Palimpsest

So I won’t intrude in your life and you don’t intrude in mine. Facebook is a voyeur’s paradise. Every month I get at least one request from a person I never spoke with in college – mostly my first post grad college – random women who used to sit at the other corner of the class ,short fat overdressed richie-rich girl from koregaon park, mind-numbingly dumb-now-married-to-some-NRI girl who exchanged one line with me in two years, the guy who gossiped about me in a not-so-nice way, the ex’s close friend who I was fond of but now don’t really care about, etc etc. What is with this bunch? The bunch I don’t give a shit about, the bunch that makes me squirm when I run into them on some not-so-fateful day in a crowded market. Why can’t you walk away? Look the other way and pretend that we don’t know each other? Because really I don’t. Apart from knowing your name and that we breathed in the same space for those two years, I really don’t know shit about you. I don’t understand this compulsive need for people to come and make small talk, really pointless pleasantries are shared when all that both parties are checking out is who has put on more weight and who looks more miserable. Numbers are exchanged – this annoying age of cell phones, how can you not have one, even my plumber has one – and you are trapped – you have to give your number. But then again that’s not really important because in spite of all the fake smiles and the “ooh we must catch up” business, no message gets dropped, no calls happen, so after getting that missed call also I don’t bother to save it. Let it fade away in the next few days from my list of calls and hope to never run into that person again.

So why do I hate meeting / accepting facebook requests / chatting with these people so much? I don’t know. Maybe it is because I had the most horrible two years of my life in that shithole course. Pune is no student’s paradise - it is an orgy of recklessness and pettiness. Woman stabs woman over a boy. Boy fucks girl and then he fucks her best friend. Roommate gives a crying shoulder and then complains about the weight. Boy wakes up in the morning and says he is commitment phobic – never mind that at night his brain was in his balls. Almost-best friend suddenly appears in boy’s room in his night clothes. Thankfully the ‘almost’ turns to ‘never’. And the usual jhingbang. Really there is nothing so liberating about a college and a place like that. If anything, that place makes you question your own sense of self. It makes you feel helplessly trapped. Anything that made me not want to face my own self in the mirror is pretty much better-best deleted. And so I try to delete the episodes, the chapters, the primary and the auxiliary characters that are associated with the phase. But no – facebook is a bitch that will keep trying to make you get in touch with people you are actively trying to erase. I wonder sometimes if erasing my account is the answer. I don’t know. I like being in the loop with people I know and want to know further. Why should I be the one erasing myself? Talking of erasing, there have been recent erasures which have surprised me, not because the erasing happened but that it happened so easily. Kurtz is a person I used to know who is trying very hard to mend his old ways and turn into a new leaf. But I think spring is over and soon it will be time for autumn and things will begin to change colour and fall. For me he is fallen already because flimsy leaves are fated to fall one day or the other. His flimsiness is legendary really. One day K wants to be friends and the other day he finds an easy way to get out of it. One day he sees me as this unrealistic image in his head and the other day it shatters so easily he walks over it with sigh of relief. I don’t know whether erasing is an activity he indulges in frequently but give a man a rubber and he will find ways to use it almost immediately. As for me, I’d like to think of my two years of that crappy phase as an unpleasant parchment on which I have begun the process of palimpsest. Because I don’t just like to erase, I like to rewrite.

The Do-Not List

I do not like the colour grey.

I do not like it that my brilliant second cousin got brain fever at the age of 12 and never recovered.

I do not like sympathizing with her.

I do not like others lending me their sympathy. Though sometimes I do whine for it.

I do not like lukewarm conversations that start with a polite hi and end with a politer bye.

I do not like it that losing weight is such a pain and sweet cravings, uncontrollable.

I do not like it when people pluck flowers only in the day because one shouldn’t pluck them at night. Why pluck them anyway?

I do not like sugar coated responses to my mistakes. I wish people were more honest.

I do not like never ending chatter of intensely self centric people. I have my bad days too you know.

I do not like getting a zit. I am too old for this kind of agony.

I do not like it that I wonder about my choice of friends and if I could have chosen more prudently.

I do not like spending hours reading Anna Karenina when all I want to do is stare at the blank sky.

I do not like blank skies. This city is full of smog. My home town is full of stars.

I do not like that I am indecisive, unstable, obsessive and neurotic.

I do not like it when a certain someone is happy.

I do not like myself for not liking that.

I do not like early mornings.

I do not like cats.

I do not like non-sweet alcohol drinks. Except beer.

I do not like it that my closest childhood friend lives in the land of the Gujjus. I need her back.

I do not like the nomadic life I lead. Some day I’d like a house without a two year lease.

I do not like Delhi as much as I like Mumbai. Yes I confess.

I do not like summer.

I do not like it that my ‘like’ list might be shorter than my ‘do-not-like’ list. Who would have known?

The Kaleidoscope

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, inspiration comes knocking at my door. I look around, I glance behind my shoulder, I like being alone, I confirm my solitariness. And then I begin to write. But nothing ever materializes beyond a page. Then thoughts get arrested by the anticipation of an audience and the inappropriateness of it all. And then I stop.

This has been happening for many months.

J.S. Mill was right. One has to write poetry (in this I include fiction) assuming there is no audience at all. “Poetry is feeling confessing itself to itself”. But what kind of a confession is that then really? Even Catholics need the confession box and Calvin needs a Hobbes. What is the point of anything confessing itself to itself? Pray tell.

And yet the fear of being read and read into, the uneasiness of misinterpretation, the lack of courage is a reality that suffocates me. Where is my Hobbes? I used to have one. I don’t have one anymore. It is tragic. My Hobbes and I drifted apart when more than just distance came between us. Life happened and though it isn’t as tragic as it seems, it is tragic enough.

But I am digressing and I should try not to. So writing with an assumption that one can be read is a really scary proposition. I admire the guts of authors who write autobiographical works and get published. I admire the guts of blogs that chronicle a personal life without giving a damn. And hard as I may try, I don’t think I can even become it. That is sad. And have I lost out on you already? Yes you – you who reads my blog once in a while, my fortunate patron, the known and the unknown, the blurred past and the etched forever, the berating friend and the appreciative acquaintance – have you taken me off your RSS feeds already? Did you not have me in the first place? Did you plan to have me initially and then wrote me off as just another person who got married and became boring? I don’t blame you if you did. I haven’t tried to redeem myself much except just write a “oh-i-am-going-to-vent” post and then chickened out. Yes that’s all that I have done. Characteristically enough I haven’t carried out what I claimed, I have announced and then disappeared. It is unusual if I do finish something I take up till the end. I am the queen of incompletion, of half-heartedness, of initial euphoria and immediate disillusionment.

But I really do want to write for there is so much to write about. I want to pen down pages and chapters from my life. I want to mention the twisted story of the man with the heart of coal, I want to confess my lack of feelings for the boy who died, I want to say how sometimes when death doesn’t move you, you can question your monstrous self for years. For years and months that have passed, I have had moments of madness, euphoria, disillusionment, depression, betrayal, elation, fulfillment, epiphany – notice that there is nothing banal about these emotions, nothing as simple as happy, sad, indifference, no – these are the big words, the specific adjectives, the things that express the precise state of mind – I like it that things have been dramatic, larger than life, immensely exciting – things that can be recalled in an anecdote or make a fit subject for a late night confessional chat, things that can still make my gut twist, that can still make my throat knot up. I like it that I have had a fairly exciting life where I didn’t let impulse cower to the mind. Sometimes I regretted, sometimes I didn’t. But mostly I am just glad that the youth was a kaleidoscope and not a microscope where I didn't sit back to analyze but somersaulted with the colors.

And I want to write about the people and the episodes, all the shades of the kaleidoscope need to splatter across the white sheet of paper, the fear needs to be covered with a splat of dark humor, the puns and the digs need to be highlighted with a fluorescence.

So why do I fear the interpretation, the detailed investigation, the repercussions of such scrutiny? Why do I fear the microscope when I have already played in the colors?

From the Laugh of the Medusa

An excerpt:

“Time and again I, too, have felt so full of luminous torrents that I could burst-burst with forms much more beautiful than those which are put up in frames and sold for a stinking fortune. And I, too, said nothing, showed nothing; I didn’t open my mouth, I didn’t repaint my half of the world. I was ashamed. I was afraid, and I swallowed my shame and my fear. I said to myself: You are mad! What’s the meaning of these waves, these floods, these outbursts? Where is the ebullient, infinite woman who, immersed as she was in her naivete, kept in the dark about herself, led into self disdain by the great arm of parental-conjugal phallocentrism, hasn’t been ashamed of her strength? Who, surprised and horrified by the fantastic tumult of her drives (for she was made to believe that a well-adjusted normal woman has a … divine composure), hasn’t accused herself of being a monster?”

-Helene Cixous. (The Laugh of the Medusa) - Read it!

Die Blog Die

I’m officially sick of writing about the weather, the season, all things happy and all that la la la! No, I do not know what to write about these days. I want to make this blog more personal than it is. Then I want to write about how, what and when I really feel. Then I want to be somewhat like my tall friend whose writing has this sharp, acidic courage that mine could never achieve. I really want to vent. But this blog is now not personal. And that is excruciatingly annoying. It is only my fault that I let myself go. I think it was the greed of getting some comments on my erstwhile no-hit blog. I think I was a bit tired of wallowing in that anonymity which now seems to be such a luxury. In between all of that, I have resorted to another privately tucked in scrap on the internet, but this one is still my oldest, my favourite. Blogspot is still comfortable. Tumblr is a step sister of blogspot. I was never much of a fan of wordpress. And this red and white and black header is still what is typically me. This strange, senseless title of schizophrenicsalad given to me long ago by a friend is also a part of me. And with this blog now becoming a yawn-inducing machine, I don’t know what to do to revive it again. How I miss the venting and the bitching. Being older sometimes comes with a disclaimer. Politeness and all the shitty jazz sometimes just strains and drips itself into your writing. And this is how we all become dull and insipid. And this is how a perfectly good blog dies.

I am almost tempted to let it die. And restart again. But like a nagging, incomplete story of the past, this blog also seems to have the last 6 years of my life. A lot of it has been deleted for god knows what politically correct reasons. My curious cousin discovered this blog thanks to my negligent brother who discovered this blog thanks to my negligent internet history. So all the sex had to be erased. All the smoking had to be gotten rid off. All the bitching, the drunk episodes, the stoned scribblings and the massive stupidities I have done in my first post graduation days and after had to be let go of. What is left then to write about? The god damned weather, the city and more of the bloody city, the monsoon and so much of the monsoon, my annoyingly unpredictable health and maybe some food and ofcourse the oh-so-often swimming posts? No wonder I had to resort to a new link. Who wouldn’t? Who can live with this boring crap?

So even though I do want to kill this blog, I am going to try to let it stay. And maybe care a little bit less about appearances? And write a little bit more about the strained relationships and the blooming ones? Maybe I can write about the fantastic poems I come by thanks to some friends? Maybe I can post interesting videos I come by on days? Maybe I can light up a bloody cigarette and not wonder who is reading about it. Oh by the way, if you listen really hard, the lit cigarette is not quite so soundless. The small noise of the thin paper burning really does make me want to pull out another one. It’s like diwali in your mouth.

Sometimes the bad weather can bring you joy.

Today’s weather is exactly how it was when we first saw our current home – gloomy, dark yet full of hope. It was the fifth day of continuous house hunting. I was determined to find something that could replicate my home in Mumbai. I was waiting for a house to speak to me like it was my own.

It was almost a year ago that the winds lashed out at the trees, the dust got into my lenses half blinding me, we sat in the coffee shop outside the complex and waited to see yet another place and face yet another disappointment. A really delayed call by the property dealer had already inflamed us. We were almost determined to not go and see something else the week after that. All I wanted was to return to my house in Mumbai in which I had spent hours, making it from a brand new house with no fittings to a workable home with many memories. We move every 2 years. This is our third house. City to city, locality to locality, cook to cook, convenience store to convenience store, we are uprooted from our comfort zones so often that now house hunting has become a painful ritual.

In a weather like todays, we walked into the complex, through the dingy corridor that had no light and it opened up to the messiest and yet the warmest house I had seen all week. Seven people lived in this house before. None of the flushes were working. The balcony door had been cracked by the crazy wind, the wall was a jaundiced yellow and multiple things needed repair. But the kitchen had nice modular shelves, the living room had so much potential, the white light needed to be done away with and I could see more than a month’s time of work that the house needed but somehow it was okay. Somehow we had found our new house.

Sometimes bad weather brings pleasant surprises. Sometimes a heavy downpour can make you stay in and have that really rare conversation that cements relationships. Sometimes a really hot day can make you like yourself in your own skin. Sometimes a really cold day can make you fall in love with an author you didn’t discover before. Sometimes a windy day can make you feel like Marilyn Monroe. While on other days, it can find you your next home. :)

I did get rid of that white lighting.

Molten Sunset

The weather is deceptive today. It gets warm, a little dust storm comes from nowhere. Then the weather suddenly cools down. Now it is breezy, beautiful and not a time for indoor activities. It is the final match of the world cup. I don’t care too much about cricket. I just like watching the last few overs of the second innings. So I will go for a swim.

The water isn’t warm but it isn’t cold. At sun down, getting into the pool feels like dipping yourself in molten sunshine. It’s somewhere in the middle – the transient transition, the few minutes that just passes by, the shortest part of the day, when the yellow and ochre meets the blue and invites the indigo sky to take over for the night. It is a time for a peaceful exchange between the busy day time and the sleep inducing hour. That is the time I love to go for a swim, when everything is changing and the shimmering droplets of water turns into dark glittering globules and I can stay in and watch the day retire into the night.

And while I am swimming and have drowned the noise of the world and my mundane daily life thoughts in the water, I stay suspended in a state of alternative introspection. That is my favourite part of the day. That is the most beautiful. In a pool, around strangers with whom I don’t have to make conversation, in a completely public space, I find my most private moments and I find my peace.

Farewell Fabulous Fog

The morning was enrobed in this ethereal mist – white and translucent, gauzy and delicate, gloomy and gorgeous. Like a bride’s veil, the city seemed to be hidden away from the view of the rest of the world. No flights could land. No, they couldn’t spot the city. Everything was delayed. There were traffic jams on the road. Yet, fog is so beautiful that every inconvenience can be excused.

I like a foggy morning. It makes me like my tea better. I can’t see the tall building in front of my house. A semblance of idyllic isolation surrounds my balcony. Suddenly I am not living in a big city. Suddenly I am not surrounded by high rising condominiums. Suddenly peace seems to replace all hurried, human activity. I am suspended in a self-deceptive solitariness and I love it.

Winter went by too soon. Suddenly its warm and my coats are whining in the cupboard. They will again be subject to months of suffocation with the unbearable smell of naphthalene. My heart goes out to them. Hot milk won’t be so much fun anymore. Walking in the chilly evening will not be a secluded activity anymore. The walking tracks will be thronged with multitudes of people every evening. The charm of the cold, the biting wind in the middle of the night and the dead of the morning will disappear. Everything will become warm, hot, burn and char. Yes I hate summer. It makes me sluggish, least inspired and most cranky.

Bye bye cool morning breeze, colorful socks, velvet blankets and hot chocolate.

Hello sweaty, sticky days, skin breakouts and tissue paper overdose. I so did not miss you.

Dying and Dipping

I know what death must feel like. It feels like getting into the swimming pool on a cold winter day in Delhi. Thousands and millions of tiny little daggers were suddenly stabbing me from all ends. When I dipped my head in, my ears revolted in disgust and the ringing didn’t go for an hour after. My stubborn as hell self didn’t give up. So I tried to drag myself to the other end convincing myself that all I need is a warm up lap. All I needed was a brain – which by the way, also was frozen with my throbbing forehead. “No this isn’t happening”, I gasped in my head, “I can’t breathe”, and quickly, before the world closed itself around my eyes, I shut myself out and managed to swim back to the edge and get out. Yes I know what that chicken in my freezer must feel like. And yes, I know how it feels to be physically numbed till you can’t feel your own pinch.

Winter comes with long vacations. Home is where the paunch is. Even I couldn’t escape from Mom’s ghee-bhare paranthe and my favourite halwas. Indulge – I thought – and back in Delhi, all will be okay. That is a myth. The holiday weight isn’t. How does one lose the new year’s new layer of adipose tissue? I hate the treadmill. I hate the monotony of walking in one spot. It is depressing, to keep walking and yet stay in the exact same spot – almost like how we sometimes live our days, our weeks – we think we are walking, and yet the routine of the daily life sucks you right back and nothing has changed. So with that depressing piece of contraption out, I wanted to start taking real walks. But Delhi is cold and I like walking in the dark. Yes, I have issues. Like I don’t like the redundancy of the treadmill, I don’t like the visibility of the early evening. I like going for a walk when the sky is dark and no one really sees me. I like the invisibility of the night, when they can see you walk yet can’t see your face. I also don’t like walking with a phone or music. I like to just walk. And the dark of the winter is too cold for my warped activities.

So what do I love the most? Ah. I love to swim. But it is cold. Just how cold, I didn’t anticipate. Why haven’t they shut the pool down? Do they like inviting people to have just a little peep into numbing, icy death? And I hear people have been coming for a swim. They must not be human. They cannot be human. It is impossible to dip oneself in that chilled water and step out as if nothing happened – as if nothing evil struck your face, as if nothing icy smothered you and as if nothing menacing grabbed your lower back. And so, following really bad examples, I bravely and enthusiastically got into my swimsuit and stepped into that sinister body of coldness. I died. My short lived death lasted half an hour. Really. I am still reeling from that numbness. And sheer stupidity. I don’t think I can even look at that pool until April. And that too, is worth a second consideration.