpy hello kitty type cat drawing with one paw raised and a gomra mukh whose other paw is nicking (your) dumplings from a bowl full of them (dumplings, not cats or frowns) outside a restaurant on Tipa Road. Or I can tell you that the sign that got me all smiling and warm inside (okay overdoing it a beeet) said: 'Drive slow Kids Playing' with a stick figure and a ball separating the two lines. And after reading Interesting Times it's kind of um...I dunno epiphanic? or maybe deja-vu-ish to come across a board reading: The Tibetan People's Movement for Middle Way.

Well, I'm having an interesting time (in a non-curse type way *cross fingers and toes*). And older friend, if you're reading this (you had better be and as a proof I want to see your comment[s]), this isn't the first trip to mountains alone: the last time I stayed (albeit on my parents largesse) two months in another place (known before as Paradise) and er, got involved with a local, with um, unfortunate results.

But this dramatic exit, pack first thing you notice into bag and depart (though mellowed by tears and all that jazz at a point later, but not, hah! anymore) is suiting me just fine. Meeting random friendly dogs (who despite major friendliness does NOT dirty your clothes [one of the only two sets: yes there are negative sides to dramatic exists but not THAT many] with muddy paws like Dilli pooches), scratching two eyed cat at monastery guest house (where I pay 110 for a double bed room and which isn't as gloomy as I thought with the CFL on)[I am yet to meet the one eyed one that younger-wiser friend informed me about while recommending the place], walks down roads devoid of much but the occasional auto or traveller (and once a rosy faced biker dude on his harley davidson or summat who gave me a wide grin in all his pierced, ponytailed, plait-bearded glory) or frequent worshippers fingering their prayer beads, meeting Ludo and Melissa and weird coconut lady and her unfaze-able cocker spaniel Mallika and all this and more are the highlights of my second day here.

The walk to Dharamkot and the pizza at Out of the Blue were pretty good. So was sitting there, the only customer, looking at the stunning view as rain drummed on the tin roof and occasionally splattered in pools here and there and reading Traitor Ghosh. It was just fine and la-dee-dah as can be. Before, this villain from the Ekta Kapoor serials came in with his hyper faux biker friend. No I mean it: one of the dudes who came in, acts as villains in many K serials. And of course he stared at me willing me to acknowledge and I gave him the cold treatment I mete out to Bangla serial wannabe starlets at Dolly's or Nandan: complete and utter and chilly ignoring. But to his credit he was the strong silent type. Whereas his friend had verbal diarrhoea. Coupled with the most annoying voice and diction. your basic North Indian asshole vocab, which is basically some insignificant words thrown in b/w 'DUUUUDE'. Thank gawd I had nearly finished pizza so walked away (and the walk down[hill] too so much lesser time) and back into Herbal Tea Point with Melissa and Mallika and Indo-Brit lady (who thinks Tata (not TATA, you get me?) is such a venerated figure and asks what kind of company is Greenpeace *eyeroll*) and soon Ludo(vico) from Bordeaux. Lounged around, had cinnamon tea, stared at them while they had roasted chicken and baked potatoes (including the dog), bitched and gossiped about BP oil spill, online activism, how Obama's advisors include ex Merryl Lynch chiefs, the expenses in Europe, the wine in Himachal, yadda yadda.

I think I might have bed bug bites on my arm. And mosquitoes are biting me now, in here. I have a veg and tofu fried rice waiting for me at dinner at 9 back at monastery. Think I'll go and read some more T.Ghosh now (River of Smoke, if you were wondering).

Tomorrow seems promising with Tibetan man (who has sold sweaters in Midnapore) assuring me his wife will make me custom made woollen socks, my size, my choice of colour. Tada!

And toodles.

Hulo

2011-05-23T13:52:00.003+05:30

Life is truly beyond our grasp. Once it's gone nothing remains: no blood tear sweat and it slips by even beyond memory. And today it might bother me, this transience, this fear of (from past experiences I know it's true) not remembering. But in a month even this will not remain.
Maybe it is just me. Another might have gone star gazing and asked--কোথায় তুমি ছোট বৌঠান, কোথায় তুমি ছোট বৌঠান.
Do many deaths make one hard hearted? Greedy for scraps of happiness and in equal measure miserly and suspicious of happiness? Maybe. Today I might say I have lost so many loved ones, already, at twenty six. But would that be true? As every new death recalls past losses in a procession of those 'barnacle deads' I realise that I've missed one here or there with a start. Too long ago, to recall their personal quirks.
When Polau died aged three months I mourned like I had never before or after. At the same time knowing full well that three months is all too short a time and soon, now, it'll be three years since 10 June 2008. He remains the symbol of grief for me, but do I really grieve for him anymore? Is all grief then a parody of itself? A symbolic expiation of the guilt of continuing to live, remaining alive.
And after all, one would say, and I would agree there's a difference between loving a human and loving a beast after all. Not quantitative for me at least, but you cannot go to school or share a beer with a cat. And that's that.

[It might have been good to end in a fashionably bitter, cynical note as above. But Hulo has been with us for seven long years. The discrete-est gentleman there ever was. At least post neutering.
He'd become fairly quiet and kept himself to himself in the last two years, I guess. I wasn't there for the last two years. So I don't know if quietening down meant becoming less demanding about affection.

I don't miss home. At all. The idea of a home I created for myself appeals to me much more. But I will miss the feeling of cats lying all over and around me, over and under the woollen blanket in winter. And Hulo, as always inbetween my feet, ever the most sensitive sleeper so that if I happened to even think of changing position instead of lying rigidly on my back all night he'd jump off and go, silently reproachful. I loved him very very much.]

I got

2011-04-13T13:02:00.000+05:30

the April blues. About three days in advance?

...

2011-03-30T11:57:00.000+05:30

I only turn to writing here when something's bothering me. Maybe it's time to close this chapter and move on.

I am not sure what this post is going to be about/Roaming in Latakia

2011-02-10T00:17:00.003+05:30

But then this midnight hour seems particularly apposite for unburdening myself (to a small, intended, known audience of whose inquiring eyes I'm ever so conscious) [and perhaps, one reason for this tremendously parenthetical style, comes from that acute consciousness].

I should feel very sleepy. Not only because I slept late but today I've read quite a lot (interesting how the internet horizontally keeps expanding your 'knowledge peripheries' or the number of tabs open at any given point: so that you keep leaping from one link to another).

Just wrote back to Utrecht telling them I won't take a 375 euros worth online test to be (fully)eligible (my acceptance in programme is conditional as yet) for the course. I am upset at all the wavering indecisions am feeling. But this post is definitely not going to be about inner turmoils re future path in the life of Madhura C (in spite of all my professions about caste markers and honest desire to shed a surname which bears caste marks as well as traces of obnoxious patriarchy and patriliny, just my first name seems kind of incomplete).

I'm writing to calm me down. I thought I might write about Gaza/caravan, in accordance with the demands of the latest addition to my sphere of (5) followers.

Hmm. I'll start with my encounter with Abid, the politely wiley cab driver in Latakia, Syria. I was getting tired of sitting at the hotel, tired of feeling depressed, homesick, annoyed and decided to go out on my own and explore the city while also posting my post cards and Swara's (none of which have as yet reached the adressees). I had borrowed Swappie's iPod. So I walked briskly down from La Liche towards the port, and the nearest Post Office. My steps matching in rhyme with Hotei Tomayasu's bass guitar, Mediterranean breeze ruffling my hair, and the blue-blue sunny skies against which the beautiful green trees on the road divider were outlined. Perfect setting.

So I reached the PO where I was shown a cubicle and after much shrugging, incomprehensible words and waving of hand on part of both the lady in charge and me, a helpful gentleman walked up to us and offered to translate what she was saying in broken English.

The import was that I'd have to go the main post office, near the railway station to post these postcards. Outside, I tried hailing a cab: he didn't understand post office or railway station and I decided not to take chance with someone who didn't understand me at all. The next cabbie (was Abid) spoke to me in perfect English and I was as happy as can be. We chatted on general topics: Abid telling me how many tourists preferred to ride with him for his proficiency in several foreign language including German and Kurdish. He hastily added that he had to learn Kurdish because he also happened to the principal of a technical college somewhere where there were a lot of vKurds. So it was a necessity: unlike his command over other European languages which he taught himself out of the sheer pleasure of being able to speak such exalted tongues (okay that's a bit overly harsh: he didn't really say that last bit about exalted languages).

He asked me what I did and whether I was alone in the city. A bit reluctant to talk about the caravan (I wonder why now: everybody else used that as a starting point to gauge people's opinions about the issue), I said I was here with friends and just wanted to get out of the hotel and see the city on my own. So he kept saying I was very brave and young girls shouldn't travel alone, yadda yadda conventional wisdom reserved for 'young girls' like me.

We reached the central PO in no time and in spite of my insistence that he leave, he said he'd wait till i was done ("Don't worry about the money" he said and also charged me about 5 Syrian pounds more than the meter or perhaps more since I cannot read Arabic and the Syrian pound coins don't have any roman figures on them). So I went up and found the appropriate cubicle and fixed about 17 huge (and beautiful) stamps to the letters with aid of another non-English speaking, bleached hair PO employee. This took some time after which i was gestured to drop them into a rectangular slit (quite like a largish piggy bank) in the table that I was writing on. I did, with quite a lot of misgivings (and I was right: none ever reached anyone).

I went down, hoping he was gone so I could explore the city without any mediation by officious, polite and ultimately rather nice in an annoying way cabbies. But there he was and opened the door. I considered asking me to take me to a cafe and inviting him over for a cup of coffee. But I was hungry and didn't want to spend too much (don't rem,ember if this was after the--ahem!--phone bill fiasco) so I asked him to take me back to the hotel (where I could have free but same, boring lunch where everything tasted of vinegar). On the way back we passed a church and Abid kept saying my wife would be very happy if you came for Christmas. Please come for dinner on Christmas (his daughter was studying in Jordan). That being about the 30th of December I was slightly confused, concluding he must mean the New Year's. So I asked him (he kept talking about Christmas: I wasn't following all of what he said: was too busy looking at the first residential area in the city we were passing through) whether he was a Christian. And he immediately exclaimed and said ohnonono! he was a Muslim for sure. By this time we reached the hotel. I didn't have change and gave him a bigger note (all of which he kept: about 20 Syrian pounds/Indian rupees more than what was on the meter).

Well, that's all about Abid. If anyone ever ends up in Latakia do look him up. I have his number if you need it.

Writing is such strange exercise. As I wrote I could recall it so vividly: the streets off La Liche in Latakia that some of us would walk in the nights, looking at Christmas lights in closed, darkened shop fronts as we walked on singing everything from Rabindrasangeet to Jamaica Farewell loudly into the night and near empty streets. The walks to the beach/sea front in the evenings where the two pre teenage/early teenaged boys (selling Syrian street food) would talk to us without any of us understanding anything and then offering us free fafa beans (alas! too tart like rest of Syrian cuisine) and refusing to take money. The pavement ducks: who were always to be found roosting at the edge of the pavement. The lobby of the hotel where everybody sat for hours (occasionally whole nights) with their laptops occasionally talking to each other, mostly sharing stuff, exchanging tricks to bypass the filters, listening to music in very low volume to bypass unwanted attention from the 'police'.

Suddenly I wish I had been feeling a bit more positive about the whole thing so I could've enjoyed it a bit more. But then, that could hardly have been possible, since one of the greatest source of discomfort/annoyance was the restrictions on free communication with a few of my favourite people in the caravan =)

YouTube - Helsinki Complaints Choir

2011-02-05T15:48:00.000+05:30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATXV3DzKv68

Thanks to Linus

The hours for once they passed slowly, unendingly by

2011-01-28T15:07:00.006+05:30

I like today. How lazy and slow it is. I can hear the sound of the tap running in a thin sliver in the bathroom. I like the new house (water problems notwithstanding). The orange and red curtains and the warm winter sunlight filtering through in the living room, the superfast oven (burns muffin at 150 degrees post 5 minutes), the verandah running all around, the gate at the back through which the cat slipped in to sleep inside the cardboard box.

I miss days like this. I hadn't realised that. Days where the world makes no demands on you. You can cook, be lazy, indulge in all sorts of decorative whimsies (cutting photos out from Time Out and pasting them on the walls of my room), upload photos on Facebook, and so on...

I guess I miss being alone. Talking to myself while traipsing across the room (and three large rooms here!). Blowing the dust off the gitobitan cover and opening a random page (and what delight to find a known, familiar song!) and singing till voice became hoarse. I remember not being able to sleep one night in Katwaria and singing through the night till dawn!

Days like this where i'm content knowing everyone's doing their stuff out in this busy world when I have all the time to sit writing a blog post while the immersion rod heats up my bucket of water...

PS: Nearly forgot I had fever. oh and rum in hot water with honey and lemon is yum! besides being a good substitute for paracetamol.

Consufed

2011-01-14T11:22:00.004+05:30

I haven't been calling people up for fear that they'll ask me about the trip. The standard question: So, how was your trip? completely flummoxes me. So how was my trip? Everytime I try to think unease wells up inside me and myriad images flash through my mind. Am I unable to judge because there is so much experience tightly packed within a relatively short span of time? To say just good or bad about this whole complex of experience-sights, smells, sounds, tastes, emotions-seems so reductive. So how can I sum it up for people without going into the intricate details of all those days, nights, sunrises, sunsets, bus rides, lunches and dinners? Is there a necessity of summing up at all? Should I dismiss the question with a short and sweet lie? I remember how I would write, in my journal, that all my days are merging into one long day of bus rides and tiredness.
But if I close my eyes now I can see so many different landscapes: the arid deserts of South Iran, the first rain after crossing Qom, the green, wide sidewalks of Esfahan, the news stands in Tehran, the snow on the way to Tabriz, the spaghetti dinner for veggies at Bazargan, the vanilla and choco chip ice cream landscape on the way to Van, the completely boring brown bare muddy fields on the way to Diyarbakr, the first plate of hummous and baba ganoush in Syria, the orange groves by the road side on the way to Saladin Fort, the first glimpse of the Mediterranean...I could go on.
I hope I can go back to most of these places and live for a while. Then I would surely have more than just fleeting glimpses of the landscape.
Maybe I immersed myself too much in the details to have a bigger picture. I'm trying to think what I felt after coming back from Kashmir. No doubt something similar: how to concentrate so much of little details into a broad overview. But then it was diluted by other concerns. And it is true that I was much less involved on this trip than I was in Kashmir. So I haven't come back with strong convictions. But that's a good thing I think. But I hope I have strong ties-I think I do. I really really feel a very strong urge to go back especially to Iran and Palestine. I hope I can, soon.

Gaza

2011-01-05T20:46:00.002+05:30

It's a lovely sunny day out there. Unfortunately, all of us who didn't go on the official conflict touristy exercise are hogging the laptops. So am sitting on the balcony of our posh hotel in a wicker chair: the sun warming my feet and the chilly sea breeze blowing through my hair. The mediterranean lies before me. The view to my left is obstructed by a mosque under construction and on the right the horizon ends abruptly to hazy structures the most prominent of them a gray phallic chimney belching white smoke into clear blue palette of the sky. That's Israel. That's the port to which Mavi Marmara was towed to. There's a funny kind of justice in Israel being on the right, at least on my right. In front of me the blue sea in its many shades of blue (mostly aqua marine and sea green: two colours that I didn't know existed outside a fancy paint box) stretches till it vanishes in a haze. I am hypnotised by the rhythmic breaking of the surf as it breaks on the rocky shores. There must be many underlying rocks for in the distance the deep blue is regularly flecked by sparkling white as waves encounter rocky outcrops hidden to the surface. The narrow stretch of sandy beach is dirty, as we found out on our walk last evening. Its strwen with all kinds of refuse, mostly plastic. Also, spreading their narrow concrete arms (at right angles to each other) are what seems to be two narrow, dirty concrete roads. The edges are uneven and dirty as concrete chunks and protruding iron rods lay rusting and mossy for the waves to crash against in foamy sprays. These must be the remnants of a dock. The rotting concrete carcass one more reminder of Israel and the ongoing conflict. Jihad, one of our guides (a third year student of English at the local Islamic University) tells us bombed and damaged roads can't be repaired due to shortage of building materials because of the siege. That must be why the mosque lies unfinished. Jihad studies Animal Farm and Death of a Salesman and says capital punishment is just because it satisfies the basic human urge for revenge. He's 22.

Why I'm Not So Fond of the Army

2010-10-29T12:27:00.003+05:30

I came across this on FB:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=484806376150&id=1100220111&ref=mf

I confess I didn't read through the whole thing. Certain phrases caught my attention* and that was sufficient to goad me into writing this.

This is not a theoretical exercise: I'm not very well versed with theories etc. It's an account of certain personal experiences: in Dilli and in Srinagar.

Before my two days long trip to Kashmir in April 2010, I was looking for catteries (cat creches, sort of) to leave my cat. I found a rather expensive but quite good one near my home. The people seemed genuinely fond of animals and the space was like a fairly good sized room. So I went to drop of my cat and gave them detailed instructions about her food habits. The whole process was mediated through the person in charge, a gracious, suave old gentleman: some retired Major of the army. He asked me where I worked, where my parents lived etc (as is the wont of all Indian people who are slightly older than you). He expressed surprise that my parents let me go--a single girl and an only child--out in the big, bad(ass) world (the infamous capital, no less) to earn my living. He also asked me what kind of surname Chakraborty was. He'd had a Bengali friend in the army called Mukherjee who'd come up with very apt truisms about how brainy brahmins were (I don't recall exactly what or why Mukherjee proved his superiority but I do remember being appalled at being identified as kindered soul: a fellow Bengali brahmin)
So it transpired I worked for a small NGO and that I was going to Kashmir the next day. The first thing he asked me on hearing that was "Are you not afraid of Muslims?" I don't quite remember what I said, mumbled something vague, ike "er...no" I suppose. I was repulsed but at the same time did not want it to turn it to an ugly confrontation: my priority was my cat who couldn't defend herself against neglect or deliberate cruelty. I wanted to piss off no one. Anyway, in the middle of this Sajad (an oviously Muslim name), my colleague from Kashmir called. That seemed to stem the flow of anti-Muslim talk from him. Then he started on Kashmir. He said something along the lines of it's not just Kashmir, but also Jammu and, I added, Ladakh. At which he seemed incredibly pleased and patted me affectionately on the back. I was trying to escape before I had to hear more invective against which I'd have to steel myself and not respond. But there was, alas! no escaping. He started saying (not the exact words, but as close to them as I can remember): What these stupid people have started: Azaadi, Azaadi. We give them so much more money than our own states. Ungrateful bastards! [last two words are an exact quote]
His face (that of a fairly handsome, pleasant North Indian man) was contorted in hatred and fury. So much so, that he permitted himself to utter the "b" word in front of me.
Then he kept insisting that I take numbers of people high up in the bureaucracy and Army in Srinagar because he knew them quite well and they can be of help. I mumbled something about there being colleagues in Srinagar who can help and made my escape.
I felt horribly guilty and disturbed at not contradicting him.
And above all, I felt he was very nice very courteous to me and that I sort of cheated him into behaving that way with me. What if I'd come out and said what I really felt about Kashmir, about women living on their own and working and not generally needing muscular men to stand guard, about "being a Brahmin", etc? But maybe he would still have been indulgent towards me: after all I'm a featherbrained young female and so easy to dismiss.

I discovered how huge a coward I was when I lived in Srinagar from late July to early September in 2009. I'd always known I'm a bit chicken: especially when it came to heights, high waves, darkness after watching a scary movie--you know, scary things. But the true extent of it became obvious after I started living in Srinagar. I would chafe against curfew (after night fell, which, luckily in July, was after eight) imposed by people in charge of my accommodation (first in Saida Kadal and then in Rajbagh) but would feel eminently unsafe in the relatively empty streets (and completely emptied of female pedestrians) patrolled by CRPF and with men giving me surprised glances (maybe because I was a youngish looking tourist out after dark or maybe because I was a woman out after dark: I don't know which). Not that I should have been scared of the CRPF-wallas. They were more concerned than my worried parents about my safety. The second day of my stay, I was out with a Kashmiri friend who was showing me around the city center, answering my queries (I didn't know what poplars or willows actually looked like before I went to Kashmir. I remember thinking so these are those almost mythical trees peopling English literature!). We were passing by a State Bank Branch near Pratap Park, heavily guarded by barbed wires, sand bunkers and armed CRPF men. I just remembered I needed to find out where the state bank ATM was ( I was the proud possessor of a brand new ATM/Debit card that I'd experimented with once before in JNU and instantly became the laughing stock of my friends because of my lack of atm/card savvy-ness). So I asked my friend, A, whether he knew. So we stopped on the pavement, and A pointed me to the direction of the atm. I was a little slow on the uptake (my sense of direction is appalling and often I have to think of which hand I write with before I can judge left and right) and a burly (CR)policeman intervened. I instantly cringed a bit internally and nervously mumbled something about ATM at which he imperiously waved his hand in the right direction. I was about to heave a sigh of relief when he started interrogating ( I cannot use any other word for it: it was brusque, business like and quite unfriendly if not hostile) my friend: how do you know her? where are you going? Then he turned to me and started what can only be called cross questioning:how did I know him etc. By this time my hands were quite clammy and I didn't know what could be counted against my friend or me and so just stuck to truth: my best friend was doing his PhD in the same US university with A. That seemed to calm him down or at least he gave the interrogation a rest (Kashmiris from US were, presumably, not as dangerous as Kashmiris living in Kashmir). He relaxed and started asking me where I was from and what I was doing in Kashmir. I, on the other hand, was not quite relaxed and was quite eager to be away from armed policemen who asked questions. I said I was a tourist and that I was from West Bengal. Instantly he became super friendly, A was completely ignored like he didn't exist and said he was practically my neighbour being from atna (yeah, South Calcutta sits right next to the capital of Bihar). I sort of nervously smiled and generally scarpered.
It would take me a few more interactions with jawans to understand how lonely they must be and also to perfect my safety-net plan. The safety net plan was required when even though being obviously non-Kashmiri and "Indian", I somehow managed to provoke the displeasure (or feared I had) of the armed personnel (doesn't work with the Kashmiri Police, I warn you). I would innocently widen my eyes and say "Yihan, aap me se koi, Bangal se nehi hai kya? Main Kalkatta se hoon." [excuse the bad Hindi] or words to that effect. It worked like magic every single time.

This started as a rant against militarism as an irrevocably right wing institution. And turned into my first account of any significant link on my Kashmir visit in July-September 2009. More installments upcoming.

*The political class, including the government and the supreme commander of the armed forces, the President of India, are not acting as even as missile after missile is being hurled at national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Scathing attacks, both overt and covert, on the armed forces are not an aberration, but are virtually becoming the norm in Indian democracy today.

The corridors of government, which should be responsible for keeping defence structures and pillars intact, are more or less either mute spectators or providing impetus to actors who are eroding the morale of the armed forces.

Transformation

2010-10-28T14:49:00.003+05:30

I cooked.
Bhetki Paturi (which I think must've tasted kind of bland)
Chhana-cheese-bread-cumin roundthings (fried) [greasy and bland]
Rajma (not bad. but used rajma masala: so cheating)
Raita (ok)
Shabur Panpod (really just fried them) [but it takes time to fry, even]
Fish Fry (just fried the stuff bought from CR Park)

Forgot to serve the ice cream with chocolate sauce. Forgot to buy any alcohol. But was giggly from Madera brought by S.

I don't know if I should regret the absence of photos or be glad I didn't enter FB as yet another cook-away-from-home-and-mar-haater-ranna.
Well, in the ultimate analysis I'm glad to be different: a cook who can't taste (some of the) stuff she cooks. And also, I'm glad to add, an occasional cook, stirring the pot when fancy strikes and when feeling particularly grateful for lemon tarts and pear wine =)

One Year

2010-10-26T13:12:00.002+05:30

So have completed a year of full time employment.
What a horrible time I was having last year.
This year, could have been bad, this time around (for entirely different reasons). But I'm being more pragmatic.
But I just went back and read some mails to concerned people from last year.
Augh! Just after very fake-formal exchange of birthday greetings and all.
Feeling kinda bitchy

Beware.
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

PS: No meditation on the nature of work or anything, as one can see. Hmm.

Be-zeee

2010-10-21T12:49:00.003+05:30

Life's full of activity right now. Maybe writing about it here will jinx it. But I don't care. I'm lovin' it!

And there's bound to be some great upcoming news-es. *happyface*

If only the internet was restored at home! *sadface*

Bangla

2010-10-15T14:38:00.005+05:30

Ami onekdin chhobi tuli ni. Jodio aajkal hantchhi prochur. Ki kore bojhai, ki je ekta anando achhe, eker por ek pa phele egiye jaowar modhye. Brisk footsteps following in time with this rhythm inside of your head. Peshi-r chhondoboddho norachora onubhober ananodo, rokter bere otha taler shonge paye cholar chhonder miler anando. Thik bojhate parbo na. Ekta onubhuti. Byas, oitukui.

Shobtai toh perception, tai na. Onubhuti ebong interpretation niye-i amader jogot toiri. Ebong tai protyekti byaktigoto jogot alada. Tai exactly bojhano shokto. Kintu onyer anander onubhuti shonge nijeke miliye niye, ba melabar cheshta korleo anando hoy.

Anando-ta ektu inadequate. Joy. Yes, that's more like it. Joy and happiness: bangla-te dutoi toh anando. When you are alone with yourself, ektu eka, then you notice the smallest things. Boddo bhalolagar, boddo mayar jinish. Shiulir gondho, chhatimer gondho, kukurer bhije naak, beraler mota lyaj, sheet-er roddur, lajuk hashi, phutonto tele jire bhajar gondho, pasher ghore backstreet boys, JNU OAT-te boshe rod pohano, ghumer agey rabindrasangeet ba ghazal-er resh, Dilli-r raat duto-r aakash, shoddyo roddure shukono jamar gorom om, rongin kancher khyalna bati, printed cotton fabrics, People Tree, onek chapa kanna-r jol

Flying, Terminal Three, Carbon Footprint (and by default: CWG)

2010-10-09T09:05:00.005+05:30

Yesterday was the second time I used Terminal three to board an Air India flight to Kolkata connecting another flight from NY to Delhi. Last Sunday I arrived at the same terminal via an AI flight connecting a Delhi-London flight. This time around I was prepared for the completely carpeted floors, the duty free shop advertising the chance to win a Volkswagen Beetle with the purchase of two bottles Chivas Regal, perfumes by Chanel, make-up by Dior, wines, chocolates, etc. But I still wasn't prepared for the waiting lounge with Haagen Daz (*snort*) parlours, various posh type eateries and clothes and accessories shop that I've never heard of, and (wait for it) a Delhi Daredevils Sports Bar. I'm sorry I can't describe THAT: you'll have to see it to believe it. Then I spotted the vending machines: just like in bideshi sitcoms and movies. You feed money punch in the code and your bottle of beer (or Tropicana apple juice: highly overpriced at that) rolls down. Well my bourgeois instincts kicked in and I was able to coax a certain vending machine to accept my 50 rupee note and cough out a juice (priced 22). And then it promptly stole 18 bucks, returning insufficient change. That's capitalism for you.

40,000 people have been displaced due to the CWG. And probably more. A friend asked what's wrong with the CWG: it is, after all, the greatest sporting event in the country in more than two decades. This is a sort of attempt at an answer:

A city where Taimoornagar slums exist, the Terminal 3 and the CWG are abominations. According to Calcutta newspapers more than three thousand beggars (of Bengali origins) have been sent back to the state (of WB). All the dogs in, around and near the venues have been dumped at various NGOs (notably FRIENDICOES) who're staggering with thousands of new mouths to feed. Hoardings and bamboo bushes have been planted around the slums which couldn't be demolished to hide them from view.
In a country where a woman has to walk 5 kilometers to the nearest hospital after the onset of labour (Baramulla), where a fifteen year old Muslim girl has to drop out school because powers that be in the village do not want her to continue and threaten her with acid bulbs everytime she steps out of her house (Nandigram), where a man can get away with kicking a teenage beggar girl repeatedly in her abdomen with his shiny leather shoes (Howrah station), where a woman is arrested and force fed through her nose for following Gandhian methods of protesting against the brutality unleashed on her people more than half a century ago, the CWG with all its glitter is something we cannot be complacent about.

Phew! When did this turn into such a righteous rant on CWG? I meant to write about other things. Like my escalating carbon foot print. Between last Sunday and this Monday I would have been on a plane thrice, back and forth b/w Dilli and Cal.
Anywho, no denying that it's lovely to be on a plane at night. A friend had said Dilli looks gorgeous but Kolkata looks like village with a few blinking lights. Well, I can testify that that is not true. Delhi is like huge megapolis: glittering lights for miles and fireworks (probably over some CWG venue). But Kolkata, oh! It was like a very small, very intricately woven carpet. With delicate filigrees of golden capillaries (as opposed to the wide arteries of Dilli) in no discernible pattern: like some inscrutable divine plan! The jumble of tiny, crooked roads and the lights of houses, cars was sometimes obscured by thick, rolling, dark clouds which seemed, as we flew above them, to be illuminated from within. It was like watching a Nat Geo programme on thunderclouds which are sometimes illumined from within by lightening bursts! Bee-you-tee-fool, in short.

LSD

2010-10-04T12:43:00.002+05:30

Love:

Oreeebaba runnnnn!
OR
Dil hi to hai na sang-o-khisht dard se na bhar aaye kyon
Royenge hum hazaar bar koi humein sataaye kyon

Sex:

I have realised, that it is possible to love the idea of having sex rather than love having sex

Dhoka:

October is a treacherous month
OR
Self Deception is the worst kind of deception

PS: I quite like the film actually

Words of wisdom

2010-09-27T23:21:00.002+05:30

Dengue is not much fun.

On Blogging from a Moving Train

2010-09-01T22:10:00.001+05:30

It's cool!
Yo mun!!

Abar Mash Khanek Badey

2010-08-30T14:30:00.002+05:30

In Dilli. Trip to Bihar, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Kashmir in the offing (or, OFF perhaps).
Returned from Beeg Faat Tamil wedding in Pollachi with mild food poisoning. Aggravated same by eating at Kiecha (JNU). Missed office on Friday. Memory of the weekend a beet blurry...Oh yes cleaned up on Saturday for Ani's arrival on Sunday (now it's all back to being the same mess).
Oh yes. The biggest news update: a domesticated me (my shiny new avatar) fighting fungi and dampness armed with colleague's (borrowed) hair drier and istiri (mine own dear one). So I have scrubbed fungi off with sandpaper, rubbed anti fungal powder lovingly on walls and blow dried and ironed damp bits of the dewal. I've also boiled food diligently in the rice cooker and steamed packets and packets (more plastic alas!) of frozen sweet corn and served them with butter, beetnoon, dash of lemon, chat masala and pepper cheese spread (not always mixed together). I've also washed nearly 40% of the (humongous) unwashed heap of assorted garments in the past three days (when the sun deigned to show it's face sporadically) with the result now that there's no more water left in the tank. Last time this happened was about a month back when the MCD decided to not supply water to my area for four days straight. Bloody annoying, what.
In the other news I love having so many people over at my place. And because of these Calcutta/America wallahs, I'm getting to meet Dilliwalahs who are generally too busy to meet other Dilliwallahs.
I still haven't been to Mehrauli, Kashmiri Gate, Purana Quila, Lodi Gardens, Siri Fort, Travellers' Cafe. But I've been to Hauz Khas Village and Gunpowder: mee-oh-my!
Also, who hasn't seen Sita Sings the Blues, yet? Go die!

Kashmir-Kolkata

2010-07-24T22:36:00.003+05:30

Dear Jonogon,
Tonight I can write the happiest lines like: Long Live Revolution (in our very own 'shukhi' candle-lit way)!
I know it's easy to become stagnant and self-congratulatory. But this is a beginning: a great beginning!
Cheers to all those who made it possible(you know who you are)!
Love, love
Udbooddho-in-Dilli

Books

2010-07-03T17:16:00.006+05:30

I can't believe I didn't write about this earlier. But the greatest new book I've read for a while is The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing. It's the kind of book that gives me hope and validates my bumbling existence. It's a collection of short stories centred around one main character (except one story) which deals with love and relationships. Awesome I say! Soooo liberating in a lot of ways. Especially when this crazy drama is going on in my family: my cousin's getting married. She's three years older and works in Bangalore. But now my parents (cannot belieeeeeve it) are talking about marriage, MY marriage. Un-fucking-believable!

I bought 900 bucks' worth of bangla books, ekhan theke. Daryaganj is such a blessing in Dilli. I bought The Girls Guide for a meagre 20 bucks. It was almost absolutely untouched. Also Midlands (Aurobindo Market in Hauz Khas and South Ex) with it's year round 30% discount.

Also bought and read a whole lot of kid lit. Leon and the Spitting Image and The Diary of the Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules were the latest I read and were pretty awesome too. The first in the Wimpy Kid series I bought at the second hand bookstores off Golpark.

Read through most of Ei Mrityu Upotakya Amar Desh Na, collection of poems by Nabarun Bhattacharya, yesterday.

Ma-r shorir better, thank god. Ekhon phera niye shomoshya what with the bandhs and all: no tickets =/

PS: Since I've read The Girls Guide, I've been dying to tell someone one of the last lines from the book:

We're just two mayflies mating on a summer night.

Unfortunately, there IS no one I can say this to. =/

Dukhi Manush, Tomar Bhalo Hok

2010-06-26T22:55:00.000+05:30

Do not assume that she who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. Her life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, she would never have been able to find these words.

~Rilke

Kashmir, Guilt

2010-06-23T12:34:00.003+05:30

I really want to write something on Kashmir. It feels like a betrayal not to. But my understanding of the situation has become more problematised since the first visit spanning nearly seven weeks. Would it be honest to simplify? It is necessary to simplify, because I'd necessarily writing for other (ignorant) Indians. It's just laziness perhaps. So much to do, so little time: yet again.

Then there's that other paralysing guilt as well. Wrong doing personally perpetrated. Shit! Bloody Indians. Bloody Indian Hindus. Bloody Brahminical supremacy.

Domesticated Animal, Among Other Things

2010-06-22T11:13:00.003+05:30

Yesterday I got two magnets from People Tree. I've also made a list of things that I need to get which includes things like shoe rack, internet connection and cupboard along with wine glass, ceramic cups and lamp shades from Janpath.
=D

I hate that three of my friends are in the mountains: Kathmandu, McLeodganj, Satauli.
=(

I've to clean out my fridge. Wash clothes. Fold washed clothes in a civilized fashion. Fold up the bed in a way becoming of a 25 years old responsible person. Buy groceries. All this and more apart from the 1500 words introduction to queer movement in India. All of this before Saturday when I leave for ye old Calcutta.
When I come back armed with cooler, I shall start inviting people over. At least, I want to.

Life

2010-06-21T16:56:00.003+05:30

is strange, confusing, beautiful.

Sometime last week I had three creeps creeping me out within the space of half an hour. I'm glad that is over. I was waiting with bated breathe for Dilli to spring its nasty, most-warned-about, surprises on me. For eight months. Phew!

Yet, again sometime last week I returned by buses from Lodi road, walking confusedly around ring road at about 9. There were sundry men (working class, the kind who're aways supposed to be eve teasing and giving you what you never ask for) loitering around. I was rather scared. Nothing happened. I walked back home from Adhchini. One stretch has defunct street lamps. Some men, some of them in groups, walked past me. Nothing happened. But its difficult to say the same about Calcutta. The last few times I've been there something has always happened. Nothing major, nothing creeping out like in Dilli the other day, but fucking annoying.

I don't know bus routes in Dilli. I depend on the kindness of strangers at bus stops. From the garrulent old man who regretted my not having a bus pass to the shy boy (around 20?) with a stutter who told me that I'd have to cross the road from where this bus dropped me to get a bus to Katwaria Sarai, they have been exceptionally nice to me.

Then there are the autowallahs. Except for the white haired creep (Who sang some English songs with the words 'baby' and 'love' featuring very prominently in it) who drove me to Aurobindo Market and addressed me as 'guria', I've not really had a bad experience. I even met a Bangali autodriver the other day. He's from Digha. Working in Dilli for the past 15 years. There was the driver who drove me nuts with his detailed question about dams (constructed on rivers and seas? do they catch fish there? what kind of fish? how come they have a dam in West Bengal and not in Allahabad where he comes from? etc.etc.) and the driver who very helpfully dropped me near my door because it was late (and then proceeded to spoil the camaraderie by insisting on knowing my caste).

Why has this city, with such a horrible reputation, been so nice to me? Is some impending calamity waiting to unfold? In the meanwhile, I can only nod my head in pretended agreement when people say how unfriendly the people, how unsafe the roads for women, etc.

I do, I do like living on my own. I'm lovin' it!

Bikel, Hawa, Humayun Ka Makbara

2010-06-04T15:29:00.004+05:30

Yesterday afternoon in Dilli was lovely: rain-cloud-darkened sky (no rain alas!) and breeze. Went to Humayun's Tomb. Walked around a bit. Then climbed up to the terrace(?). Stuck my nose up at the boorish bunch of visitors (everyone) with their chunnu-munnu-chnya-bhnya-s who were making enough noise to bring 'out' the dead. Then sat on the edge of terrace, looked down at the gardens (lovers lying on each others laps, idiot people splashing in the fountain and taking ridiculous snaps with their cell phones and labourers-mostly Bangalis-restoring/destroying the monument) through the sand stone frieze and sang (pretty beshuro-ly) rabindra sangeet and lalon songs.

Later at Inayat Khan's dargah I thought I heard feline sneezes. A and S were dismissive. But sure enough, there emerged a black kitten, a ginger kitten and their tortoiseshell mom from behind the potted plants. It's hard to deceive a feline afficiando of my stature, na? Except that they all ran away =(

Dhusssala!

2010-06-01T14:08:00.003+05:30

Dur chhai
Ki je chai
Kichchhu bhallagena

Cal na Dilli
Prem na khilli
Kichhui bujhte parina

Chhora-ye chhora-ye
Chhoriye pore, hridoy chhorey
Kabbyi- baki thakena

Dukkho eto
Kake bolbo
Online-o keu ashe na

Fresh Discoveries

2010-05-31T14:16:00.003+05:30

It's raining in love

 I don't know what it is,
but I distrust myself
when I start to like a girl
a lot.

It makes me nervous.
I don't say the right things
or perhaps I start
to examine,
evaluate,
compute
what I am saying.

If I say, "Do you think it's going to rain?"
and she says, "I don't know,"
I start thinking: Does she really like me?

In other words
I get a little creepy.

A friend of mine once said,
"It's twenty times better to be friends
with someone
than it is to be in love with them."

I think he's right and besides,
it's raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.
That's all taken care of.

BUT

if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
"Do you think it's going to rain?"
and I say, "It beats me,"
and she says, "Oh,"
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think: Thank God, it's you, baby, this time
instead of me.

-- Richard Brautigan

How a Cat Was Annoyed and a Poet Was Booted        

A poet had a cat.
There is nothing odd in that-
(I _might_ make a little pun about the _Mews_!)
But what is really more
Remarkable, she wore
A pair of pointed patent-leather shoes.
And I doubt me greatly whether
E'er you heard the like of that:
Pointed shoes of patent-leather
On a cat!

His time he used to pass
Writing sonnets, on the grass-
(I _might_ say something good on _pen_ and _sward_!)
While the cat sat near at hand,
Trying hard to understand
The poems he occasionally roared.
(I myself possess a feline,
But when poetry I roar
He is sure to make a bee-line
For the door.)

The poet, cent by cent,
All his patrimony spent-
(I _might_ tell how he went from _verse_ to _werse_!)
Till the cat was sure she could,
By advising, do him good.
So addressed him in a manner that was terse:
"We are bound toward the scuppers,
And the time has come to act,
Or we'll both be on our uppers
For a fact!"

On her boot she fixed her eye,
But the boot made no reply-
(I _might_ say: "Couldn't speak to save its _sole_!")
And the foolish bard, instead
Of responding, only read
A verse that wasn't bad upon the whole.
And it pleased the cat so greatly,
Though she knew not what it meant,
That I'll quote approximately
How it went:-

"If I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree"-
(I _might_ put in: "I think I'd just as _leaf_!")
"Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough"-
Well, he'd plagiarized it bodily, in brief!
But that cat of simple breeding
Couldn't read the lines between,
So she took it to a leading
Magazine.

She was jarred and very sore
When they showed her to the door.
(I _might_ hit off the door that was a _jar_!)
To the spot she swift returned
Where the poet sighed and yearned,
And she told him that he'd gone a little far.
"Your performance with this rhyme has
Made me absolutely sick,"
She remarked. "I think the time has
Come to kick!"

I could fill up half the page
With descriptions of her rage-
(I might say that she went a bit too fur!)
When he smiled and murmured: "Shoo!"
"There is one thing I can do!"
She answered with a wrathful kind of purr.
"You may shoo me, and it suit you,
But I feel my conscience bid
Me, as tit for tat, to boot you!"
(Which she did.)

_The Moral_ of the plot
(Though I say it, as should not!)
Is: An editor is difficult to suit.
But again there're other times
When the man who fashions rhymes
Is a rascal, and a bully one to boot!

-- Guy Wetmore Carryl

Parents eye roll

2010-05-25T11:08:00.003+05:30

Matridebi Europe theke ashiya-i shuri hoiya giyachhen:

Tomay ingriji porano ta eto boro bhul hoyechhe...Ami bhebechhilam jadabpurer ingriji department amader shomoykar Presidency-r ingriji department er moton: kintu shei shomoy-o nei, shei lokjon-o nei...Kotogulo usrinkhol chhelemeyeder shathe mishe ekdom kharap hoye gechho...ityadi, ityadi.

Ke janey jwor hoyechhe bole kina, ektuo utshaho pelam na jhogra korar ba retaliate korar. In fact, ekhon besh moja lagchhe.

Fridge-ey moder botol dekhe proshno: Rum? Rum abar meyera khay naki? Kokhono toh shunini baba.

Idike jodi ter ti peten aro koto luchchami kora hoyechhe, tobei hoyechhilo aar ki!

Song: for me, from me

2010-05-17T23:38:00.002+05:30

When you try your best but you don't succeed
When you get what you want but not what you need
When you feel so tired but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse.

And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

And high up above earth or down below
When you're too in love to let it go
But if you never try you'll never know
Just what you're worth

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

...

2010-05-16T17:08:00.005+05:30

There's this hole within me. A sort of black hole that can suck all happiness and colour out of everything for me. My whole existence is geared towards keeping it at bay. Keeping it submerged somewhere in the unconscious.
Right now this hole has the shape of black cat. Throughout this week I was able to keep it away with laughter, conversations and alcohol with the last being the most potent agent in not just forgetting but bringing about the other two. Except in my dreams.
Then I found out about Choto Beral. I don't think about that at all. I can't. It's impossible to process so much pain: hers.
Loss makes you a bad person, an ugly person. Selfish, superstitious, nervous, angry, depressed. I know am not good company. Thanks to all my friends, especially S and J for helping me pretend like I was 'normal' and not a broken parody of something human throughout this last week.
I'm Midas, you see. Anything I touch, especially those that I love and those who are vulnerable, succumb to my golden, death-dealing touch. I should just stay away from non humans.

Amar chhotto kalo hariye jawa meye

2010-05-05T23:14:00.004+05:30

I will pretend that you are fine. I will make believe that you exist in some other happier world where people are nicer, kinder.
I have succeeded in ultimately getting out of bed and getting on with life. But what good did it do? You're not here.
I didn't spend a whole night clutching the wooden boards underneath the mattress. I didn't cry all night begging with some un-nameable thing to keep you from harm. I was unable to persuade a certain someone to take your photos off FB. Is that why you didn't come back?
Should I be proud of myself at dealing with things the adult way? In not ritualising grief in false pretense and misdirected attempts to commemorate you, forever (such a long time) in my heart? Should I be proud of being heartless? Why does no-one and nothing ever prove to me conclusively that my superstitions are just that: superstitions: baseless.
Come back darling. Prove me wrong. I can't continue to break my heart into a million tiny pieces. I miss you, heart wrenchingly. I can't ignore the forlorn toy mouse.
And what of when I go back to our house? Your house? Your paw prints and scratch marks? all over the place. I love you i love you i love you.
I wish I'd exhaust my capacity for loving. It hurts. I love and I lose and I hurt. Everytime. Come back and let me love. I'll wait.

vignettes

2010-04-28T22:59:00.002+05:30

that's life. so many little bits. already forgotten, half remembered. like things i come across and make a mental note to photograph. but invariably never do.

in the other news i'm pretty broke and deeply in debt. mostly to my parents to whom i owe more than a month's salary. as yet i have absolutely no furniture, very little crockery and no cooler.

enough scribbles. take a look

Oooof!

2010-03-19T12:50:00.003+05:30

Now that the floodgates are open once again (meaning i know individuals, organisations and doctors associated with animals) there are so many animals needing help here too.
On the surface of it, Dilli is peopled(?) by happy and fat (often obese) spayed dogs. CR Park, let me add, is animaled by very fat, tremendously gorgeous, horrendously disdainful and proud, and sometimes friendly (enough to allow cheeekpulling) cats.
But scratch the surface and there's everything from mange to cancer to UTI and most horrendous of all, abandoning of pets.
Friendicoes' FB page is filled with rehoming requests: owners urgently leaving country etc. Some i suspect really are: there are loads of diplomats here and stuff (but why can they not take the animals? EU has a quarantine or some such but nothing insurmountable, right? Especially when you know your pet might live the rest of his/her life in a cage). But there are perfectly lovely pedigree dogs (maney well natured) abandoned at the FRIENDICOES city shelter. And the cats. Most are pets: hardly any are feral and scared of you. It breaks my heart everytime. Horrible people. Horrible partial (to canines) people.
There are callous people even among animal lovers: one day when I was at Friendicoes, these two young white girls (like kids, 8/9 years old) came in with a 50 kg packet of processed animal food pellets. And were just randomly scattering all over. Kukurder bujhi nongra lage na? But they adopted a kitten (Tarjane hid away out of reach so they adopted the more friendly ginger kitten). Kintu ki callous. Ke jane chhana ta kemon achhe (ora naki ageo 2to billi adopt korechhe). Niye jabe kina nijeder deshey ke jane. Khub kharap. Aar jodi etoi boro bari, shobaike niye gelei pare. Shudhu shundor dekhte, cute chhanarai ki home deserve kore? There are so many slightly deformed but extremely loving and friendly dogs at the city shelter.
Oooof! Amar keno ekta farm house nei? Boro lok-ra erom bodmaish keno?
Hopefully aaj Pencho-r beshi mon kharap hobe na.

Wimmyn

2010-03-09T16:29:00.008+05:30

Ah. So today's like a flood of words.
This post is about Wimmyn. Wimmyn in my life. Wimmyn not in my life (ssssssssiiiighhhh).

Well, as I've realised only a short while back, It would have benefited me muchly had I been born in a man's body. You see, I only get along with gay men and straight wimmyn. Not only do I get along with them, I get along famously, I go on roguish romps (don't think dirty) with them. But I'd like to get it on sometimes, at least, you know.
However, that seems nearly impossible. So I only seem to get it on (and off) with moronic straight men. Don't misunderstand me, they're nice, sweet, decent through and through. But somehow, after spending some time in my presence, morph into some kind of horror (for me, not them or others close to them). The fault, I assure you gentle reader, is entirely mine. Mayhaps, they don't change, it's only a distortion of my perspectives. Yes, that's likely.

Anyway, I digress. So womyn. I have had entirely too many differences (ahem!) with some to wax eloquent like misogynist male poets. But I feel terribly lucky to have the wimmyn I have in my life. With the differences of opinion, in some cases.

So I raise the glass to my mum (innumerable differences and broken crockery) who has managed to fracture her arm a couple of days back and who won't be reading this blog. What kind of lady manages to take care of my five cats and five dogs (and often some more), is happy thinking I'm getting it on with my gay second cousin (in her defence, she didn't know he was gay), is unhappy that I refuse to think about marriage now that I'm 25, is happy if I 'think' about marriage but not get married until much later, is furious and heart broken having found a pregnancy test wrapper in my loo, has called me to ask me about her HS School Leaving Certificate yesterday, has fiercely fought for and taken care of various in-laws who were nothing if not hellishly shitty to her, has sacrificed her academic career for yours truly and yt's dad, and still manages to love me and pat the cats to sleep with the accompaniment of lullabyes? The answer must be some kinda super womun: super loving, super forgiving, loyal, courageous: my mum, in short.

Now to the womun who I want to be but can never be. I'm just glad that she let me in to her life, let me have a share in some part of her magical world. I can never express how I love her without sounding corny. Can't even begin to list the many many many million ways in which I owe her so much, owe her everything in fact. If I continue in this vein I might cause much embarrassment to the colleagues: men aren't equipped to deal with tears. Well, suffice it to say, my life has truly changed because of this perfect (even if completely loony) womun in so many wonderful ways. No guesses for who she might be. :D

Then there are girls from the past present and future. Where do I begin?

This year's love

The loony bunch who inhabit the office downstairs in Joo.
My BFF, the bestest gal-opal in the world, who's really a boy.
The one who can complete my sentences for me and with whom I can wallow in mutual misery (and occasionally fun, I admit).
The dog-loving one talking to whom is my only source of comfort in these troubled times.
The crazy indomitable ga(u)l who's opened her house, at much inconvenience to her, to me.
The young feminist who inspires me with hope :)
The little one who makes me worried and glad and happy and sad at the same time.
The oft revolutionary, sometimes self-possessed, always cigarette-smoking actress who's always there to point out when I'm rude and sympathise when I'm upset.
The one I admire above all, but seem to have fallen out with, somewhat.
The slightly younger ones with cameras and big hearts (especially when it comes to animals): they are the reason why I can sit tight knowing Foxy and the rest will be taken care of :)
Then there's the travelling, couch-surfing gypsy who I adore and admire.
And the kindly ones who are so far away yet never far from my thoughts. We have some great memories together (at least I think so!).

Right now I am in process of meeting new ones, and creating strong bonds of wimmyn-love. But that's part of the next-year's love series :)

Same day, another post

2010-03-09T15:56:00.003+05:30

I just realised how i've wasted the gift of an excellent state subsidised university education (INR 75 per month). I hate me.
I'm here wasting my time, getting fat, letting all those people down. I'm reading everything written by my contemporaneous peers and it just goes to show that i really know not a thing. Time to pull up the pants. [But then the pants stay put over the hips owing to the humongous bulge that my tummy has become].
Damn! Must do something about it. Must do something about everything.

In the other news: still quite worried about the canines. But having written to AC, feel oddly comforted. Ugh...my life now will be a perpetual push-pull between the two cities.

I must admit, against my better judgement, that I like Dilli. No use maligning it so much. I always have something to go to (film shows, heritage walks, qawwali concert, exhibitions, etc etc). Dilli then is a virtual And it provides for so much indignant blustering: the commonwealth games to the migrant labour scene. Dilli generously allows me to bash it to pieces. I won't be able to do that with Kolkata: i can only rip the collective skins off the powers who be in West Bengal. Here it's bash-fest all around: the bangalis, the punjabis, the officials, the rich kids, the ngo wallahs, the intellectuals, the feminists, the film critics--you name it, i can criticise them all. Hah! That's one thing the five years at university has taught me, and taught me well. *smug grin, with double chin*

Dilli then is a paradise for lonely souls like me: I know loads of people here. But i never run into them inexplicably and shout 'small world' incessantly. I can be anonymous in this large city, watch from the sidelines and snigger under my breath.

Yesterday was women's day. Went to a rally. Where everyone else who came were part of some organisation or other or some head honcho activist of sorts who knew everybody else and vice-versa. I was very excited about it: 'At Laaaaassst!', I sang. I'm going to find like minded, no nonsense type women and form fast friendships. Well, I was mostly standing (and throwing warm friendly smiles all around which found little reaction from others) and feeling low(e). It staretd about an hour and a half after it was supposed to. By then i was bored and depressed to tears and my stomach was rumbling.

Once we started moving things picked up: funny slogan shouting, voices cracking, stupid teenage boys walking on the roads ogling, etc, etc. Oh and my camera batteries gave up the moment we started walking. So not much photo-ing.

Anyway, I'm bored with bashing-smashing. So something positive perhaps? Yes.

PC called me up first thing in the morn to wish me 'shubhechha' on women's day. AND I found the card(which i though i'd lost) which she gave me before i shifted northwards here. It's signed "with love and solidarity--PC'". How uber cool is that? Tralala!

I should have a separate positive women's day post. (upcoming). Now let me do some more bashing. So on the 7th and 8th went to IIC for South Asian Women's Fest. It's being organised by Zubaan. Nice posters exhibit outside (which were not for sale). On the 7th there weer quite a few powercuts while the screening was going on. And one of the organiser's said "oh if this goes on, we'll have to talk to Sheila". I thought who the hell is this Sheila, me being a slow-poke. Then later i realised this was the CM, Sheila Dixit, she was talking about. Very gross. These rich elitist Dilli types. I always feel invisible and stupid in their presence (in spite of the fact that I was wearing my best skirt and matching Fab shirt yesterday). I feel my nostrils are too big, my tummy too protruding, my dress too uncool, my smile to gummy, my breath too stinky and so on, in their presence. Should do something about this low self esteem thing, na? (and we're back where we started)

Dispensible

2010-03-09T11:55:00.005+05:30

This blog has become dispensible because i'm having too many conversation in my head, with myself. The unavailability of internet a la maison (euh..lit, en verite) is one reason why I can't type them out: mornings--I'm slow and lazy.
And there's much I cannot write about. Here. Time to post in the private blog, I think.

Life right now

2010-03-03T11:40:00.004+05:30

Aborted Udaipur Trip:
waste of four sheets of paper, some ink and INR 210

Atrophied Brain:
no writing (for work or otherwise)

...

I just realised that I still haven't uploaded the Singur photos. However, what's the point? It doesn't matter anymore: I'm convinced it's unsustainable.
I haven't uploaded Surajkund photos either. Must remember to bring camera tomorrow to photograph the flaming red flowers. P was right. Spring must be beautiful in JNU. Want to go to Ridge. Even this dusty corner of the city has been painted brilliantly red by three palash trees. Occasionally the flowers swirl to a dying fall to dusty macadamed roads below. The road is littered by red, dead, crushed palash carcasses. Must take camera to Daryaganj and for the Nizamuddin walk.
Must get teeth pulled out and scaled. Must find doctor(s) and get appointments.
Must find house. Must shift soon.
Must lose weight.

Lazy Holi-day Post

2010-03-01T15:09:00.003+05:30

Wanted to write about the lobster thing. In my head so many posts have been written out to perfection. Wish I weren't so lazy.

Will go back to reading Marquez, I think. *yawwwwn*

PS: xyz is a loose whale-vag.

L.i.a.B

2010-02-11T01:32:00.002+05:30

Life's a bitch. And I've realised I'm Bridgette Jones. At 24.

PS: Sometimes it's just important to make a connection. To say 'Exactly!' and mean it. Even if you are only sharing sad bad mad things.

PPS: I've realised that I've begun to be able to hold my drink these days. Even beer. Especially rum and vodka. Life's good!

Bhor

2010-02-06T04:31:00.003+05:30

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

Horns of Dillemma OR Tanaporener Gutoni

2010-01-29T10:43:00.003+05:30

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

2010-01-27T13:50:00.002+05:30

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

2010-01-20T11:06:00.004+05:30

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

2010-01-19T12:30:00.003+05:30

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

2010-01-15T11:10:00.004+05:30

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

2010-01-11T11:56:00.002+05:30

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.

Dodging Missiles

2010-01-06T23:10:00.003+05:30

Have you run through long dark stretches dodging missiles and waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel?

Well, ah 'ave. walking down from VP towards Golpark, the lights suddenly dramatically went out the moment I asked a taxi driver 'lake gardens jaben?'. As I scrambled towards Golpark (on my feet) guessing my way through the ups and downs of the pavement ends and beginnings---plffftttt!---something whooshed past my ear lightly grazing the little finger of my right hand.

It was pakhi poo, of course and in that disconcertingly unfamiliar darkness I couldn't even make out the branches on the trees above, much less the birds sitting on them. It was miraculous how I managed to dodge two more of these warm, liquid missiles before reaching Golpark to comparatively more lights and traffic. Whew!

Blog Post

2010-01-05T23:30:00.002+05:30

So I've deleted the old template in a fit of destructive madness. And I cannot also seem to fix that post there which is all yellowish.

Now that there is just one day left in the city, my heart is breaking at this parting. In the mad rush of the last few days I've tried to meet people and cram as much of Kolkata as possible into the days and ways. My parents being angry and not talking to me only helped as i consequently spent most of my waking hours outside the house (sometimes somnolently).

I love this city like i possibly do not love/never loved any human being. I adore the 'oh its such a small world' talk every two seconds in completely unexpected company again (this happens much less frequently in Dilli but happens nonetheless). I adore my need to madly scramble for the camera every two seconds: to capture that half moon or that fern growing out of the crevice of an old house. Incidentally, one of my favourite houses on the Bengal Lamp way is being demolished, presumably to make way for another block of flats. Another one bites the dust but Kolkata Kolkata-tei. I adore the pointless rambling walks discovering new things (importantly telebhajar dokan or jhalmuri-ola) every moment. I adore the company. The lyadh. The roddur (in combination with this surprising thanda, it's towtally awesome!). The barandas and chhaads. The mod and the mad. How could I ever feel that I might cease to belong to this place? I love it. I hate it. I adore it. I loathe it. I'm attracted-repulsed, manipulated.by-managed.to.extract.myself.from the city that has stamped itself on my flesh and bones. I lament for it and celebrate it at the same breath. We belong to and with each other.

I walked down the stretch from Tolly Metro to my house about 20 minutes back. I did try to scramble for the camera as i saw the old half moon luminously hanging over the cemetery and the dark, old, sometimes crumbling houses on the other side of the cemetery. I realised the pointlessness of trying to capture the scene: not just with my own paltry camera but with anything but memories and words describing those memories. Hence the post.

Always, always you recede through the evenings

2009-12-30T10:03:00.000+05:30

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin between my hands.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that is always turned to at twilight
and my cape rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings
towards where the twilight goes erasing statues.

~Pablo Neruda

Memories

2009-12-28T11:03:00.003+05:30

I like to think of nostalgia as that irritating grain of sand or dirt that is then coated and smoothened into a beautiful, treasured pearl. The years in JUDE, as a friend put it and I completely agree with, wasn't all that mother-of-pearly to start with: "yes, i was depressed on and off throughout and extremely directionless, but the freedom i took completely for granted. that i miss."

But yesterday's memories : yellow-mellow-winter-sunshiney will always remain that: ushnotar chhnoya. Perhaps because they will remain memories of memories of nostalgia.

Talking of memory, how do the memories of cats function? I'm sure Hulo recognizes me, but he still doesn't demand affection with his eyes half closed and baring his belly towards me :(

And while Shada ran away from me the day I returned, once night fell he was lodged firmly on top of my belly covered by a woollen blanket purring away as if I was just in the other room all this while. Cats! They can bend us, at will, like their twitching tails.

Live Fried Fish

2009-12-18T13:14:00.017+05:30

Just watched this.

And all those people who believe i take self righteous pleasure by criticising others' meat eating practices are so wrong. Just like in this case, though I wouldn't ever beat a bear to death doesn't make me feel smug about its death. It takes nothing away from the horror of this being committed at all. No matter by whom.

And instances like these often become an excuse (look at the comments section on Youtube) for legitimising racism. Cruelty does not depend on ethnicity or race. Just remember the slave trade everytime you try to establish your white/pro-anglo-american superiority over the Chinese or the Assamese.

And just as in everything, our attachment with our mainstream-ness makes us blind to our own cruelties. So eating fish is fine even if it has gasped for hours for oxygen after being hauled out of water. Talking about the merits of fresh fish ('ekdom jyanto chhilo') is fine. However if the Chinese do anything its immediately alien and inexcusable and we start questioning their humanity. When the Nagas eat dogs it's always cruel. But when we lick our chops thinking about 'kochi pantha', it's fine. Hypocrites!

Music and Love

2009-12-17T11:46:00.000+05:30

You know why else breakup songs will always have their glory? Because at the end of a relationship there is an anthology of songs you will no longer listen to, ever. It won’t be dramatic—you will just subtly, steadily avoid them because your methods of self-preservation are tailored to evade the past and its stinging, sweet memories while embracing the present and future of solitary pain.

http://bitchmagazine.org/article/break-me-off-a-piece-of-that-breakup-song

So true!

Another Gem ( from the ol' same)

2009-12-17T10:53:00.001+05:30

The basic act of homosexuality may be abhorent to some, but apparently it is not this one act the constitutes homosexuality, as practioners would have you believe it is a cultural/lifestyle thing that is totally in keeping with the 21st century. It is though based solely on this one act, and doesn’t merit “rights”.
The death penalty – no. Just pay more taxes than hetros.

~The Big Fish, Stockport, United Kingdom

Great idea there, The Big Fish, but what happens when they get sick of taxation without representation and refuse to pay the tariff? It starts with the Boston Bumsex Party, then they’ll have a revolutionary war, then before you know it they’ve gained independence and they’re the major economic superpower on the planet. With fabulous hair to boot.

http://ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com/2009/12/16/no-taxation-without-anal-penetration/

Nigella Lawson: Eroticising Violence

2009-12-08T15:15:00.003+05:30

I was reading this. And it reminded me of the one (and only one) Nigella Lawson cookery show episode I had seen on TV from my hotel room in Ahmadabad. The woman is DISGUSTING. It was unbelievable the way she went on and on and on about 'delicious' baby squids: cutting them up delicately ('leave the tentacles whole, they blossom like flowers when fried') and going on about the merits of handling 'squelchy little baby squids' which is bound to 'relax you at the end of a long day'. Maybe I'm more squeamish about cutting up animals and enjoying it, than I used to be before. But I have seen even the most non-human-animal unloving people recoil in horror from the idea of eating veal. Why should baby squid, then, be such a delicacy? Imagine somebody cheerfully talking about cutting a delicious puppy with tender meat (people do eat dogs you know) or even a kid (a baby goat I mean) and proceeding to do so on television. Would you really enjoy the sight even if the puppy/goat was dead? And I'm not a vegan/veggie ethical Nazi. I completely agree with this, for instance. But this woman took food porn to quite another level altogether: eroticising dead animals. And this cool-cook lingo is sooo ridiculous it is nauseating: this 'robust fish holds the curry up so well'. You 'd think the fish was some kind of bra. And she deliberately uses violent language and thereby promotes the elevation of violence into some kind of art form: 'bruise the lemon grass with the back of a knife to let the juice ooze out'. She is constantly eroticising and exoticising (lemon grass and baby squids aren't the normal staple diet either in India or England as far as I know: so exotic food) violence through the use of language. And it's all somehow supposed to be beautiful and delicious. Yuck! She put me off my food that night.

Another Ridiculous TT article

2009-12-07T15:00:00.004+05:30

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091207/jsp/atleisure/story_11831536.jsp

As a friend pointed out, this has put feminism back by a hundred years. She's about right. Clinical trials of the pill began around late 1950s (wikipedia tells me). So not a hundred years that way but the right to and control over one's choice of reproduction is one of the most basic and fundamental of rights and without it women will be left nowhere. The debate about making the Emergency Contraceptive Pill a prescription drug is the latest step in this patriarchal world order feeling its need to exert control over women's freedom of choice and their independence. Yes yes hormonal prescription drugs do cause damage, I admit. But so do painkillers. And there are thousands of stupid people out there fucking their systems over and over again by doing Spasmo and Decolic: drugs to relieve menstrual cramps. Have these drugs been made prescription drugs? Nobody cares, you see, whether women fuck their systems from taking too much painkillers. But oh, we don't want the ovaries and the uterus outta order. We need a billion more unwanted children in this overpopulated country. We want women to go through humiliation and face the social stigma of having to go to a physician for an ECP or an abortion. Maybe force them to have a few hundred more illicit abortion thereby killing or maiming themselves. This TT article, as the said friend who directed me to it pointed out, does not say anything about women facing patronising gynaes who see themselves as moral instructors instead of doctors. The article recommends itself as a look at 'the debate' surround the issue of making ECPs a prescription drug. But how is the debate reflected where nearly everyone who's quoted says how horribly teenage girls are misusing it?
If you're talking about the adverts, yes, since when have adverts been morally responsible? Why should the ECP be made a prescription drug because the advert doesn't talk about the side effects? Do the adverts of fairness creams and bleach talk about side effects? And is anyone stupid enough to assume that fairness products do not have side effects? Is this blatant promotion of fairness products not even more reprehensible in a country where dowry deaths and violence against women are on the rise? At least ECPs have leaflets talking about side effects inside. I don't think Fair and Lovely does.
And what kind of critique is this:

“I find the advertisements for these pills completely misleading,” says 28-year-old Neha Singh, who had a bad scare when she used an emergency contraceptive recently. “I hadn’t read the fine print, so when I started suffering from lethargy, breast tenderness and my periods were delayed — all typical signs of a pregnancy — I didn’t realise that they were side effects. In fact, I thought that the pill had failed. The ads should at least mention the possible side effects and educate consumers about the correct use of the morning after pill.”

I mean there are morons everywhere. But because some idiot doesn't read the leaflet and panics, it somehow means ECPs should be made prescription drugs? Brilliant journalism I must say!

This is a response to all the hype surround "26/11"

2009-11-30T11:43:00.004+05:30

As a friend (and being a phirang, his vision was less clouded than our media people who devoted 5 pages on two consecutive days to 26/11) pointed out, this whole 26/11 (another ridiculous and forced link with 9/11) is being used exactly as 9/11 had been in the USA: to whip up non-existent patriotic fervour and justify the printing of police adverts that ask the citizens to report any "suspicious" person. And at the same time the Indian government, police and army are hunting out the "terrorists" in chhatisgarh, manipur, lalgarh, kashmir.

I know this might and probably will be interpreted as a refusal to mourn for the dead, on my part. But what has mourning the dead got to do with the Indian national flag may i know? Does the flag fly half mast for those killed in the 1984 pogrom against the Sikhs? For those raped, murdered and burnt alive in 2002? For those (the official figure is: 14 and that's the biggest joke) killed in Nandigram? For the unknown and unknowable numbers of young men and women who were imprisoned, tortured and killed during emergency? For Asiya and Neelofar who were raped and murdered by the security forces in Shopian?

I am very suspicious of nationalism and nationalist sentiments. 'Unity in diversity' seems ironical in face of the tendency of the Indian state to fragment and dissolve: the opening up of the cracks on Salim Sinai's body. And I see nothing but an oppressor's repressive baton in these attempts to forcibly retain sovereign power over a people using extreme kinds of violence. Those who are complicit in this show of patriotism are those who have gained something from the state; that is, those with empowered class, economic, caste and linguistic positions within the structure. I hardly think a landless labourer in Singur will have the luxury to celebrate state holidays on the 15th of August or 26th of January. Therefore, I'd like to argue, articulation of such patriotic displays, on the one hand, becomes articulations of your superior standings in terms of class, religion, caste, etc. On the other hand, it becomes a narrow and parochial alignment with the rightwing ideas of nation and nationality.

Fragments from 2007/2008

2009-11-27T11:10:00.004+05:30

Victim

I’m tired of playing the game.

I’m tired of your trembling and of your cowering.

I’m tired of your collective victimhood.

I’m tired of the taste of blood,

The fat coating my tongue.

I’m tired of dousing myself in the ashes

and putting up the act. Do not prostrate yourself in my path.

I’m tired of drinking your blood

I’m tired of my flamboyant blood-streaked hair.

I’m tired of my head-ripping strength.

I want to sink down, weak and forlorn

I want to be a victim.

The hate speech reverberates infinitely

That boy whose blood I must draw

And these red monkeys

Flagellete self

With pointy hatred keen

I draw blood

Mine

The ritual exorcism

Always fails

And for ever more

The long dead vengeful wandering ghost of hatred

Causing choler and melancholia

Traverses my body

In its long aborted

Attempts to be born

She would shudder away from the possibility of a breakdown. In spite of the drama she craved, she hated being too loud. So she buried the little hairy ball underneath layers and layers of forgetfulness. Coating it with the mother of pearl sheen—it was precious and secret, after all. It seemed to her that she stood on the brink of the great big abyss managing to cling on somehow in spite of the tremendous allure of the fuzzy, unending darkness of oblivion. Later Dr Cherebous would say that she ‘was already nearing the great impact of the fall’. The Fall. From deliberate forgetfulness or innocent misinformation. Nobody told her—you’re alright. They all wanted to squeeze out all the drama out of her while they could. She who hated public displays of emotions but was invariably melodramatic. A secret craver of Plathian neurosis she waited and waited for the intense pain-pleasure of the masochist. It never came. The intensity was missing in everything but her desire for it. So, frustrated, she pushed everything away. They went away, happy to conform to the roles of victims.

the keen edge of a knife

slices off so perfectly leaving the white bone bared.

I want a rusted saw to hack at me again

And again

Make me feel pain

Not the keen pangs of the living—

But to bring me back from this undead world

Hack me into feeling

Pain, love

Transform this wormy flesh

A self-conscious cat

Sleeping

When it feels your eyes upon its

Furry yellow body

It wakes up

To greet you

With a silly smile

It swats a butterfly

Its whisker incandescent against the white page

Its tail curled up snail-like

You just can’t make it purr

Read

2009-11-26T13:54:00.001+05:30

http://ink-ink.blogspot.com/2009/11/22nd-november-2009-jnu.html

Isliye Ae Sharif Insaanon

2009-11-23T15:58:00.001+05:30

Is liye ae shreef insaano
Jung talti rahe to behtar hai
Aap aur hum sabhi ke aangan may
Shamma jalti rahay to behtar hai

This and that

2009-11-23T10:44:00.002+05:30

Somewhere I read the number of blogposts is inversely proportional to how interesting your life is. 'tis troo.
*snort*

No i no be meany-weany. I just be busy-wussy. Have a report to write, another official trip coming up, accounts to do, research into certain things...

Ahem! Official trip is to Baramullah. In December. The first snowfall of my life! *touchwoodtouchwood*
For those who don't know who-what-where Baramullah is: it's a district in Kashmir. Cachemere. Cauchemar.

Oshojhyo!

2009-11-19T14:40:00.002+05:30

Lok joner eto megalomania hochhe keno aajkal?

Ei amakei dyakho...ki shundor down to earth typer manush.

Ar choturdike kirom shob ashchorjo unnashik jeeb.

Ami Kolkata (ebong tader company) chharar doroon-i ei odhopoton. Shondehateet bhabe.

Bachchas

2009-11-12T12:04:00.002+05:30

shob bigor gaya. Koi college nehi jata hai? Emonki chhoto chhoto bachchas also? Not just Pigs but the under-pigs as well? Too sad wonly.

Aur hum realise kiya hai whenever unlimited supply of movies bondho ho jata hai (due to lack of internet or lappy) tokhon-i hum ekdom bigor jata hai.

Simon's Cat:

2009-11-11T15:54:00.002+05:30

the light of my life (NOT fire of my loins), my only joy in this dreary, feline-less existence in South Delhi.

http://www.youtube.com/user/simonscat#p/u/1/I1qHVVbYG8Y

Can you believe

2009-11-09T10:21:00.002+05:30

that i spent a total of 2000 bucks (plus VAT) on a brunch and a dinner for two? On two consecutive days, too. For just two people. Gawd! I'll be so broke if i continue this way!

Also bought meself a fulsleeve, BJP-orange Fab kurti. (Why am i so attracted to this colour, now? Dyamn!)

Bought number.two two kurta-s as well. Number.two is ill. AND someone else is coming to live in the office! Oh woe the day!

Strumpet

2009-11-06T10:41:00.006+05:30

Chhatim Phooler gondho, ekhon--ekhono--ekhane, ekhaneo...
So late these flowers still bloom, perfuming the dusty arid air with their heady fragrance. I think of my city. I think of my favourite season the monsoon. I missed monsoon in the city. This year. Maybe the next too. Are chhatims still blooming in your alleys and by lanes? That heavy fragrance mixed with diesel fumes on a sudden turn on the Gariahat Road call me back to the city where I belong.
A city which is a mixture of grease and sweat, blood and red flags, protests and hypocrisy, politics and rabindranath, apathy and poverty. My strumpet city, whose lanes and by lanes, garbage and poverty invite everyone to come, look, explore, conquer, fall in love...

Statements, Questions

2009-11-05T16:30:00.004+05:30

If equal affection cannot be
Let the more loving one be me

~W.H. Auden

'If equal affection can never be true,
why can't the more loving one be you?'

~Akhil Katyal

When you love someone and it goes to waste etc

2009-11-04T09:58:00.003+05:30

is not a profitable line of thought. I've been through this same phase some 3 years back. That way lies heartbreak. I must hold on to this realization every time i weaken.

Animaux

2009-11-02T15:28:00.004+05:30

Most dogs here are neutered/spayed. They wag their tails and pull the strings of my jhola or the edge of my dupatta. awwwwwwwww! I in my turn press their noses and pat them on their heads and then discomfitted by their persistance in following me say "ja, ja! kichhu nei". But no cats :(

PS: There is an INTACH chapter in Kolkata. Is it even functional? Why does nobody in the city care about the city? I mean look at the website of the Dilli Chapter: http://www.intachdelhichapter.org/heritage_walks_in_october.html

Daryaganj

2009-11-01T17:51:00.002+05:30

NEVER EVER EVER thought i'd find the books i found today: Paddy (by R.D Lawrence which has been translated as 'petook' by Narayan Sanyal in Na-Manusher Panchali), Uncle Oswald, Dostyovsky, Kate Chopin, Angelou, Allende... Two at 35, one at 40 and the rest for 30!!! omg!!! *faints*

self evidently, a blog post

2009-10-31T16:13:00.002+05:30

at a cyber cafe. some wedding party is going on outside. infernal noise created jointly by stupid women inanely wailing (i terribly want to slap their livers out) + jogojhompo band party.

it's amazing how many men and women still willingly submit to this kinda shit (not just marriage but the marriage ceremonies). riding horses (who go deaf from the amount of band party noise near their ears...where's Maneka Gandhi?) and riding on shoulders of poor men, and covering faces with paan pata and uttering mantras that they don't understand a word of.

thankfully my closest friends are not the marrying kind. which might well be the reason why i am close to them, in the first place. though i am sure there are many men+women who hold similar beilefs and are not my friend. self evident sentences. inserted in order to ward of unwanted overtures of friendship, perhaps? ah, what nonsense this is! my INR10/hour is nearly up. so, see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya!

My life right now

2009-10-30T10:22:00.003+05:30

is an Ekta Kapoor serial.

But as PC said, i feel emotionally drained for nothing. I should invest emotions in people who are worth it.

Oh and in my dreamscape things have moved on. So am all :D :D

PS: The Telegraph is communal: no holidays on Eid, Christmas or Buddha Purnima or Guru Purnima. Only on independence day, republic day, holi and dussehra.

I have a nut for a roommate. She is bangali from Dhanbad: jhogruti, sh bolte pare na, khyan khyane gola ar obsssession hochhe shara shondhye pakha na chaliye shiter rate full speedey pakha chalano ar mukher opor kombol muri diye shoya. Otherwise naki suffocated lage.

"Women=Sluts" WHY?

2009-10-29T13:02:00.006+05:30

The post under this heading was a result of a misunderstanding. Completely on my part. Beg your collective pardons. I'm deleting existing comments and disabling any further comments on this post. Thank you and goodnight.

I hate bipolar disorder

2009-10-25T16:08:00.003+05:30

A very close family member suffers from it. I guess you can't exceed or overcome your genes. except in movies of course (I'm thinking Gattaca). I want get over manic-depressive asap. And you were right, anger is the backdoor through which other emotions enter. I'll try not to be angry. No matter how unfair everything seems.

Facebook

2009-10-25T09:46:00.000+05:30

Is FB acting up for everyone or is it that the whole world is against me?

More Dilli

2009-10-23T21:41:00.003+05:30

I saw an auto today. It's behind (don't think naughty!) had the following words printed therein:

Guruk Nanak Ji Ki Gaddi *

Yes the asterix was also there.

Otherwise, the people, especially the one bangali person i met really disappoint me.

The weather's amazing! Huh, you ol' suckers *tee-hee*

A huge baggage has dropped off my back. Maybe the ghost feeling will be there for some time. But i'll get over it. :D

Also, philosophical/metaphysical question: if you want to go to church to cry, because you don't have privacy, and in a church as a supplicant praying it wouldn't be too out of place, would you still count as a practicising atheist, albeit an opportunist one?

dis.com.bob.u.late

Sunday/Funday

Random Rambling Rant

Paris

Autumn

On Lonliness (?)

Facebook

Post: after a while

written in a state of slight inebriety

Porikkha

I hate

I miss Dilli

XYZ

Is wondering

End of another day

Cats and other things

Hague: Secrets

Hague

So.

Nothing Post

Another death

Another day, another post

Confused Rant

Stress Buster Post

What is this post going to be about?

Life...*dramatic sigh*

Hulo

I got

...

I am not sure what this post is going to be about/Roaming in Latakia

YouTube - Helsinki Complaints Choir

The hours for once they passed slowly, unendingly by

Consufed

Gaza

Why I'm Not So Fond of the Army

Transformation

One Year

Be-zeee

Bangla

Flying, Terminal Three, Carbon Footprint (and by default: CWG)

LSD

Words of wisdom

On Blogging from a Moving Train

Abar Mash Khanek Badey

Kashmir-Kolkata

Books

Dukhi Manush, Tomar Bhalo Hok

Kashmir, Guilt

Domesticated Animal, Among Other Things

Life

Bikel, Hawa, Humayun Ka Makbara

Dhusssala!

Fresh Discoveries

Parents *eye roll*

Song: for me, from me

...

Amar chhotto kalo hariye jawa meye

vignettes

Oooof!

Wimmyn

Same day, another post

Dispensible

Life right now

Lazy Holi-day Post

L.i.a.B

Bhor

Horns of Dillemma OR Tanaporener Gutoni

Rant

Amar shontan jeno thake dudhe bhaate

Food

Winter and Delhi

Crib

Dodging Missiles

Blog Post

Always, always you recede through the evenings

Memories

Live Fried Fish

Music and Love

Another Gem ( from the ol' same)

Nigella Lawson: Eroticising Violence

Life...dramatic sigh

Parents eye roll