theoutsider

2012-01-22T22:00:00.000+05:30

I don't like my phone, that is the truth.

Chosen very carefully for its utility: 5 megapixel camera and high battery life, I think it's graphics are ugly, as is true of so many Samsung phones. I love the gift, but the looks are, eugh!
On another note: make-up! Don't buy! I!

2012-01-15T20:48:00.001+05:30

Oli's (original post here: http://www.arcche.blogspot.com/2011/09/normal-0-false-false-false-en-gb-x-none.html)

Prayer for travelling people

If it is evening when they set out,

collect them into the last light

and make it dawn for them.

If someone kissed them

goodbye, let them both remember.

Give them fewer waits at airports

or train stations or bus stops

or rickshaw-stands. Mostly,

give them breath to walk

far and wide and with

clouds catching their eyes.

Keep them warm.

Give them silence if they

are happy. Give them

conversation if they are

in themselves alone

and thinking not just of

passing from place to

place but of passing the

very world by.

Bring to them the

kindness of strangers.

Fill their eyes.

Let there be someone,

when they arrive, to

bring them home.

2012-01-15T20:37:00.002+05:30

Is marriage bred out of tiredness? I saw Little Childrentoday and it touched and built up to a crescendo in the end and I longed for asimilar plenitude of drama in my life. And the music in the end was beautiful,quite. And I read the last part of the Eragon trilogy a few days ago and I’vebeen meaning to write about it, because it struck me so hard in the waypleasure, fun, enjoyment becomes more and more rarefied until it is completelybanished from the psychological landscape of the book. Eragon, along with allthe major characters in the book, except Roran, follow the path of duty,without any sense of doubt or beyond a longing for what they leave behind. Itstruck me as so very curious, in that it’s written by a guy who’s barely out ofhis 20s himself and he’s writing fantasy, right, which is, after all, wishfulfilment. And though I found it very disturbing when I read it, I recogniseit as the same satisfaction one gets when I work when I want to do fun things,because it means not having the sick feeling one gets when the weekend is at anend and there’s tonnes of work to finish.

I am considering making this a private blog.

2012-01-09T21:56:00.000+05:30

The plumber told me on the naked terrace yesterday, while I looked around for the first time at the crumbling concrete vista below, that marriage, money and something else only comes to those who are fated to have them. Going by how people marry here in the same way that bunnies mate (no idea if they do, really. The bunnies, i.e. The people definitely marry voraciously), you would think it would need a hand of fate to not marry. But it's something to think about. Very scary, the thought of spending the long, long years alone, or making them a blur that does not matter. What if, though? I thought while returning home today that it would be comfortable to be married. To sign a document and that would guarantee extra closeness and fewer questions asked. But that doesn't really happen. And I would be happy to marry, but not to stay in Calcutta for it. Right now, I'm getting the feeling that I am done with Delhi. I would like to go live in Bombay. But that would be another upheaval, perhaps a furthur moving away from the boy. Maybe the money won't be enough to support two people and a dog as comfortably as I can now. It would be so nice if he and I could go live in Bombay, but that I suppose is not to be. Nothing else but living till eternity in the city of my birth can be accomplished with ease.

Meanwhile, the real winter is happening, finally. Gah!

2011-12-29T21:11:00.002+05:30

I am so not houseproud. My house, after I have lived in it for a little over a year, is still no more than utilitarian lodgings: digs is the word. Though I rather like it: the word and my digs. Until now. The walls of the kitchen and the two bathrooms and the passage and the other room have been damp for about a month now, but the kitchen ceiling has now started dripping. The house is a filthy mess, though my mother has been trolling through most of the shit, since I conveniently have quit the kitchen since she came. It's now gotten so messy that even I, who will stay put as long as her one patch of clean ground is undisturbed even while the shit overflows, am thinking that enough is enough. Not to mention the hell that will be when the monsoons come around. I am swinging between shelling out about 9k for another same-sized flat, that would not be on the top floor and would have a separate meter, or a larger flat that I would share were someone interested and suitable to come along, or settling for a smaller top floor room: lesser space to mope around. But the last option is impractical, I already know: I have too much stuff already and on muggy days, if I have to stay cooped up in one tiny room, or perpetually keep a door open, with all the risk that involves... think of, among other things, if a pack of monkeys like the one I saw fighting the other day, were to descend on the terrace and proceeded to create mayhem: I do not want to cower in fear or constantly feel anxious about them making an appearance.
Very likely a two-room set-up like the one I have now is what I will look for in earnest: more money gone, but well, if ma and f chose to come again, I wouldn't worry about space or feel constrained about inconveniencing someone else.

I discovered pooja's blog yesterday. she seems to be living such a bohemian life to my stolid one. I am so old. I am so old.

Also, I have no idea what makes a house look warm and welcoming. My aesthetic landscape is so sparse: I do not feel the need for photos or showpieces. I want them, but don't need them. Clean, bare walls, clean floors and whatever else you need to exist. A big kitchen, like the one I have now, where you can cook and surf the net; clean, slightly spacious loos, mirror, clean washbasins. But while others: both pooja and mamdmomma, whose blog I was reading before I thought of writing this one, would do so much with these raw materials, I am fine with these. There is the simmering discontent, about how bare my life is, but I don't really know what to do. I know I can't stand hurrays, I know I will not travel with random people nor invite them into my home, which leaves my mind and my house kind of bare. Ah well. Maybe there's hope yet.

F is curled up under the lep by my leg. Ma is making dinner. It's as good as it gets.

2011-12-01T23:40:00.002+05:30

I go to office on my elephant and have a pet camel. I need the elephant because, as you must know, I have to traverse a tropical jungle to reach work. On weekends, we go out for jaunts on my magic carpet, which I bought from the neighbourhood genie, who belongs to the local snake charmer. Every locality needs one because, you know, the snakes are numerous. And I have Curry for brekkers, lunch and dinner and I am very promiscuous. It's the heat, you know.

2011-11-27T15:17:00.000+05:30

My grandparents were quite unusual people for their time, I think. I am not entirely sure, because they were young at a time when a lot of uncommon things were happening and in their milieu, it might have been a fairly usual thing to do.

They met at while studying at one of the premier medical colleges in Calcutta, a decade or so before independence, I suppose. They fell in love, and decided to marry in the face of some family opposition. My grandfather was a penniless idealist. His father had been a railway official in pre-independence Bangladesh, in, my mother says, Akhaura district in Kumilla. They called him kanababu because he was deaf, which deeply hurt my Dadu as a child, but they were poor and his father was a quiet man, I suppose, and so, there was nothing much he could do about it except bottle his rage. He had an elder sister he rather loved and a younger brother, both of whom died. And young Goura was left alone, with, I fancy, his ambitions and his love for his parents, cut by resentment, I suppose, for his authoritarian mother and a father who did not have the resources to provide what he wanted.

My grandfather is a natural storyteller. I always spent a lot of time with my maternal grandparents and his stories of his life, which he would never tire of narrating again and again, are a part of the fabric of my mind. I looked at them differently at different times as I grew up. Unquestioningly, when I was little; with indifference, coupled with resentment, as I discovered Dadu's flaws; and with tedium, when I was grown up: by then, I had heard them so many times that I didn't care anymore. Now, he is in Calcutta, growing older and older, often complaining like a weary Tiresias, asking to be gone. I hardly speak to him anymore. His problems are too many and there is not much I can do without taking charge. And I am a master shirker. I take on as little as I can. But I do love the man he was. His life was an enormous act of self-fashioning, the credit for which is no less for it being so common.

One of the many tales I grew up listening was about the Durga Puja bhog. Goura was a most enthusiastic participant in all village festivals. He wanted to be in the thick of things, he loved running errands and generally, being where the action was. During one Durga Puja, a dada asked him to distribute the pujor bhog among those in the pandal. Now, they (and we, by extension) belonged to the lower castes. And when he went to pick up the bhog er thala, the cantankerous mashima in charge screamed at him: 'Tui chhoto jaater, abar bhog dibi ki! Pala!' The youngster's face reddened with rage and embarrassment and though a kind person asked him to never mind the lady and to go ahead and distribute the bhog, he did not shake off the incident.

This story was often followed by another of his college days. As a poor medical student from a distant village, Dadu could only afford the most basic lodgings. He stayed in the college hostel. As a low caste boy, he said, Dadu was required to eat separately from the other boarders. The thakur would prepare his food separately and keep it aside in a corner, where he had to sit and eat.

That, and perhaps a certain amount of idealism was the reason he believed, still does, so strongly in Mahatma Gandhi. Maybe he, like so many others, at the time, found in Gandhi a kindness, a recognition of basic humanity that others didn't show.

I have a lot of rage for Dadu, a lot of anger for the way he lived his family life, the differential treatment he always did, and still has meted out to his daughters, for my Didu's sadness, for her disappointments. But he also did so much, lived with such courage and such fullness. And as time passes, and those I hold dear grow older and fade away, the heart fills with such emptiness and sorrow that nothing can fill.

I haven't known many men closely. The other two are my father and my boyfriend. Baba's trajectory was much the same, starting out with very little and ending with enough and more. I think part of the reason he died so early was because of a certain nihilism, of believing that nothing mattered beyond a point. He wouldn't fight tooth and nail for himself, maybe for one he loved, but not for him. Which I know Dadu would and did. My boyfriend, I think I chose him because I could recognized the mould. And disappointing and often intolerable as such people are often to live with, it is the only one I can, and probably, wanted to navigate. So, there's him. I find much to admire in him, the grittiness, the tenacity, the hard work, the fearlessness and being able to conceive a state where one has nothing.

I will write more about Dadu. But so many emotions well up when I talk of him, or of any of the other people who have been such ever-present characters in the family tableau that you forget to question their being. My paternal grandfather, who I know far far less of, was also quite a remarkable person. He completed his Masters in jail, he was a freedom fighter. He was not a family man and married at 42 (I think) and had six children. He was one of the founding members of the Socialist Party and a very bad businessman whose chemical factory was in a very bad state and his family was perpetually poor. My father and mejo kaku would have to give part of their monthly scholarship for family expenses. It is remarkable at first thought, but then not, that his family took his achievements for granted. They bore the brunt of his financial unsavviness.

My thakurda was much derided and neglected in his old age and the only person I have found taking any interest in him as a person is my chhoto kaku, a rather strange person himself. I will find out more about my thakurda too, from him.

So, I will write slowly. Maybe I won't, ever. Maybe they will recede to their fixed places again in the picture. But I would like to write. I think they will make fine stories.

2011-11-06T20:42:00.004+05:30

Just finished the packet of Gems that was a part of the Diwali gift pack of Cadbury goodies ma got me. Bakigulo agei kheye niyechhie. :-)
I went to Daryaganj today, at the Sunday book market. And I hate you, pretentious Delhiwalla, but I did find the Hardayal Municipal Library which is a place where people come to read newspapers (place subscribes to 25 papers in various languages) and the coin seller too, I dare say. But it was horribly crowded and the kebab platter at Moti Mahal was not half as good as it is notched up to be. But I did buy a butter knife with an embossed Air India logo and a penknife which I quite like. How is it that Delhi still doesn't warm my heart? But it doesn't.
There was a wonderful collection of books today, not the piddling shit I could sift out the last time. One guy was selling a huge collection of Penguin Classics, but too canony and stuff that I don't really read, tai ki korbo, kinte parlam na. And the place is really close to my place, did you know? I took an auto from Laxminagar, it cost me 50 bucks, but the guy had the meter on, which came to only 40 bucks! I spent such a lot of time scouting for a bus to the place, kintu the only bus that passes through my locality goes directly to the book bazar too! Amazing discoveries and wonders never cease. Needless to say, I returned on a bus. And people travelled on public transport more habitually in old Delhi than I have seen people do here anywhere else. It seemed like Calcutta in that way, and very heartening. It has nothing to do with wealth. It makes sense, non? And why should you have to resort to your own conveyance in a bustling metro? Public transport is one of the most basic services.
My haul:
Alexander McCall Smith: The Kalahari Typing School for Men (40 bucks). It seems quite lovely. Ma likes it too. She asked me, 'eta ki Negro der boi?' She also asked me if Kalahari was in Africa and I spent a considerable amount of time trying to convince her it was in New Zealand. She didn't believe me, sadly.
Margaret Atwood: The Year of the Flood (and this very same I had been high falutin about buying at the Penguin discount sale. Got it for 80 bucks and I was cribbing about the high price)
Rimi di's City of Love (50 Rs). A little ashamed for not buying original.
Christopher Paolini: Brisingr (30 Rs). I had read the first two parts from Oli. We all did, I think. That was a couple of years ago, at least. I was waiting for the third part to materialise through a hand of fate. That means not buying the book, but 30 bucks is hand of fate, alright.
Nicholas Flamel: The Alchemyst. Hoping it'll be alright.
Ellis Peters: Monk's Hood. Ditto
William Hart: Culture and Civilization of Bengal (25 Rs). Hardback, with pictures, published by Mahadev Prakashan of Shahdara. I am glad about this one.
Tolkien's The Silmarilion (30 Rs). This, after the guy who sits at the junction of the left and right side of the market and who seems to know about books/ takes advantage of his prime position/ is pricey offered it to me generously for 120 bucks.

I read on the Net that the municipality occasionally conducts drives to get rid of the Sunday market. A classmate today was surprised to hear about my jaunt because apparently such a drive happened recently. I was surprised that he was ok with that. I hope the market is never driven away. Books are peace, a refuge, always, and everyone should have access to them, at whatever level of the financial ladder they are at. Also, those like me, who want to buy great books cheaply, principles be damned.
Also, books are familiar territory. But that lunch sucked, awfully. As did the overly fawning waiters and the horrible loo. Though I suppose I should be glad to have found a serviceable loo in old Delhi at all.
At the market, there was also:
Lots of P. D. James, which the boy says is good.
Salman Rushdies
Spattering of Dickens. And Villette, of all things.
No Ahmed Ali, though.
No Game of Thrones neither. Maybe it hasn't reached these nether regions.

It's Bakri (probably Bakr) Eid tomorrow. But no chhutti in office. Really.

Did I say what I bought from the Penguin sale? For me and others. Mostly for others. Here:
Dalu's books: The White Mughals and City of Djinn's (that was just the 50% discount)
Suketu Mehta's Maximum City and Complete Ruskin Bond (how boring)
Khushwant Singh's Delhi: A Novel. Yuk. Mom reading.
I wanted Chatwin's What Am I Doing Here and boy wanted Finnegans Wake. But you know how they never have the good stuff.

2011-10-25T22:13:00.003+05:30

The Delhiwalla is a most pretentious piece of writing. I will have Daily Mail any day. Among other things, it is the same time of the year. Last year, around this time, I was starting things from scratch in this godforsaken piss of a city, working away at setting up house, quite unafraid, really, like chipping away at a massive block of stone, only to see what lies beneath, not worried about the enormity of the task.
Here's a photo from that day, taken on my phone. I was completely alone, then. But it did not seem that what emptiness there was could be filled with random people.

2011-10-02T20:24:00.002+05:30

If sex is just sensation, there should be more pleasure in denying it, non? Or maybe I am more straitlaced than I think.
My eyes are popping out with endless work and far more from Castle marathon watching. I am desultory, sulky and depressed. It's Pujo and nobody is really whooping about it in my part of the city. And my potential mother-in-law asked why I didn't do a registry biye the next time I came, and onushthaan could happen later! Oof babare! I said no, I mean, what the! And she was even saying that they wanted grandkids. I feel like gurgling with laughter at the outrage of it. But well, no. They are kind people. Very kind. Much better than a lot of people their age. But I can't meet this demand.
I want to be er, free. I realise it involves just so much loneliness, but I still want to be free. No marriages to make to keep other people happy, no endless khushal mangals to inquire of relatives who do not excite your interest. To live anonymously. I can't see what I am going to do. He is doing so well for himself it makes no sense to even ask him to come and live here. And I don't want to live here forever and when I am ready to go elsewhere, he will probably just be settling in. He gets unsettled if he has to move. I do too, I am even now, but I still want to move.
If I were Beckett, I would have been resolute and told him a long time ago that we don't want the same things from life and let's go our ways. But I have hung on like a limpet and now it's five years and I will be obligated, even want, to marry after two years.
I still hope to have everything. And I am not a kickass person like Oli even. Nowhere near. Yet I hope to have everything.
Miserable Pujo, youalls.
On another note, much love and warmth. I miss Pujo, I miss the pandals, the hubbub, the laughter and the fatigue.

2011-09-13T22:56:00.003+05:30

Very tired, so just facts:
Well, the woman who wanted to have the baby is having the baby. And her husband who had said he did not love her anymore (something as heartbreaking and earth shattering as that) and that he couldn't bear to stay with her, is buying her a gift and planning to buy a camera to record the baby's arrival. The typical Indian family, what joy! You will break and be finished, but you will not leave. You will spawn progeny and forever be happy and believe this is your reality, a good reality. Call upon God and believe in him. It is right out of Heart of Darkness. Its unbelievable, unending night. And we are supposedly modern, better than the generation before, with more autonomy. It seems that I am sinking, that there is no way out. Who knows if I will commit such blasphemies myself.

Ma's blood sugar is down.
My boyfriend got me the bag.
I bought two perfumes online today. One for ma.
Pujo ashchhe.
Bhishon gorom.
Ghum peyechhe. Painfully slow download speeds yesterday and day before. I watched both of Satyajit's Felu das. Ate hideous hideous chicken roll.
And strange miracles abound. Like auto appearing almost immediately after I prayed for one in tutiphata morning sun. Happened yesterday too. Jam clearing, bus stopping when it never does. Small things that well, restore faith.

This is not nostalgia

2011-09-02T20:15:00.000+05:30

People have left Calcutta in droves. I flew the nest very late at 27. I had been frustrated and had wanted to get out for a very long time. It seemed then that staying in Calcutta was an exercise in futility, waiting for the proverbial cookie to crumble, which, of course, it never did.

But there are so many reasons why one loves home, and none of them are things that make the city absolute as a font of contentment and joy. I was humming Mohiner Ghoraguli r Shaat Tola Bari today and it came back again, as it has for the past few days. Hot summer days, the hint of spring, Jadavpur, such love that it is a physical longing to have those days in my grasp again, friends, the sun on your face in the basketball field on the engineering side, the jheel there, climbing up that windmill like thing, sitting at the foot of a tree, Oli climbing the tree, French classes, BCL, desperate tiredness, bus rides which now seem so pointless, Debasis sir, the world opening up. From the age of 18 to 22, I dare say it was the perfect place to be. Rimi di, Amlan da, Supriya di, so very kind, Queer Studies, a classmate seeking to confirm from the Sappho people very, self-consciously knowledgeably, if the first sexual experience for a homosexual was a defining moment :-)

Babu, all bird-like, even the first year of Telegraph, when so many new things seemed to be opening up, and Floppy plucked out from a heartful of sorrow that were those years.

What will it take to have that love back, the longing for University is such a yearning sometimes, for something that is perhaps not there anymore, because I am not 18.

I miss Calcutta, I wish I could go back to it with an empty page, instead of as a refuge when I am broken, beaten up by Delhi. I wish Calcutta were not such a dump professionally, that I also could take its opportunities for granted like so many in Delhi do.

Ma has 400 pp sugar. Scared.

2011-08-28T03:04:00.002+05:30

What would it be like to never be held or made love to. I am desperately lonely and I can't imagine me a scenario where I wasn't. I am scared.

2011-08-20T00:03:00.001+05:30

A mosquito bit me on my boob! I'm sure this is all premeditated, or maybe it just found it first, because of the bump.

The Ballad of Jack and Rose

2011-06-10T01:01:00.002+05:30

I am quite shattered, paranoid, worried. My boyfriend told me today that he thinks the way Floppy is being brought up bothers him. For instance, that I take her with me to bed. He says he is a light sleeper (he is) and he'd never be able to sleep with her in the bed, and what'd happen when there's a kid. Now, Floppy doesn't jump around in bed once we've lain down to sleep. She stays quietly beside me in the morning until I awaken even if she's woken up herself. My boyfriend doesn't know that. But I think he doesn't want to share a bed with her anyway. I didn't know this. And I am very shocked and worried about how strongly he feels about it, how determined he is about it. I feel like I appear to be someone I know, a woman who wants to have a child even though her marriage is falling apart, because she won't be able to conceive later because of gynaecological problems: a crazy, manic woman. A colleague had recently told me he thought me crazy for attaching so much importance to animals, for thinking more of them than human beings.
I thought my boyfriend understood, I thought he knew. I am too tired to fight over this, over anything after so many years. I wish, well, I wish sometimes, now, that if this is how we are going to be - he said, with great concern, that our relationship might even end over this after we marry - I wish I could go my way, that I would not have to share my life with him.
Floppy is the dearest thing to me, one of the very dearest. She gives me love in a way few do, and I don't want to put any distance between us. I don't think I am crazy and I thought he felt the same way. But he doesn't, and I feel too old to fight.

I watched The Ballad of Jack and Rose today, and it's stayed with me through the day. And I wish, I so wish - to be loved like that, that state of innocence, and that things could always be that way. I know it can't, I don't think I even want to go through the physical living out of it, it was bad enough how dependent I was on baba and how claustrophobic it was. But this world - where you never find one whose soul is like yours and who understands you and there are no compromises to be made - I wish I didn't have to deal with it, I wish I could turn away and live like Indrani, with all my animals and their unquestioned love. And die with them.

And no, I don't want to have a kid. And I don't want to guard the marital home in one city for the rest of my life after I marry. I can't stay in one place, I am sorry. Hard as it is to stay alone, I can't live by another's rules in their house. I don't want to, I can't, I am sorry, I am sorry.

Sacred Games

2011-06-03T15:30:00.000+05:30

I am a little in love with Sartaj Singh, much as I was a little in love with a designer in my office, and perhaps will be awhile. It's easy to fall in love with him: he is tall, and an inspector who has a heart. He even makes me like Surds.

Reading Sacred Games is a labour of love. I read through the 945-page book with care, slowly to savour in the details, wishinh I could write on the things I remark, especially the Eng Lit stuff that I have been trained to notice. That makes it such a doubly-pleasurable exercise.

The reviewer Jabberwock calls it Dickensian in the way the author balances such a huge tapestry of plot lines and also the way the city is also a character in the story. I agree.

And I love the book for much more. To sustain the reading of a book this vast needs a certain discipline, constancy, care. It is only the second novel I am reading after The Feast of The Goat, and that was a year ago. It's hard, if you feel high-strung, unhappy, despairing to sustain a read. It needs overcoming the overwhelming sadness, because reading is like adding more to yourself, and if it's a good book, it makes you happy. Which is at odds with the rest of the unhappy you.

I don't really like Ganesh Gaitonde. He is an unreliable narrator of his story because his perception is at odds with the facts narrated by other people disinterested in his fate. But it gets to you after a while, his constant self-inflation and what he things is his understanding of the universe.

I bought the book from Daryaganj. And I found just yesterday that it was missing 32 crucial pages. I was despairing a little, but Dibbo found me a soft copy. I am very happy, because it won't disrupt the thread of continuity, because I can continue this exercise in bringing together the fragments of my mind. O i sound like Ganesh Gaitonde, I know.

After this, I read City of Djinns. I have to procure it from somewhere, I hope it will be good.

Among other things, I saw the precious Koel Purie Rinchet outside the office building yesterday. She is a midget, and she looked like this sulky, surly, small thing, shorter than I thought he was. Gamine, but in a not nice way. And she is starting to look old too.

2011-05-12T14:04:00.000+05:30

Ma keeps wanting to go back home. O ma go, ki korbo. Ma, summer ta at least paar koriye diye jao.

A sad year and a smelly dog

2011-04-24T16:28:00.002+05:30

There is a certain symmetry to begin the blog with a photo of Bruce Chatwin and to end it with one by him. I am happy with how the blog looks now, none of the hard, definite colours there were earlier. But the vagueness, like how I want to be, and the greyness, which is what the weather makes of the environs and what the state of my mind is.
The smelly dog is F, she hasn't had a bath in a month and smells very dog-like. Kukur kukur gondho, as we say around here.
The year is indubitably sad, but is made happier and bearable by the presence of my mother and dog.
We got the AC installed today, took less time than I thought, more money than I'd hoped and messy as I expected.
Sitting at home, I am wondering whether the year MUST be so sad, whether working elsewhere was such a big thing. After all, this is Delhi, that is why one comes here: because there are options, if nothing else, in numbers that can never match your home town.
God, I do hate this city so.

But then, searching for Chatwin and Edmund White for the blog made me remember stuff I liked, of happier times, of knowing Chatwin for the first time at the BCL library, such a refuge in summers, so many hot, hot afternoons whiled away reading nothings, always things not meant for coursework. Of Oli passing on Chatwin's notebook, or was it that book of photographs off-handedly and I think I did teach myself to like a new thing, and now the picture of that door and that abandoned trailor somewhere in Latin America, or was it the Midwest, from What Am I Doing Here, brings back such warm memories, of myself. And the title, it has always echoed my state of being at so many different points in my life.
The only difference is, this torture is self-inflicted.

Apparently, celebrities are passing off manic depression as bi-polar disorder. Am I manic depressive?
And to think, I was supposed to check out all the birdwatching sites in Delhi. So many things I had meant to do here, and none is happening.

2011-04-22T06:31:00.002+05:30

There are moments in my house in Delhi when I get a sense of home: as I walk through the small passage between the living room and the other room in the darkness, and know ma and my dog are asleep nearby.

Living on the top floor has a freedom I have never known. When I lie down on the floor and look out through the windows and see only sky, the glittering moon at night, and the pigeons flocking through at daybreak, I know no one can see me. And I feel free, almost invulnerable. I feel free in Delhi, then.

Watching House gives me strength that I wish would last. He, the people in it, shore me up to face life even when it gets so tough you think the strength is being wrung out of your muscles. I see them survive each day that is as tough as that and it gives me strength. Sadly, I don't see House before I leave for office, so by that time, all the strength has seeped away and I am left with dread at the prospect of another day of being wrung dry.
But the serial has such heart, it speaks so close to what really happens and how incredibly people find the resources to go on.

My boyfriend and I speak of marriage these days. He seems accepting of it, I have more or less accepted it. We are happy.

It has become very hot over the past few days. I will rent an AC. Someone is supposed to come over about it today.

The meat almost went bad and my dog vomited the other day. My mother says it is because of the heat. She also needs a bath, and her rabies shot.
Did I say, I was bitten by a dog right after I returned from home? I met the dog last week and went up to it. But it totally changed demeanour after it sniffed my hand. It began growling and showing its teeth and started to chase after me. I shouted and hit out with my big bag and got away, but I think it meant to have a go at me and it really shook me up.
I felt really scared then, and I felt angry that it should be this way with me, and I wished I could harm it, that it would die. I don't know why it hates me so. Also don't know why dogs here are so very violent with outsiders, considering they are well-fed etc. They aren't this way in Calcutta. I don't think I will be able to take my dog out while I am in Delhi. I dare not think of what might happen.
There is a lot of work for today, my off day. There's fish and milk to be bought, gas to be filled, my kurta brought back from the tailor's. And we also planned to go to a mall and eat out. And I haven't even begun to sleep.

2011-04-07T23:45:00.002+05:30

Well, it's kinda long time-no see. Ma and dog are here, have I said. As are lots of mosquitoes. I am afraid it's a situation developing here with the mosquitoes. There are nights we barely sleep thanks to their numbers and coils and repellents seem to make no difference whatsoever.
Apart from that, of course, it is what I do to earn my daily bread. And earn it, I do, by God. I feel the price I pay, the toll it takes and how money is needed to keep the daily bread coming. I sense it when I go to the market twice a week, when I buy chicken for my dog every three days, and I feel it when my mother throws away vegetables that have gone bad after lying too long in the fridge.
But I can't keep doing this. I can't, please. It's too much. Earning a living can't be this bad a thing? And there is no time for anything, and I am always so exhausted, mentally and physically.
I look at people in their houses and I tell myself this is home and hearth for them, this is it, there is nothing beyond. And I feel a little surprised, since Delhi is so intrinsically a place for transit, for me. I can't imagine what it would be if this were it for me. Home is still Calcutta in such an immediate way, maybe more so because I am having such a hard time here and it's hard to want to return to something that holds no pleasant memories.

tmi

2011-03-20T17:38:00.002+05:30

I had sex after a very long time. It was so much better than I remembered it. On the downside, no condom, so like, a wee bit worried.
the best part of days so far, ma and F are here. I am so happy, so relieved, to go to bed beside them every night, to find them when I come back home, to see them when I come back from office, to wake up with them. It seems I was getting by like a zombie so far.
And being this way is like, everything I had not meant to be. I mean, how chhaposha I am, to not be able to exist without home, city, boyfriend. In my delirium of relief, I often think I would be happy to give up everything, come home to Calcutta, marry my boyfriend and live with him. Maybe like everything else, this is me coming to what everyone else feels, like, from infancy.

2011-03-14T17:49:00.002+05:30

I am home. I am having a bad turn at work. A rather bad one. I feel human after a very long time. And it feels stupid to stay away from here. I have no idea what I will do with my career, but what my present job demands to succeed, I don't think I am up for. I don't want to leave, I want to be able to crack this and then quit, to show myself that I could do this.
And I feel happy here. I like the weather, I like how laid-back it is, I like spotting things on the road that I can keep looking at, that don't make you want to turn your eyes away and shut your ears.
I don't know if this is the influence of my boyfriend, or the nature of the job, or whether I am getting old. I hate change, now as always. But I never expected to be stuck at a dead end in my profession twice in such a short time, I never thought I could not do something, or maybe I am just not putting myself out there because I don't care enough, and that I never did care to excel.
I have often thought of quitting work altogether, something that I would have thought blasphemous earlier. Work was identity, I was always made to understand, subliminally. It let you live, without it, you would be swatted away off this earth.
But work, as I have experienced it of late, holds no allure for me at all. I keep thinking there must be other aspects of my profession that are not as unsavoury, that are easier. Or maybe something is wrong with me, I am not smart enough to crack it. I may sub decently, but I can't come up with ideas at the drop of a hat.

2011-02-25T02:02:00.001+05:30

Perhaps all cities are the same, in their alienation, in their devil-may-care way. Maybe no city is innately kinder than the other, but becomes that because of what we find in it. I was watching Dhobi Ghat, and there is no closure, only a sense of loss and the knowledge that something is gained. You are immeasurably sad but have learnt to live with it.

I don't know why K found it so good. I don't think it is very good, especially not once the spell is broken. And probably Aamir Khan is the weakest link. It's hard to like a character if you have to imagine him, if the actor playing it can't convince you to believe in what you see on screen. But he is so House-like in his isolation and self-sufficience. I wish I could live out my life in an open apartment and not need friends either.

Actually, on furthur thought, I find more to fault in the movie. Oi, that the real story goes untold: the suave young man 'exposed' as the rat catcher, his moment of shame. Shai's moment of shame when her friends are buying drugs from Munna's friends, Munna who is also a prostitute on the side, Aamir falling in love with a character once removed from his existence, something mirrored in all the other characters. How they come to terms, even accept the unreachability of their feelings, when Shai admits the moment between her and Munna.

A rich artist living in the heart of the old city, this is felt so fleetingly. In a friends with benefits relationship with Vatsala.

And the city. God, I think I will not take photos of poor people on principle. I will take photos of filthy rich, bogus people and make them fantastic. What is this obsession with poverty? What is poor is real? If you believe that as a given fact, how fatuous is that? "I've done the dhobis, the cobblers, the perfumers, now I will do the rat catchers."

I resist this categorisation, of 'professions of the poor' as much as the idea that if I can walk through the filth and grime one day, or several days, I will know what the "real" city is about. Isn't that a more lived experience, rather than a catalogue to be ticked off?

My schedule in Delhi: home, office, back home, Internet, watching films, sleeping late, cooking, are things you would have done in any city. But I live these days fairly intensely and the city affects them all. It affects my mood, and it's about the sense of inhabiting a city, non, rather than what you see. I could spend a year doing nothing but this and feel that I inhabited the city intensely. And I have done the cataloguing. It doesn't leave you any richer. You have to give time to the city to filter in, years and years, of walking the streets. You remember the taste of the Dilli phuchka, you observe the clothes people wear, turn away in disgust from the fancy cars, shut your ears to the cacophony of people discussing mundanities in a korkosh accent, your own interactions, utterly unspectacular, with the neighbourhood vegetable seller, the autowallah, with the swindling shopowner and know you have inhabited the city. There are no places to tick off, no things to do for that. The places you visit out of curiosity, for pleasure. Anything sieved from those journeys is incidental.

I love living alone. For the most part. Sometimes, at very brief times, I think I could do this forever and not mind it. When I did, I would just quit and go wherever I wanted.

But running low on cash now. Want more cash, and want to go home. Desperately. Please God, engineer something so I can both go to Hyd and go be with mom and F and K.

2011-02-20T03:53:00.002+05:30

I am very sad. I had a talk with my boyfriend. It seems this distance will always be there if we are to be together. I wish I was not always held at arm's length. I wish somewhere, the boundaries would be breached.
I wish I could cry a great deal. And that this crying would bring forth a solution: you know, since I expended this much of myself, I demand something back from the cosmos.
And well, it does come down to my being asked to move back. How rich is that!
I am sad, and very very disappointed.

2011-02-20T02:19:00.000+05:30

2011-02-10T23:31:00.002+05:30

I am not a big fan of the Internet. I don't think it's amazing, I use it as a tool, it's easy, it works, that kind of thing. And it's also really useful, but when was that fun.
The past two days have been very solitary and I have depended on the Internet almost entirely for any sense of the world outside. Usually I talk to my boyfriend everyday, that kind of fills up my mental space.
But here's the thing: I was so totally alone (which I have been before) but it's like, y'know, the contentment lasted for way long than before. Usually, I am trying to bear up with it, and eventually it all goes pouf! and I sink into depression and fall lower and lower till I am close to losing my mind, when I pull myself up and do the next thing that my schedule demands, which always evens things out.
But today, apart from this general feeling of having kept something slightly important at bay, I was very happy. And feeling resentful at the hour I spent talking to someone on the phone yesterday night and about having to meet an old school friend tomorrow morning before going to office.
It's like I feel apathetic to any company that is not perfectly suited to my taste. I can't imagine wanting to be with anyone with whom I have to 'interact', do things with. I just want to be left alone.
It's also a little worrying. Everyone I know here socialises compulsively. I was told yesterday that if I did not get married in the next two years, I will apparently become that way too.
It's as if that is the key to survival. But well, it never was that way, was it? Having people is fun, friends egg you on to do things that left to your own devices, you delay, even fun things, because lazyness is a more delicious option.

2011-02-09T03:46:00.002+05:30

Weird week, topped by fight with boyfriend. Maybe we are breaking up? That would completely mess me up. On the flip side, mosquitoes have appeared, I have lost one nos. t-shirt, one nos. nyakra, one undie in the storm, and a panjabi lies on the balcony of the girl below. I cooked mangsho, with ne'er a damn about how it tastes.
I loved Chungking Express, though not the first part. It seems to confirm the disquieting impression that Chinese men go into paroxysms at the slightest provocation, like happiness, arousal. But the girl, oh the girl, she was so beautiful, with her waif-like body and well, the story.
Someone in my class just got married. It has an unreal quality to it, hearing of this marriage, but it is so rigidly rooted in reality there is no way around it. Perhaps that's why he did it, so the act, the coming together of two people could in no way be denied.
But I still can't imagine doing it. Yes, the thought of it is a fond indulgence. And more than anything it fills me with sadness and worry. But it never seems to be a certainty.
Though I do want to come home. Always. And with him, I know it will never be a shutting of doors to hem me in, but then, he won't look if I walk out and never come back.
Is this how it will always be, only as good as this, and as solitary as this?

Last week, I went to Paharganj. It was lovely. The spaghetti bolognese was very nice. And the other day's sushi too.
I have cooked for a dog. I have night tomorrow. I have to iron clothes, I have lost half a bottle of shampoo to a shampoo disaster. I still haven't got leave, have to submit investment documents, get lots of fake medical bills from somewhere.

2011-01-30T04:05:00.000+05:30

If my father could have seen me, cooking badhakopi at 3.45 in the morning, he would probably have said in disgust, erom uronchondipona keno? Sometimes, when I am washing dishes at the kitchen sink, I wonder if baba is standing behind me. And I half-believe that since I am thinking it, it must be so. And then I tell myself in despair, there is nothing beyond death. But I don't really believe that. Though it does not help, because I can't reach out beyond life.

The badhakopi refuses to get done, much like the gajorer halua. And I am not eating anything tonight, because it's too much of a hassle, plus all the cooking smells never make me feel like eating what I've just cooked. It would be lovely if I could have a mild, soft, delicious steak with potato mash. What a firingi I am talking like.

And apart from that, bad, bad day at work. Looking ahead to a day just as bad, hoping to be able to get chhuti approved, the very tiring day before yesterday, but shopping. And then a 10-hour sleep.

What would it be like to go home. I have wanted it so much that I am ragged with wanting. It is not even enjoyment, or delicious anticipation. I just want to get home and sink my head on my old, flattened pillow and go to sleep with my dog early one morning. And wake up late in the afternoon and eat lunch and fight with my mother.

2011-01-15T02:52:00.003+05:30

One of the good things about life is there is always tomorrow. If time stopped whenever you were having a bad time, life would be very hard indeed.

I just thought of this. And I am too tired and my knees are aching and there's still bloody paneer to cook. Life sucks, I miss my dog. Buuuut, I had salmon sushi last week, veeeery nice. And nice dokra earrings at Utkalika, Orissa emporium and another dul on the street. Then cake from Wenger's. I rather like the emporiums than not, ki bolbo. But wait, Rajasthan, I will the come to you.
Puro O Champs Elysees
And I met a dog lady here. And Friendicos gari does come here. On the flip side, Delhi pet shops do not stock medicines. Tell me what else is stupid about Delhi again??
Also, I discovered all those shops selling jackets at CP that day. Kothay chhili ami jokhon sheet e kapchhilam? Oh well, late discovery. Also, I am wondering whether to bring my dog by train. Ooo First Class, amar baba o choreni, I bet.

And that brings me to baba. I think of him sometimes, like, baba ki bolbe. Ei onko ta kibhabe korte hobe baba janbe, ba, baba ke phone kore jigesh kori gaachh kata r economics ta ki. Never mind that my father and I never had a phone relationship. And definitely not a mobile phone one. My first cellphone was the one my father had bought before coming to Vellore. So ya, I miss him very much now. What I thought would not happen anymore is happening again: I keep reverting to a state of mind where I think he is around, when I am most stressed, I suppose.

At the bus stop near the Metro station nearest my house, people spit gutkha laden gobs of thuthu in great amounts. I wonder sometimes how big their mouths might be to hold that much of oi, whatever, at one go. So, everyday, I remember Ol's pishimoni telling me to never step on spit, to walk around it, never across, or over it. She said this on that day we got our Master's degree, in oi, orange robes and all that hoopla. Oli and I were there, and she took a photo of us on her mobile. I wonder where that photo is.

So well, I have a stocked fridge, except for tomatoes (roshun is 300 rs a kg, mygod, and deem, can you believe, 50 bucks a dozen) and I have hired a maid. So clean house and no clothes to wash. What else could I possibly ask for.

2011-01-10T03:18:00.002+05:30

This is a protest post, but before I start: sheki, o ar phirbe na? How can you just bid goodbye to your life in Calcutta?

I'm fed up of this job, I haven't had sex in years, I am so unfamiliar with fun that it takes me by surprise. And for what? For what do I wind myself up so tight? From fear of losing what? Everything, everything. But what do I even have? And what would I be left with if I revolted? Dog, come back to me. In your love and mine for you, there is no distance, no restraint. All other relationships, activity are fraught.

Release me. To be myself, whatever ugliness that means, however tragic it is.

Road trippin' with my two favorite allies
Fully loaded we got snacks and supplies
It's time to leave this town
It's time to steal away
Let's go get lost
Anywhere in the USA

Let's go get lost
Let's go get lost

Blue you sit so pretty
West of the one
Sparkles light with yellow icing
Just a mirror for the sun
Just a mirror for the sun
Just a mirror for the sun

These smiling eyes are just a mirror for

So much as come before those battles lost and won
This life is shining more forever in the sun
Now let us check our heads
And let us check the surf
Staying high and dry's more trouble than it's worth
In the sun

These smiling eyes are just a mirror for

In Big Sur we take some time to linger on
We three hunky dory's got our snakefinger on
Now let us drink the stars
It's time to steal away
Let's go get lost
Right here in the USA

Let's go get lost
Let's go get lost

Blue you sit so pretty
West of the one
Sparkles light with yellow icing
Just a mirror for the sun
Just a mirror for the sun
Just a mirror for the sun

These smiling eyes are just a mirror for

2011-01-07T03:39:00.008+05:30

It's very cold in Delhi these days. It's that kind of cold where I no longer register needs like hunger, the need to pee, the need to bathe (which was never very strong, anyway). I concentrate on trying to keep warm and on sleeping. No amount of time seems enough to asleep. I spend about an hour trying to fall asleep, to discover at some point that I had been gritting my teeth against the cold. Feet refuse to get warm. It's like it would be during the trek.
I wake up all warm and toasty and it seems like the biggest injustice to have to leave the bed and get ready for office. That's all I do in the morning, really. Make tea, warm lunch, potty, shovel food down my throat, get ready and run.
I have taken to eating with a spoon and out of the bowl I boil rice in. Hand feels frozen if you eat with it, plus one utensil less.
I bought a jacket from Sarojini market today. I'm wearing it now. I feel like Sajid in East in East. He would always wear a parka, and at the end of the film, he got circumcised.
I saw Persepolis over the last two days. I liked it more than I liked the book, which I also liked. It would probably find an echo with anyone who feels exiled and unable to return. La liberte a un prix, it ends with. Truer words never said, etc.
I was also watching Black Swan, the whole of which I couldn't watch, for faulty download reasons. Trying to see whether the whole film could be seen somehow, I watched one-third of the film thrice. I liked it each time. I loved the music. It's haunting and it mirrors Natalie Portman's character, Nina's thoughts. She acts very well, I think. Or maybe, all lonely women answer a chord these days.
I went to Khan Market today. No one told me that besides housing all kinds of brands, it was also a rather quaint place. And Big Chill, for all the blowsiness it suggests, is like that too. Of course, it's also expensive. I disliked Dilli Haat quite thoroughly and felt very at home at Sarojini market. But that was after I found the jacket, which I was looking a little desperately for. But then I went into this part of the market that sells vegetables and fruits. I like that section. a fruit seller there has made a little space beneath the brick surface he sells his wares from. It's a small space, exactly right for a dog to fit. There's a gunny bag and some straw there. The dog in question was a black one, sitting straight. He was very soft, ami aador korechhi. He also ran away with a tupi someone handed him and the small boys selling stuff there played a game of chase with him. He knew it was a game and he adroitly sidestepped the boys several times. :-)
I felt at home there. I wish I were living in south Delhi.
And company definitely makes venturing out easier.

I wish the boy were here. I miss him on, well, certain days.
There's a flurry of marriages all around. Again. I wish I were settled too, sometime. In every which way. I wish F were with me. I wish my dog were with me. I wish she were with me.
A colleague said while we were coming back a few days ago: 'I had many dreams once, but I want now is to be back home.' He is from another city. He doesn't like delhi either. he's lived here for three years. how can he live with such longing for three years? i blabbered a little. i said, i think at home, i'll be the least unhappy. he agreed. who knows if he was telling me the truth.

2010-12-31T03:25:00.002+05:30

I think I can never be happy. I don't probably like it so much. I am more at home with being depressed. What would make me happiest now? To be able to go back home, to not have to do the job I do. To relax, let go.
I don't think happiness is dependent on one getting what they set their minds on. As Dibbo said, or perhaps didn't, it's a state of being. It comes to me only in short flashes.
The year will end tomorrow. It's not been a bad year, really. I got the flat emptied, I came away, like I'd wanted for ages. But they didn't really happen the way I would have liked them to. It is, as it always is, about gritting your teeth and bearing the situation.
I was looking at photographs of people in JU. There was an album that had me in splits, absolutely. Another that made me remember what it was like to be in college. Another, that seemed to suggest the people in it were happy, even though they had left college.
It's neither here nor there.
Like today. Which wasn't bad as a day, but was hard to swallow if you thought of the circumstance it came in.
One tiny day, when you wanted to rest and venture out, finish chores and eat out. Play with dogs, who would dirty your clothes, which you would have to wash. To know that you were away from your dog, in a job you did not enjoy, in a city you did not like and not know if there was anything in this world that could ever make you completely happy.
Like, ever.

2010-12-28T18:27:00.002+05:30

It is like, bloody cold in Dilli. i am sitting at home with a cold and when i breathe out, i can see the dhowa. my hands are too cold to type. ami chollam.

2010-12-27T04:49:00.002+05:30

The sense of a man standing close, hinting at softness. You keen towards that body, wanting to reach out and be enveloped in the warmth. You yearn with half-remembered longing for what it feels to be with a man.

Maybe it is just the novelty. Maybe it isn't missing what is familiar.

But here, in faraway Delhi, I am allowed to long for someone's touch, anyone who is halfway kind: to be kissed and loved and to be allowed to rest.
That there is a time for rest, a time to stop fighting, to stop looking over your back, that with some people, you can relax.

For the new year, can I ask for calmer days, easier times, to be loved up?

2010-12-17T00:39:00.001+05:30

Today is my off-day. I wait for it like I didn't in Calcutta. But a large chunk of every off day is ultimately spent in catching up with chores. I head out in the evening, to some market or the other and come back with a bag heaving with groceries. Not any bag, actually. It's Madhura's bag, the one she liked so much and the one which I'd said I'd courier to her but never did. I like it so much as well. And well, embarrassment, the usual stuff.
I like grocering, I like what the act involves: looking through the gleaming, fresh vegetables, asking the rates, looking for a bargain, picking up the new cheese, or ice-cream or sauce (I bought Plum sauce today. And it's not horrendous, I tasted.) what I don't want to give away to it is time and energy.
Here, doing something for myself more often than not means not doing something else I want to do or which needs to be taken care of. Buying a 3g data card recharge coupon today meant not going to Majnu ka tilla for momo,something I'd been mulling over through the week. Hurrying back for grocery meant no time to look for new cell phone. Wanting to relax after a bath in the evening meant no cooking, ordering in food, which still irks me right now.
The floors haven't been swabbed in weeks, I haven't yet gotten around to cleaning out the box bed and putting in stuff there. The bed sheet needs to be washed as well, likewise for the kitchen top.
Then there is home. There is trouble at home. That apart, I feel terrible about staying away from my dog. Sometimes I fear she is slipping away from me. I look at the photos of her, us and there's an ache inside. I feel guilty for not taking the white dog in. It seems he must have been a pet sometime, he keens towards people so. I love to hug him. There was one evening, when they had all come up to my flat. I'd given them biscuits. One had left, but the other two, including the white one, settled down outside, a black one on a landing below and the white one just outside the flat. I sat with him on the stairs with an arm around his neck. But I had to go in and cook, so I shut the door on him eventually. It's terrible to have to do that, terrible.
And Delhi. Well, I know it as a fact that I am living in Delhi, I am assured of the amenities the so-called capital provides, I speak to vendors and Delhi residents in office with an accent approximating theirs, I dislike, I tolerate, I often smile. But I don't think I inhabit the city. There is much to see here, I am sure, but it's so far beyond my periphery. It's a mental void, really. I'm grateful for the things there are. I like my flat and I like Jalebi Chowk, I like the sunshine on my balcony, I speak to the pigeons that sit on my neighbour's balcony and live in trepidation that the tenuous calm will be broken.
I've had no one up here, save C and a junior colleague and don't feel the need to. On this one day of the week, I want to be left alone. I'd only want to be with someone who'd leave me alone. That apart, the house is in a mess and there's too many things to do. Always.
I'm afraid I'm becoming like those Bengalis in Delhi whose mental space is so entirely filled by Calcutta that they speak of Shymambazar and flurry of real estate activity at Rajarhat as if they'd find those if they stepped outside their rooms, as if those were problems that affected them on an immediate basis. It does feel good that at least numerically there are so many Bengalis in Dilli. But that's it, really. I don't think we carry a common core that makes us happy to be together just because we are Bengali.
I bought fish the other day from Jalebi Chowk and the boys dressing the fish were Bengalis from Araria. But they spoke with such a strong accent there wasn't much you could identify with. Still, I was grateful. I suppose that does makes me sound like a crazy bag lady who scans the crowds for a Bengali face. I do, and often my guess is right, but that's about it. There's nothing more to look forward to on an individual level, save drawing a bit of warmth from an imagined commonality.

2010-12-08T06:02:00.002+05:30

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3067501.cms

India's lost cult films

Are you one of those who were awake that night? Be warned that answering ‘yes’ will identify you as nearing 40 now, but back then in 1988, you were a bored, disaffected, possibly dope-smoking late adolescent who stayed up late to watch Doordarshan (DD) because there wasn’t anything else to see back then, and not much else to do late that night.

So you sat through all the crappy, presumably cut-price shows that DD filled its late night slot with: dour German detective serials, dull Russian costume dramas, bad British sitcoms, pathetic pop shows, and only very rarely something good, like when it showed Hanif Kureishi’s My Beautiful Launderette.

That was a jolt, but it was nothing like the jolt that we got late that night in 1988 when a film with a really weird title was shown. Because In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones wasn’t set abroad, but in Delhi. And the kids in it weren’t foreigners, but students like us. And they didn’t speak American teen lingo, but the sort of Hindi laced slang we all used. And they dressed scruffy like us, and were almost definitely smoking dope and they had the same dim view of teachers that we did, and they were happy to cheat at exams. And while the lead actress — who also was the scriptwriter — was stunningly beautiful, she was in scrappy, sexy way quite unlike any other Indian actress we had ever seen. And it was funny, in a real, irreverent, smutty way that was miles from any Bollywood comedy.

It seems hard to imagine that many people saw it late that night, released without any publicity, and yet there are so many people whose eyes will light up if you mention Annie, Yamdhoot, Radha, Mankind, Kasozi’s worms, Lakes' crystal bowl and the fruit trees on the side of the railway line.

One night...

It would have to have been that night because DD never showed it again. According to Pradip Krishen, who directed the film, it almost didn’t get shown at all. “The film was commissioned by Bhaskar Ghosh who had promised to release it without changes. And he was actually watching it for the first time when he got a call from Rajiv Gandhi’s office telling him he was being sacked,” says Krishen.

Ghosh’s rather spineless successor had no desire to show such a pathbreakingly frank and funny film, but finally agreed to that one, late night, unheralded release. A few people did record it, and those videos became precious commodities, loaned grudgingly, watched to the point of disintegration and finally lost.

Since then the fate of Annie, as we’ll call it for short, has been much speculated on. One story is that DD has locked it away and refuses to release it from sheer perverseness or revenge for its irreverence. Another was that a producer had made away with the negatives. Or that the negatives have degraded. Over time the film’s mystique has developed, not always for the expected reasons.

I'm definitely not 40 and I've never doped. Watching the film made me remember what freedom tasted like. Once you've lived through the eighties, you'll always be a child of the 80s. Though technically, mine were the 90s. But it too was free of the glut of wealth and glitter.
Delhi seemed like a grey ole town in the film, and how I longed to live in it instead of the loud, boisterous city, a corner of which I now inhabit.
And I miss Doordarshan, miss the glut of choice, the dull, hot afternoons, often without electricity, the trance the heat would send you into.
Life was simpler, even if as sad. I really, really miss it.

2010-11-29T04:12:00.001+05:30

It's getting to be 4 in the morning and what a hard day I had today. A bad day, more like. I was unslept, so was not alert at all, was slow, made horrendous mistakes, didn't have the right things to say and got into the boss's car along with a colleague and only later realised that I wasn't sure if he'd asked me. Not to mention that I didn't want this to become a regular habit. A news desk has so many different kinds of people, most often so hard to negotiate, and when you have a bad day, well, the weight of people seems to pile up.
At these times, I wonder if it wouldn't be nice if I were to find my boy when I returned and could go to sleep in the comfort of his arms. The black dog saw me when I returned at 1.40 today and he came straight up the stairs with me. I began feeling human again and then, sort of caught myself, because I couldn't allow myself to relax and put today behind me, because if I allowed this to be just another day, I would trip up again.
You wonder sometimes if you could escape the weight of dealing with people, personalities, if another office wouldn't be without these clashes, but then you realise that the only reason this seems to be so is because the new space is a void for you. And that there is no escape, except to recede. And it's too soon to do that here.

2010-11-27T05:53:00.002+05:30

I am back.
at 6am, in delhi,
armed with 2gb worth of data transfer limit on a 3g sim,
on Linux.
with Britannia cheese for dinner that C so lovingly bought me as a going away gift.

to all i have missed in two months' absence from the net: priyanka, oli, ananya, madhura, dibbo.
my very loving, dear boy, who makes my head not feel like an alien space. you give me roots, reference, seemingly do not mind my horrendous rudeness, go see my dog and reassure me with pictures, tell me how my mother is, your parents, including your lovingly-barmy father, make me feel warm and loved, even though i've called them only once.
in the last two months, you have reassured me again and again and again. when i was afraid, when i was lonely and when i was depressed. you keep me connected to home. because of you, i know home is not lost to me, that i can reach out to them whenever i wish to.
you asked me to go and said that you would take care of my mother, when they would not give her medical insurance.
i am glad that you let me be, and reach out to me, even in my boringness, even when i feel unfriendly to everybody. i can tell you about my chores that give me peace. i know i will tell you about them again even though you listen with half a ear.
there are often such bad days, but i still feel glad i came out to do this. i am finally living my life, mundane as it is. even if it involves nothing but office and eating and doing never-ending chores at home. i am glad i could do this, in spite of being in a relationship. maybe your patience will wear thin sometime. but as of now, i revel in the freedom of living exactly as i please and of having a companion to reach out to.

2010-09-21T15:28:00.000+05:30

I am a happy person who likes having a boyfriend. *sunny smile*

2010-09-11T23:55:00.002+05:30

It still catches me a little by surprise, when I open a Word document or switch on the computer and it says that this product is registered (??) to my name. I keep expecting that it would say my father’s name, that I would be using something that in terms of the world, belonged to him. It seems importunate and sometimes, it even feels stealthy, like I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to. I now have a laptop and it repeatedly asks for this authentication or that and always with it, is my name. My boyfriend put up the laptop, making it workable etc and he’d put in my name. I mean, what I am saying is, I don’t really feel adult in my head. It feels like a child who is being treated like an adult.
Well, ’nuff of that.
I am tired out of my mind. I went to sleep in the morning after watching three episodes of True Blood that I rather liked. And had to wake up with only, er five hours of sleep. Saw many lovely sarees that I would love to buy if I had reason enough to wear them.
Another thing is, we kissed after a long time, and it was good. Dare I say, it was lovely. And well, I am not in a hurry now. The lovin’ bit seems to come at its own pace. And it feels rather nice. Very under your skin, rather than an act to be performed or roles to be played, mired in one’s own expectations of how things should be.
You can’t say what the future holds, but I hope I can deal with it.

The number of dogs in our para has increased several fold. This, I suppose, is mating season. The racket that has been going on all day and into the night is maddening. My dog is shouting her lungs off and yowling desperately if I shut the door to the balcony from where she barks at the dogs below. It's horrible. Coupled with the tiredness, it makes me want to tear my hair or do really dire things to my dog.

I made one kickass sandwich with chicken salami, cheese spread and a shosha tomato salad with dressing comprising lemon juice, olive oil, oregano and chilli flakes (Dominos sachets) that I don’t think was appreciated enough. AAI think it’s absolutely great and totally kickass.

2010-09-08T04:12:00.000+05:30

Delhi, je te deteste

2010-09-05T20:44:00.001+05:30

I am leaving. I hope to back, soon. What I fear right now is not knowing if it is the perfectly right decision. To leave my mother here. I hope she will be fine. I hope nothing will go wrong, and that I will know if it does soon enough to do something about it. my aunt called. She was coy, saying if I had any news. I was very annoyed. It seemed as if I was hiding a particularly juicy piece of information. How this can be juicy escapes me. And what revelations does she demand? Why am I expected to sketch a life plan for her benefit? Does she know my anxieties, and does she care? Maybe she does, maybe we all do, in the way families are.
Will people take advantage of my mother being alone and try to hurt her?

2010-08-22T03:45:00.000+05:30

It was a nice day. If I were asleep by now, then nice day woulda stayed nice, but anyway.
The reason I like Rachel Roddy’s food blog: not just for the enthusiasm with which writes about food but also because of the peace that seems to run through the life she talks about. Of fresh fruits, asides about relatives, love of parents, a beautiful country she is still in love with, being far from one’s port of origin but with the ties intact. The quiet in her life, the absence of cutthroatness.
My day was nice because: I swept the floors and scrubbed them. Both our maid and cook have made their disappearing acts. The maid has actually quit. My dog is shedding her coat, so fistfuls of her hair came up while sweeping. It was particularly satisfying to get rid of those. And the swabbing, well, very tiring, but it feels good to know you are doing home stuff: takes away some of the guilt, and it is very relaxing, the mechanical rhythm lets you focus your thoughts. Then I bathed my dog.
She is all shiny now.
Part of the reason I could do so much work (that is a lot of work compared to what I usually do) at a stretch is probably because I was a little high on half an anti-allergic medicine that I’d taken for the cold. I couldn’t really hold too many thoughts together to torture myself.
I ate well. And then the slight discord of gift hunting for boyfriend’s friend, sister-in-law and the needless eating at CCD. But then back home again to dog and mom. Long sleep with dog, though I was a little sticky with sweat. Woke up at 10pm to tea, felt so comfortable that I washed some dishes.
Watched Australia: it isn’t a good movie, alas. Went down to give dogs their dinner, remembering and feeling terrible not to have given mean dog her medicine. Came back, took a bath and watched Godfather II while I ate. I liked the film, the silences are soothing.
Since then, I have been on the computer, not being of much use, really, apart from writing a DVD and looking up some stuff.
I plan to give the dog her med tomorrow and do some washing.

I also rather like Chandrabindu.
Well, it’s 4am now. I will have a glass of water and go to sleep.
The larger issues remain undiscussed.

2010-08-13T19:09:00.000+05:30

'But the truth is that whatever challenging situation you're in, somebody somewhere has got a much more extreme version. So I think one ought to shut up and not moan about it.'
This is what Hugh Laurie said in an interview I am sure he did not want to give.
Well, my mother. She has diabetes and ate a lot of dessert today at the restaurant we went to. But well, I was reading something about people who are caregivers who have it far worse than I do. Maybe that is some consolation after all.

2010-08-12T18:16:00.001+05:30

It’s one of those days that you plod through and pray will come to an end soon. I feel very very depressed. Nothing is going my way. This weekend, so very rare, could have been so much more.

Such horrible looking women write blogs on make-up. Actually it IS the horrible ones who do. Those who aren’t wouldn’t bother. They spend thousands on make-up too.

2010-08-08T17:58:00.001+05:30

Oh my, I am so tired today. I woke up at 7.30 (after sleeping at 2.30, after chopping vegetables, cleaning toilet and a VERY long time at Pantaloons) to cook breakfast for my horrible cousin, pasta, which he didn’t like, the fool. It was quite tasty, ma also said. Yesterday was lunch at grandfather’s, with mashi’s brood and us. People treading on each others’ toes, much sulking, cold wars and my paka cousin spewing his usual pseud-nonsense which my g’father quoted back to me, saying your cousin says you should soon get married and settle down. My cousin is 19, in first year of college.
Now, Pantaloons. It was very tiring. I stood in two trial room lines, for half an hour each, I think. Then I got tired and bought some clothes without trying. Which fit. No formal trousers, the cuts were nightmarish. Then very lovely pomegranate tea at Barista. Slight kosha taste of tea and tok mishti taste of whatever they were giving in the name of pomegranate. Boyfriend, the fool, said it tasted of amloki r jol. He was on business of his own in the area and we met. I saw many husbands/ boyfriends in Pantaloons who were standing around with glazed expressions, desperately stoic, but they didn’t seem to care if the world ended while their wives/ girlfriends shopped. My feet are still aching from all the standing. I wish I had the enthusiasm to sift and buy more things.
What a completely lost day off.
And then the endless fights with my mother. She seems unliveable with.
And I have to finish The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. There’s so much actual work to do, for one of which I have NO solution and which worried me so much that I dropped it for a while. This is bad, very bad.
And my eyes are burning from lack of sleep whenever I close them now.

2010-08-05T22:04:00.001+05:30

Why can’t I let go and live? Why do I cringe?
What a relaxed life would be for me (as I fancy it)
Chuck the job
Buy beautiful clothes and make-up (sometimes. I think once I am satisfied with my life, I will lose this fascination because I think this was an add-on to compensate for the other dissatisfactions. I am 60% frugal and 40% indulgent.)
Take photos again
Not go to work when I want, stay back at home and see beautiful sunsets
Say exactly what I want to everyone

But but, as perhaps Oli would say, this is not really me. I would be happiest if I did my work right and not get my life tangled by procrastinating or forcing myself to accept things I don’t like. The rest, I think, would fall into place. I see people who would really be relaxed by leading a luxuriant life, but the innate urgency to save, to store away for the future plus the sudden paranoias about clutter mean I will never want it except as a kick to embrace things that are diametrically opposite to what I am.
Therefore, the thick kohl, the luscious lipstick, the beautiful perfume and the perfect dress and shoes. Only to spit it all out and to find the soft, worn pajamas and the faded t-shirt.

The unquestioned points of happiness in my life
My dog
Our own flat
Our financial security

Relief and saving graces
Having a parent
Having boyfriend with me

The bitterness that must be swallowed
Job
The disappointments with boyfriend
The problems with ma

Hopes
Good job eventually
To keep dog and mother close even when I settle down
To work in whichever city I want
To go abroad
That mother will live well and long

Certainties
Taking photos
Travelling

PS more to be added if fancy strikes. Have to go home now.

2010-07-11T21:36:00.002+05:30

I got some money on my birthday today. It is some deep-seated Quakerlike trait that stops me from running out and splurging as I wish to. Maybe I’ll just slowly creep and splurge it. My first wish is, lipstick! And then I remember that I have enough and Calcutta is hot and you can never wear lipstick comfortably. And then soberness sets in and I think of just putting it away. Maybe I shan’t do anything special. Just buy that amazing black forest cake I’ve had my eye on for such a long time and go home and my dog and I can eat it. No ma save a little sliver because she’s diabetic.
Today, we took my aunt’s family out for dinner. My dog wakes up with me and I am a late riser. Like me, she’s used to having her first meal late in the day. So when my mother offered her lunch at 11, she didn’t touch it, or maybe she just sensed that we were getting away and refused to buy into this treachery by the mere offering of a routine if somewhat delicious lunch. And then she got into my mother’s room and began jumping around and my mother got very frazzled and started yelling. At which, I, already very frazzled and looking for a fight, felt murderous, caught hold of my dog and shut her out right away on the balcony. She whined and pushed at the door, but by then, we were leaving. There were no kind words and reassurances that we would return soon. I felt very guilty to leave a very sad and more importantly, unfed dog.
So well, throughout the meal, I missed her on and off quite a bit and wanted to just go home and flop down with her on the bed, do some messy fighting and take an afternoon nap.
Then I called my mother and she said my dog was fine. She kooi-kooied a little when she heard my mother and when she opened the door to the balcony, ran out and climbed up on the sofa and stood and complained to my mother. Then she ate some tandoori roti we’d brought back, some of the grilled beckti meant for my grandfather, six biscuits, water and went to sleep under the bed. I want to meet my dog now, not at 10.30 in the night. So I uploaded some pictures of her on FB, looked through her old pictures and read up on Marley and Me. And found that at one point, people had suggested that the real dog, Marley, might be suffering from ‘mental illness’, which was very funny. They regularly described him as neurotic, which was also sort of funny. Though I do agree, if I had a dog like Marley, I don’t know what I would do. The film was adorable though. Though everyone pans it as boring and no chemistry and when does John Grogan write if he is spending so much time with his dog. But it’s funny, with very Own Wilson kind of self-deprecating humour. And I suppose I glossed over the unrealistic bits because the warmth between them and the dog and the frustration and the moments when you feel the dog is the one you can talk to without reserve, struck a chord.
It seems like such a long time since I cuddled a puppy. I remember the Precocious puppy of last winter, who would wail and yawn and utter squeals if anything was not as it wished it. Which is actually for the best.
And I know what it's like to sit beside your dog, like Owen Wilson is in the first picture, at peace with things.

2010-07-04T20:14:00.002+05:30

It was an uneventful day off. I watched a lot of television, including watching Push again. I really like it. I also made very boring macaroni.
And I met my boyfriend’s parents this week for a casual thank you meet. It was horrible. I was ogled like a monkey in a cage, asked, among other things, the year my father died and touched (my hair, my waist. I hate being touched.). I was expecting to be asked to sing a song next. I was asked by each and every member of the family When I would marry their son and when I said I had no immediate plans, I was demanded to provide an explanation. At one point, I was afraid I would burst into tears. Towards the end, I switched off and forgot my manners and announced abruptly after the meal that I was leaving.
Thing is, I came away with what I had expected: my impression that they were nice people confirmed and my worst fears about this meeting taking a medieval turn coming true. I just couldn’t stomach that my status as a potential bride could completely obliterate my identity as a person. That it didn’t matter to them what I liked, what I wanted to speak about, whether I wanted to check out his flat. They seemed like things that I was obviously expected to do. I was outraged, horrified and insensate with anger at one point. Knowing that this is probably what happens to people in my position always, in our state and wherever else, does not make it one bit easier to accept.
I could see the kindness in their ways, but it did not matter one bit. I have endured worse torment at the hands of relatives when I was younger, relatives who are entirely insensitive. My boyfriend’s were much, much kinder in comparison. But nothing changes the facts.
I feel too scarred to contemplate returning to that house in a long time. And a little scared that I wouldn’t ever be able to make them happy. That I wouldn’t ever fit that blueprint of the pleasant daughter-in-law, who juggled her own wishes and that of the in-laws perfectly. I put the facts out more or less exactly that day and staunchly refused an explanation. At 27, I feel relieved and happy to realise that I have developed a sense of my own space, my likes and dislikes that sometimes don’t agree with those close to me and that I will guard them. I don’t want to change myself to accommodate even those I love. I can't chatter endlessly with everyone, I like quiet and I like space.
Also, the parents and aunts and uncles, when they ask why I am not marrying their extremely eligible son pronto, do they have Any idea of the kind of compromise that went into sustaining this relationship, the bitter disappointments, the loneliness etc etc? I have worked hard there, now I want to settle down on my own terms. They would probably have gotten to know about our relationship if they had asked. But it only occurs to me now that all I was asked, apart from when I would marry and why I wasn’t immediately, was about my studies, where I lived and a bit of haranguing about my job.
My boyfriend says he has no control over their actions, and he doesn’t, given his typical detachment over whatever doesn’t interest him, but I know that if had been in my position, I would have fought tooth and nail and stood between them and him. I wouldn’t have let them harangue and hurt him.

2010-06-29T21:04:00.000+05:30

Wondrous discoveries: noodles/ pasta cooks well if you don’t constantly sit it on the gas. The less you toss, the better. Yesterday, I put in the scrambled egg, pasta and cheese sauce while the cooking pan was off the gas, mixed it and put it back on the gas for a few minutes. Turned out very well.
And carrots cut very fine and fried just a little bit taste lovely in pasta. Also, mushrooms need to be fried a little more than my mother did yesterday. Yesterday’s pasta rocked! :-D I cooked it with carrots, onion, mushroom, celery (I don’t care for it) and scrambled eggs and a dash of cheese sauce. With the pasta, cheese sauce and scrambled eggs added to the fried veggies off the gas and tossed just a little. The less on the gas, the better. Yum yum.
I only wish all my tomato based thingies didn’t taste the same. Do different varieties of tomatoes taste different? And man that cheese ragu is expensive.

2010-06-27T18:11:00.002+05:30

I read such sad, dire stuff in a blog right now, but my day has been, well, pleasant, though I think Woody Allen’s words “Why are we here? And why is it so terrible?” rings a strong bell of recognition. I went to my colleague’s house today for lunch. She has a large flat and though she cribs about it not being well done-up (she wants one lemon yellow and another purple wall), I love going there, despite the hellishly long distance. The walls are white-washed, there is not a lot of furniture or things hung up on the walls and there is a balcony with large glass doors. She cooked us tubey pasta and lovely keema. I also had Amul fat-free chocolate ice-cream I took with me, a thing to be avoided at all costs from now on. I cooked some linguine pasta myself yesterday, with tomato-based keema thingy and scattered a lot of grated processed Amul cheese on top, and despite it not being parmesan as the recipes keep demanding, I think it was the best thing going for the dish. Rachel of racheleats, I WILL make that tomato sauce you wrote of so lovingly, some day to go with pasta. Next: the celery has to be finished off before it goes the same road as the basil. Likewise for mushroom. And there’s the leftover tuna and the huge jar of cheese sauce and the rapidly-becoming rancid cheese. This pasta phase will go on for a while yet. Also, I think I like linguine more than this bizarre array of penne, twisty or shell-shaped nonsense. Kissan grape squash is also very very good. I almost wanted to crush grapes and make some myself.
Aaand my dog and I went walking again. It might be monsoon time, but it’s still hellishly humid when it isn’t raining. So I almost melted and my dog was hot and panted for a good half hour after we returned. And how she sniffed. Offfffff. No lamp post, tree trunk, car tyre must be left unsniffed. Add to that the fact that we have a dog in our building, who I am sure pees on the stair landings because my dog bends her front legs and half sits, with hind quarters raised to sniff out every bit of its scent. I had to drag her away from some of these lamp posts because she wouldn’t stop sniffing. This was all quite tiring because it was so hot. The 5am walks are far more pleasant.
My dog also ate a small plastic packet and vomited today. When she was very little, she had enthusiastically made a hole in a one-litre packet of cooking oil to drink it. Then she vomited all the boiled vegetables my mother had painstakingly fed her.
I think my dog is the funniest when she raises her hindquarters, with front legs bent, to concentrate on something she is excited by, like say an insect. She also likes to push her way and create a space between the sofa backrest and a person she likes who is sitting on it. She then lodges herself firmly in that space and lounges. She also tries, occasionally, to bite your butt when you aren't looking.

2010-06-13T18:05:00.002+05:30

Grey’s Anatomy is a truly horrible, simpering serial. I exhausted myself just reading about it on Wikipedia (pronounced waikipedia by my mejo kaka, very cool, I think.)
So anyway, it’s raining and all. Ma’s doc is decent, the appointment went well. We also bought plums, peaches and cherries. I hadn’t eaten plums and peaches before. We like. Also, tonight we shall have chilli chicken and rice noodles, hneh hneh. And perhaps, just perhaps, I will finally iron today.
I stayed up the whole night, yesternight and night before and went for a walk with my dog afterward. I am a little worried that she’s not so curious about other dogs. With four dogs standing close around her (these were our dogs, not the strangers), she looked casually at them for a bit, then went back to sniffing. She sniffs obsessively, uff. Sometimes lowering herself comfortably on the raised footpath while we stand on the road. Getting her operated has made it much easier to take her for walks, I suppose, since she isn’t giving out the come hither smells. The peyara gachher daal also helps significantly. Also, in the last one year, I’ve become more comfortable with street dogs. I saw yesterday that our old white one has one giant yellow side tooth and no teeth in front, that was one gross and scary sight and I am still traumatised. The little one was eating a dead rat yesterday (big yuck!) and licked my hand with the same ratty mouth, dirtying my jeans by lovingly putting up one grubby paw on my leg. The black one, the one my mother loves most, barked and barked and barked when she saw my dog yesterday. She is the most bheetu of them all. And today, she sat close to us and kept looking sideways, but when my dog tried to come close to her, kept running away. I think she is a big bhodu and a boka kukur to boot.
I was also re-reading my old, meagre stash of Mills and Boon. I think I will go and get myself some second hand ones.
My new salwar is pretty, but looks a little like a school uniform or the uniform of a nurse who works in a really dreary hospital. It’s khaki in colour.
I watched Eastern Promises yesterday. The texture is dark and almost haunting, but in the end, it’s just a whimper, which is so sad. It reminded me later of Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive. I want to watch it again. That Armin Mueller-Stahl again plays a cruel man with a placid face, uff.
In the latest of a long list of incidents of self-mutilation, I scraped my right thumb while taking out a bedsheet from the almirah and drew blood yesterday night. It still burns, I don’t know why. Therefore, I ate with my left hand for the first time, today. I can tell you, my mouth is far more dexterous than my left hand. It made me realise why Harrison Ford looked so daft eating with his (right) hand in Sabrina.

2010-06-10T20:41:00.001+05:30

So. Back’s better, though I am losing no opportunity to complain. Well, basically I am saying that I love the way Bibek writes, here and here. So much prettier if we were a composed sum of our best qualities, instead of scatterbrained and waif-like. At least that’s the image I suggest to myself of myself. It was a good day today. Boyfriend got computer working again. Ram spoke to Vellore and found out what had to be done for duplicate death certificates, there’s a chance my savings account and our new fd will be done yet and I applied for the vellore DD at the bank today. I will send off the vellore application tomorrow and go with my mother to another bank to close an account and get some other work done.
On Saturday, we have an appointment with ma’s doc. My salwars are ready too and can be picked up from the tailor’s. I am quite excited about them.
On Monday, I went back to the municipality (site of fall and subsequent back hurt) with the last receipt and paid the outstanding taxes. No worry till April next year. That was another accomplishment. But on the way back, there were no buses. I can’t sit in an auto without back hurting. So I walked almost half the distance (a fairly long distance) in the unbearable humidity. I had eaten almost nothing and was feeling slightly ill and was getting late for office and a little worried about my back. Well, I got a bus eventually.
Now, it’s not so hot and so humid, so everything is more bearable. You can think with greater clarity, do more without feeling drained. I bought lots of interesting stuff today. Orange crush, tuna, rice noodles, macaroni and kaju and kishmish. Can’t wait to have macaroni and tuna for dinner, hneh hneh. Of course provided mother makes.
And Castle, hneh hneh.
And True Blood season 3 from next week. Hneh hneh hneh.

2010-06-03T20:49:00.000+05:30

I fell down the stairs today. Slid down a few steps on my butt. I had gone to the municipality to pay long due taxes. Slid while getting out of the building. It hurts very much. I can neither sit, stand not lie down without feeling pain. It’s the tailbone I think.
It’s also very muggy, I have a cold and a sore throat. I don’t know what to do, so I am just riding it out till I feel ok enough to take decisions.
It was quite sunny when I set out and I was sweating very much. At the municipality, people were willing to help, which was a good thing, but they also have not maintained any record of payments. I hadn’t been able to find the latest bill, so took the bill before that. The man asked me to bring the last bill, he would update his records and take the money.
While coming out, I slipped and fell. Much vigorous hurting later, I went to the auto stand, sweated in the auto line, then, after getting an auto, sat and sat until the jam cleared. It got a little uncomfortable after a while, as my back was really hurting and I could shift positions only very gingerly. The cold aggravated the sweating.
Got back home. Hunted for an hour for the bill. The cold got a little worse, I think, since I was sifting a lot of dirt, so I took an anti-allergic. I did not find the bill and decided I felt too ill to search any more. My mother kept asking what I wanted to take for tiffin and asking me with great concern to not go to office. I did not want to miss office since I had taken a month’s leave in April and there are other considerations as well. But explaining that would not really have made a difference, I suppose. My mother kept asking what I wanted for tiffin until I agreed to what she was proposing. She would not take ‘I don’t know’ for an answer.
I ate, dressed, messaged my boss that I would be late because I fell down the stairs etc. All of this was interspersed with the same sms on my cellphone from my bank informing me of a bank transaction I had done today. I kept rushing to check the message because I wanted to see what my boss would say. I probably got the sms 14 times today.
He called later, expressing great concern and asking me not to come. I said I was fine and was on my way.
I walked slowly to the bus stop, taking 15 minutes, perhaps, instead of the 7/10. I got up on a bus that had just arrived instead of the waiting auto, thinking I’d save a buck and sit perhaps more comfortably. After I sat down, I realized I’d forgotten my wallet. I hurriedly got down and began walking back slowly to my stoppage. I was wondering whether to get the wallet and come back, something I’d hate to do even on an ordinary day. I told myself that it was important to do one’s job, that one went to office unless one were physically incapable.
I ask for others’ opinion when I know the right answer, but want someone else to say the thing I want to hear. I called my boyfriend and asked if I should go back. He said, do if you want to. I felt the old sad anger at the detached answer. I said ok and disconnected the line.
I went back, climbed the stairs and rang the bell. My dog howled when she realized it was me. My mother opened the door and after my dog had put her urine-dripped paw on my fresh white shirt in welcome, said, ‘be careful, she just peed her.’ She then asked, won’t you go to office?’ I said, please be quiet. She then said, open your earrings.
I went in and changed, came out and sat and watched TV. It was hot, I was sweating constantly, my throat was sore and I felt quite ill. There was nothing interesting, so after a while, I switched it off. My dog and I went into my room. I ate my tiffin on the bed, while she sniffed greedily. I didn’t give her any. She’d had lunch, she has meat everyday and it was teaching her a bad habit. It still felt bad, however. I offered her my sweet after I finished eating, but she wasn’t that interested. I could hardly sit and didn’t want to change position, get up and coax her.
I lay down for a bit, saw afternoon become evening, took a few phone calls.
I have since left the bed, watched some TV, had a cup of tea.
My mother asked me whether she should give tomato in the chicken she was cooking for me. I said, I don’t know. I then shouted that I had told her I had a cold, I was asking for tea which she refused to make and she still kept asking whether she should put tomato in the chicken. She would have to decide for herself. We shouted at each other for a while.

In the last few days, I have hurt myself more than I usually do. Day before, I singed my calf a little with the mosquito coil while I was sleeping on the floor. That was actually a new thing, and I was a little kicked. But I keep bumping into things, stabbing my toe, ramming my elbows into walls. Is something wrong with my coordination? While bathing in the afternoon today, I remembered my father falling down the stairs before he left for Vellore. This is a story I heard much later from the residents in his building when we went to where my father lived and worked, to settle his final payments. I always imagine the incident, instead of remembering the telling. He hurt his head or back, I think, because he was returning home from office, climbing up the stairs.
My mother had a very bad fall a few days ago in the kitchen. She let out an unearthly scream, a thin, long drawn out keening cry. Until I rushed in and saw her, I didn’t know whether it was her or the dog. When I heard it, I thought the worst might have finally happened, life as I knew it was over now. When I saw that she had slipped on pickle oil and then, when she started blaming me for hurrying her, I did not freak. I helped her up. Her foot swelled up and she had a nasty cut on one of her hands. It’s ok now.
But I feel very afraid when slightly older people start falling.

I felt very helpless a while ago. With everything going wrong in a way that was hard to ignore.

2010-06-01T19:29:00.001+05:30

What in god's name is this?

If I suddenly stop trying to do everything I am trying to do, jump up and get married, will everyone be happy? Will my boyfriend be happy? (he won’t), will I be happy to have done what is expected of me and not feel so bitter about wasting my life? I mean, the marriage will be the visible thing, everything else will be subtext, non-existent unless I utter it.
Another flurry of marriages, 30 is closer than I ever thought and I am no nearer doing any of the things I had thought I would do. Living on a pause button. It’s scary how much things don’t move unless you do something about it. Scary how ok it is to snarl, claw out what you want because you want it, because you believe it your right, scary how much time I wasted thinking it to be impolite, scary that people I live with still think it so, think it better to wait hesitantly in the wings forever, doing your damnedest from there to be noticed.
Why is it that at 27, I am still waiting? I have been afraid for a long time that if I did what I wanted, I would not have something else I dearly wanted to keep. And I have done my time. If I still don’t have it, obviously the process is wrong.
But oh oh, to think of all the things with which I decorated my life: the dogs and the little kindnesses, laughter and smiles. It is habit to cling on to what you have, perhaps it is only others for whom everything is unfurled like a dainty planned process. Others just have to settle for Gulkand, believing it to be a tasty dish. When you know, in your heart of hearts, that sweetened roses with nuts and raisins cannot but be horrible, horrible.

2010-05-17T18:29:00.001+05:30

If you felt like an insect and wanted to crawl into a hole and not come out for a long time, you could, right? Will going away change this?

2010-05-04T16:55:00.002+05:30

I returned today. And stayed back since the Duronto Express (yes, it is a joke) was two hours late. It was a good day to return, it was not sunny, there was a cool breeze in the middle of afternoon, it was cloudy etc.
But then, it is not joyful. It is like returning to the site of your defeats, to your biggest heartbreak, where your heart is breaking even now, where things have not changed for you at all. Where there is no challenge because you have lost several times over and are only returning to face the consequences of your defeat and to lose some more.

2010-05-02T13:22:00.001+05:30

It's a Sunday afternoon in Delhi. I am sitting in my dusty house, typing this out in my emphatically non-qwerty keypad and waiting for the mistri who's to come an hour later. So, well, one finds oneself inhabiting moments that, even though one doesn't mind them, are very far beyond the realm of the expected. There's a nirvana-like quality in sweating out the mild heat of the apartment, hoping for an undisturbed hour, hoping to avoid catching a cold from the dust, staring at the faded fabric of old jeans. It would be pleasant to settle down, wouldn't it?, but there are so many things that must be taken care of into which it is difficult to factor in someone else: they might not want to be factored in.
Can i say that i find the challenge of making this house an inhabitable place mildly exciting & therefore want to take it on?
I don't like this locality. The houses smell of joint families & ghee, that it's far from what for lack of a better word one calls cosmopolitan. It's hard to figure how the Punjabi or Marwari or Jat thinks, one only knows to be wary.

2010-04-30T12:16:00.002+05:30

So, i am sitting in an extremely dusty house that belongs to us, which i fought to get back. I have a cold, so it's not such a hot idea to sit in the dust. I got glass fitted to the empty window frames day before & boarded up a doorway. I'm sitting on the floor with my back against the peeling wall & feeling apprehensive at the possibility of trouble from the Society. It would be easier with one other person with me.
So, door got fitted. Still waiting for a mistri to give an estimate for some work on the balcony.

2010-04-24T14:20:00.001+05:30

I didn't realise this was the extent I could ask for. I'm tired of asking, tired of stooping to beg. It's otherwise very amiable. Just that, after a certain point, there is an absence, a vacuum, where no word or appeal has an effect that is any different from that reserved for any other friend.

2010-04-20T18:31:00.002+05:30

Does one ever take away lessons from experience? Are you ever wiser? Little indicates I am. It seems I am unfit to take on the affairs of the world, so inept I am. What am I doing? Why does it take so long to wise up to things? Why do I ignore my gut feelings so easily. And Rohini is so very far away. And Dilli is so hot. Lawyers are crooks. Police are always an uncertain quantity. Ananya's words often ring true, that you are always alone. Why should one have to repeatedly ask for, beg for help from one one counts as one's own? Why do so many words have to be expended, repeated ad infinitum, why the need for explanation at all? Isn't it evident? Unless my impressions are deemed untrustworthy, or that I have not given enough to command so much in return? What are faulty electric meters, office jokes, being needed in office on a Sunday? These are non-existent reasons. Am I wrong to expect another to look at my problem as I look at it? A was saying you can't, except of parents and I knew this to be true once, but I, well, I have had so much for such a long time that I expected nothing but entire commitment. I am tired of having to explain, of trying to speed things up because someone is in a hurry to return.
I spent six hours on two commutes to Rohini yesterday, I stood in the sun for say, an hour and a half at an office and by the end of it, had almost lost sense of my surroundings. I was ill from the heat, with a tummy upset and feeling like vomiting. We had left at 8am and returned at 3. I could hardly eat. I was journeying back to Rohini by 5 for an appointment that eventually didn't happen. This was the second time it hadn't. I returned at 10.45, having hardly eaten anything through the day, ate a little rice and waited for a phone call. By then I was running entirely on adrenalin and didn't know how to switch off, so I read a couple of stories from ma's sananda. It was quite relaxing. But then I again had to explain why I couldn't do it alone, that another head, another pair of hands would be very handy, would be like being given the moon and that it was not only about reassurance.
My back still aches a little from lugging around the knapsack, my feet doesn't hurt as much from yesterday's hail auto=buy ticket-hold ma's hand through escalator rides, stand in metro-change metro=more escalators- more hand holdiing, rickshaw ride. I am glad hot blasts of air didn't lash my face and make my eyes sting. Maybe someone else would be more resilient, more cussed, more determined, more go-getting, maybe the way I am does not work in Delhi, maybe my thinking that I will get this done come what may and how badly I am actually doing this does not tally. Who knows? I did lose baba at the end of a month, so I am probably not that good a fighter. I held F's picture on my phone close and cried today. At the helplessness, perhaps, at the struggle, out of fear, disappointment??. Am I bad because of that? I need a break, at least a day's, even though I can't afford it. Am I wrong that I can't keeep working, days on end, that the weather, the stress gets to me so soon?
I sound selfish, accusing. But well, I am still there, aren't I?

2010-04-15T00:33:00.002+05:30

my heart is clenched. i dont know why i thought this would sort itself out at least a little today. my heart sank when i realised. it seems i've stayed away so long from all that i like. F was operated today. she was being trouble, so I had to put the choke chain on her. oh, she must have been so scared. she has probably been scared all the time since she always snaps at people there. what a badly-brought up dog, I must think. such a small dog, and who knows how she must feel being all alone.
it was so good to have ma today. i thought i'd cry from hopelessness on the way home. but she was around, to just have someone else who cares is so strengthening. at other times, when i have sat at home and will do for the rest of the week, it seems like i have been placed in an alien planet, where i have no roots, no purpose while everyone i know has a concrete day to day reason for being here. i feel like an exile, here to take away something that belongs to me in a place where i dont belong, where i have no right.
each day i sit doing nothing, seems like a waste of life blood: room rent, cost of food, travel: all for cooling my heels waiting for a time when something MIGHT happen.

2010-04-07T20:51:00.001+05:30

Hey bhogoban, what now? Is this all there is to it? Then I shall just keel over and die.

Oh, just get me a man though. To do this with. I am weak with relief though it might mean just nothing. It's been this way so many times in the last 2 weeks.

F goes to stay with I tomorrow. One can never appreciate a dog enough. You get used to its fur and that you will find dog hairs on your person at the strangest times. That a kyabla face will look at you questioningly and that you will receive occasional tail-lashings.

But let's not gush. It is probably nothing and we will return to the heart-clenching, bone-wearying grind.

2010-03-19T18:20:00.000+05:30

I am very very tensed about upcoming work. I couldn’t do it without the help of boyfriend and I realise again and again why people come together, marry, form communities, why those bonds are stronger than friendships. It means a commitment, a duty that goes beyond like or dislike. I am grateful for this. I feel scared, insecure, and spiky about having to take favours. I want to come back to my own space soon, where I do not feel obliged and guilty for being unable to repay the kindness/ help.

2010-03-15T20:24:00.001+05:30

Reasons to be irked about today:
BSNL has mistakenly added last month’s bill to this one’s and barred outgoing calls. In the midst of never-enough-time, kal will have to run to Salt Lake to get that fixed. Online billing? No no sirree. In fact, offline o thik kore korbo na.
I was hoping for the closure of the first phase of duplicate marksheet story. No hope in sight. Duplicate marksheet wanter hasn’t written back clarifying what she wants, and I have left stuff with Dibbo. So sorry.
And then, no cook, no maid, ma at dadu’s, so go home clean dog, prepare other dogs’ food, wake up early when ma is back tomorrow routine. Feed own dog, who will throw all kinds of tantrums, stuff food down own gullet. TALK: v.important to figure out stuff.
Getting a form signed by someone. Speed posting it.
Making a v.important call from home. (Oh brilliant, no happen tom, because no phone, no STD. So figure out a niribili place in office to phone from.)
How I will do all of this by tomorrow, I have no idea. The BSNL thingy really really didn’t have to compound things.

Plus, I am apprehensive about Dilli trip. It seems like a godforsaken place, much worse than Nagpur. Perhaps by the end of the trip I will have resolved to never live or work there.

NB: Para dog seems ok.
I hope SSS’s cat will be fine. Its name is Mieville, like Dora’s cat.

2010-03-12T17:58:00.001+05:30

So, er, this is more an update than anything else. Just because I can.
I went to Indrani’s and this is what I wrote to Oli and the sexy sadistic spanker:
Dog is well, calm, even happy. And somehow, even clean, though obviously not given a bath. It was very relaxing to be there and indrani herself talks in a language that is familiar: she talks of dogs like they are people, she told me about my dog: what she's been doing, how she loves mangsho bhaat, but rather dislikes milk. And how she can eat and eat. She hasn't pulled at her bandages either, wagged her tail at Indrani and let me pet for a long time when I went into her kennel, looked curiously out of her kennel whenever she saw us come up to her. Her other dogs were also lovely: clean, fat and friendly.
Indrani has gotten young Mowgli adopted. Mowgli is a very spirited young pup that M and I saw when we went to her place. And another two will be gone too. Which is very nice. One should be able to think of some things with unrestrained happiness and right now, thinking of her and the dogs she keeps, makes me feel that way.
Among other things, I have feeling addle-headedly affectionate towards boyfriend again, without much reason, so I don’t know what to think about it. His g’ma died and he loved her very much, indeed and I was occupied with doggy stuff and feeling uncertain and blah blah things happened blah blah we spoke while I cried a little and no solution or way forward really came out except that well, I am not worried and disappointed and sad and since I can’t understand why I should feel this way, well, I can’t keep thinking about it anymore.
A cousin married. I visited their house yesterday after they had both come back from her parents’ house in the evening. My cousin looked so glad to have gotten married, it was nice. And we shall go to the boubhaat (ogod I am referring to rituals I don’t care for by name) tomorrow and I shall have to iron out my mountaineous salwaar kameez and wear it in this heat and turn on my public self and it’s work but hopefully will not be prolonged. And an uncle said, sheshe tui ekta leri kutta ke pushli. I am too outraged and well, what’s new, but is it so very hard to expect basic sensitivity, decency? You might not care for it, but you are talking to me and you can extend the same politeness, if nothing else, that I extend towards you even if I might think that what you do is bullshit. I am polite and I try to engage you in talk about what you do even if I think it’s all hocum. Is it so hard to want the same back? I dunno. Maybe I am perpetually in guilt on account of some fault of birth.
The purpose of my Dilli visit will not be sorted out easily. But I do so look forward to meeting friends. I am a little alarmed at the thought of how hot it will be, but ki ar kara.
Since I saw the sufferings of para dog, I look at my own in a new light: I had gotten used to her, but now it seems to strike again how precious her life is, how tenuous too, like everybody else’s. I pet her more often, hold her closer, smell her again and again. When I come down with food at night and my downstairs pup goes ballistic with joy (it goes ballistic at the slightest of reasons), leaping, rolling over and trying to lick all the other dogs, my heart fills with delight.
Crazy dog lady shall accompany to Harinavi for stuff she has to get done. :(

2010-03-07T21:47:00.001+05:30

http://www.eloiseleyden.co.uk/slum-dogs

2010-03-07T21:14:00.002+05:30

Thank you Dibbo for everything today. Mane, I am just a stupid oaf bumbling through everything. I am grateful you knew what to do, from getting the taxi, deciding on the fare, lining the seat with newspapers, petting the dog when she was on the operating table and not losing your cool once, petting her and holding her reassuringly in the taxi, paying off the driver. Also, for telling me that she needs to be walked before being made to get in. This too I didn't know at all.
Twenty four hours have seemed too little in the past three days and I am not sure what tomorrow will bring, but the pressure has eased up a bit now. And I am writing this.

2010-02-24T21:33:00.000+05:30

Amar kalo chokchoke kukurta shob bomi kore phelechhe.

2010-02-23T23:33:00.002+05:30

I sometimes think that having a dog in the house is better than having an infant. At least the dog isn't as articulate and pointedly demanding as a child. You are proved wrong when the dog:
sits by the door you have shut to stop it wreaking havoc in another room, subtly making the point je ei ghor e ekhon amar thakar katha na. tai doya kore dorjata khule amay uddhar koro.
You have obliged and gone back to your stuff. You find it has procured a biscuit from somewhere and is finishing it on the sofa. You give it another, which it refuses to eat, places it politely nearby and looks up, expecting to be fed. When you do hold out the biscuit for it to eat, it takes bloody annoying dainty, testing bites, each time, and when you coax baba bachha kore to eat up fast, it looks up condescendingly and walks away.

It has been a mosquito-filled day and I haven't bathed, but sweated and a copy has to be written and phone researched and dinner eaten and advice taken for important stuff to be done tomorrow and I'm feeling bad at not having ironed and disgusted because both the parar kukur hardly had the huge platefuls of bhaat given, so you will understand if I say karuke dhore kelate ichhe korchhe and I wish the other parar kukur would be back soon.

2010-02-17T19:52:00.000+05:30

Well, uh, here’s the thing, and I am a selfish old fart for saying this. Well, that your “nearest” ones desert you when you uh, need em the most. And then, well, you manage and are the stronger for it. Don’t mistake this for a oh-my-world is good chest thumping or determined to see the silver lining and ignore the actual dark cloud. I am struggling to manage, there are so many things it’s hard to think coherently, but well, I am still standing, messing up, but still around to mess up and still there to take the blows that come out of messing up. It’s going to be a long week and I could do with some sorting out in the head. But if, after three years and a bit more, I have someone turning on his heels and marching out because I have let my resentment show for his not being there when I needed (he had genuine reasons), I am not going to call after him. It’s hard, but like every hard thing, you learn. I learned to cope when baba died. I would tell myself everyday as I found never-ending reams of papers and worldly things to take care of that I had little clue about: whatever happens, I will survive. It might be bad, it might not be the best, but it’s still me, I am still standing and I will survive. I daresay I will survive even when and if I have no one behind me propping me up.
So well, it’s selfish to expect someone to be your confidence, to be the one to unentangle the knots in your head, to calm you. When you are unsure what you offer in return. But well, this is how I probably will always be, as selfish as this. And uh, well, I will probably still be standing. If only because I don’t know yet what gets me down. Please God, give me time before that happens.

2010-02-16T17:57:00.001+05:30

Cspca was supposed to send a vehicle to pick up two of the strays we feed and another that another lady feeds for sterilisation. They could catch only mine. They came three and a half hours late, by which time I was tired, hungry and was feeling very dirty. I felt sorry and scared to think how it would be taken care of, whether it might injure itself furthur (it has an injured leg: a swollen joint and is limping) if bunged in with a lot of other strays. It was cringing into itself as I put it into the vehicle.
I did not know it would cost as much. 1600 rs is not little money for me if spent for a single dog.
I don’t trust cspca one bit. They don’t care about the animals.
I feel very helpless and close to tears. I am filled with rage at the appalling quality of service. Even 1600rs will not ensure that my dog will be in safe hands. I would not be worried if she were with Indrani, for instance.
The red tape there seems like a big wall to me. It angers me all the more to think that they should be throwing their weight around at people who are paying to have animals treated, when it is the very reason for their existence. And they have so much space, such large premises. I am afraid.

2010-02-12T18:43:00.003+05:30

God, will you think me crazy if I go to a Mughlai restaurant and wolf biryani down my throat? After a non-descript healthy lunch of ruti and aloo peyaajkoli with achaar and one lovely nolengurer mishti? I also want to eat, right now, beautiful creamy dessert (take me to Mama Mia!), or pork momo, lovely succulent pork momo drooping fat. I will be a successor to Anthony Bourdain yet.
That twit Anthony Bourdain, I was completely disgusted by yesterday's episode of whatever food show he is hosting now. Being so all high and mighty saying, why do food bloggers get acrimonious over food, why do they take pictures of a dish before eating it? After all, it's just food. Bah! You make your millions doing the same thing and howmuchever you gel your hair, oohaah over whatever food you are tasting in whichever country, you will (er, probably) never be a good cook. It gets very samey after a while, Anthony Bourdain does. And it seems to me that he gushes over everythign he eats because it's his job to gush. Let me go check out his blog.

2010-02-12T18:27:00.001+05:30

Somebody tell me about blogs that write about Calcutta in a way I want to read! Google search turned up such nonsense.

2010-02-06T11:04:00.003+05:30

So I’ve been awake since 9 in the morning, which for me should be gobhir ratri since I went to sleep at 3.30am or thereabouts. But the cook comes at that time and I have to hang around while she works because my mother is staying over at my grandfather’s, whose all time help has gone to her desh indefinitely because her husband is dying, taking some rice and two potatoes in a putuli along the way, without informing my grandfather, at which he is furious, which my mother thought was very unjust of my g, since the help’s family does not give her food, but I told her that she should have informed him and taken it and then he wouldn’t have been so furious and would have happily agreed, because regardless of why you take something, if you do it without telling people, then it’s thievery. My mother is also unable to say how my 85-year-old g with faltering sight found 2 potatoes and a cup of rice missing.
These are things my mother narrates when she returns from dadur bari, by which time I am ballistic with sleep. I am invited by my mother to opine and of course we differ and then we fight and then she says I have strange ideas which have been put there by random person about whom she isn’t feeling kindly a ce-moment la, at which I become angry some more and list the bad things that have happened to me on account of her and then I go away feeling like shit.
So so today, nothing of the sort has happened, but only because we haven’t had a chance to really come face to face, because she was with the dog since after she returned, while I was talking to the cleanliness freak maid who insisted on cleaning the kitchen tiles even though she was getting late for my dadur bari, and she hadn’t gone yesterday evening, so my dadu was bound to be raging. I was watching fascinated as she cleaned off old grime to reveal sparkling surfaces. I like that very very much. It’s why I like to clean toilets, remove iron from bathroom tiles: there’s a lot of satisfaction in revealing the gleaming surface behind the dirt. I hate dust, though. Can’t seem to get my way around it. I just seem to sift it from place to place instead of getting rid of it. My boyfriend is very good with dust.
So today, I have a holiday, so I am going to go back and sleep some more and in the afternoon, go looking for clothes. If I can keep my head and get away soon, it will be pleasant and not turn into a traumatic, harrowing incident.

Also also, I really like the song Ibn-e-Batuta from the film Ishqiya, along with Dil toh bachha hai ji from the same film, which I have been listening to everyday and now. Toh I was singing it to my boyfriend with great gusto on the phone one night and he said, abar ta-ta kore gaan gaichho? I was deeply embarrassed, but would now like to clarify that the song really does have a ta-ta refrain: bagal mein joota, ta… ta and so on. So there.

2010-02-05T19:39:00.003+05:30

The Whine
Uh, by writing about the following problem, I will take writing about personal stuff to a new level: new high, new low. So, well, my mum is 53 and has diabetes and another disorder. At rather a late time for our family, I have decided/ had decided about six months ago, that we will get ourselves medical insurance. Much testing (for ma) later, an agent has kindly told me that you can’t get insurance for people with diabetes etc unless you can show that reports are normal. The other policy there is will not cover the entire expenses of a hospital stay. So suddenly I am hyper worried about something that I was casual about earlier because I knew that whenever I submitted the forms and turned in the cheque, the job would be done, we’d be insured.
2nd, I am coveting bags: the kind women take, on one shoulder. Good leather, medium sized, something bound to be expensive and is utterly unnecessary. Ek shomoy hoyto ichhe hobe chhure phele di shoto hosto dure. Like I feel about the disgusting orna I bought to wear with a pretty salwar kameez to a wedding and for whose design I spent a couple of poring on the Internet.
I have a thing: I have decided that I will try everything that Nahoum’s makes one by one, trip by trip. So, I feel particular satisfaction when I wolf down a tasteless custard cream roll with gusto. It’s easy to imagine that it will be horrible. I saw the man at the shop lift it up from its place in the glass windows, it’s yellow vanilla bottom showing and knew. Imagine, jaast imagine: thick, floury, gyadgade yellow muck stuffed into patty. Among good things at Nahoum’s: chocolate éclair, though there is too much of it in one piece, beautiful chocolate brownies, nice pizza puff and cheese samosa thingy, garlic bread o bhalo, but daam o bhalo. And ginger biscuits too. Rest I haven’t tried/ are mucky things. Nahoum’s’ owner pays to get dogs near his shop sterilised. Which is a very nice thing.
Also pup affair: pup alive, which is very very kind of God to have let happen. But also, no home for it, except the garage, from which he keeps escaping onto the road. And he is really tiny. Pups make me warm and fuzzy inside. Sunayana had once written of wanting to softly swaddle a wee newborn, this is something like that. You want to cosset a tiny puppy and take it to sleep beside you. Only up to a limit, mind. Waking thrice in the night because of the puppy was some crazy shit.
My vet told me that cat hishoo smells something terrible. Much worse than dog hishoo, he clarified. Now when I go to Sraboni’s house, I take in the animal smells with new knowledge. I now know it’s all cat hishoo. It’s stronger than dog pee, but definitely not as bas as the vet had made it sound. Shala vet, for all his way with animals, he was subtly telling me that taking in all this puppy wuppy was crazy. Crazy is what they might make me feel after a time if I have to constantly monitor them, but if you can take care of them endlessly, that’s fine.
The following are the examples of bags I covet:

I would be happier carrying the green one, but the metallic thingy would be what I should carry, considering what I would like to look like.

2010-02-05T18:13:00.002+05:30

hack has discovered the loo in New Market. Hoorah to hack. More news later. Detailed whining hobekhon.
Edited to add:
Also, hey bhogoban, make me pretty and pheminain. Must I go through life looking like an ugly duckling?

2010-01-29T14:15:00.002+05:30

Two things:

I was in Bowbazar and then walking on Ganesh Chandra Avenue today. I saw so many dogs, and even two litters. A piece of chot had been placed under where they were lying. Another dog lounged right beside where people were eating and they didn’t mind. The dogs were, for the most part, healthy. How and why why why is it that people on the streets find it easier to care for dogs than people in prosperous localities? Why do I constantly have to be on the alert to feed dogs etc quietly, because an animal person is not looked upon kindly in the neighbourhood? Sraboni, the lady from whom I brought my dog, is a nervous wreck, almost, these days. A Marwari family in her building is ganging up people against her for feeding dogs. Their rallying point is a male dog who has bitten other dogs and even chases people sometimes. He has a temper. They mockingly call Sraboni Maneka Gandhi and say that the dog is here and acts this way towards humans because S feeds him.
I know how it is. I returned home from home at 3am from office on three days. I feed three dogs usually after I return from office. One of the residents in my complex very conveniently put the two facts together and was asking around why I feed dogs at 3am in the night, endangering the security of the complex as it necessitates the opening of the main gate. I usually feed them between 10.40 and 11pm, when I return home on most days.
I am tired. A puppy I found has gone missing. It was staying nights with me and I was leaving it on the street, near an istiriwala in the mornings, because nobody was willing to take it in. I miss it shutor moton tail and fat belly and tumbly walk and bhota muzzle. It kept me awake at nights and required me to sleep by 12 and awake at 7. Please please be alive.

There was a drive of some sort happening on GC Avenue: a man with walky talkie was instructing some people in breaking the unoons and taking away the gas unoons of people selling food on the street. GC Avenue is office para and there are shacks lining the footpaths on both sides of the road. They serve cheap, fairly good quality food and are the lifeline for office goers in the area. I don’t know why their unoon s were being taken away, perhaps because they were not supposed to be cooking there, but things is, how can you do that? They probably pay money to whoever to be allowed to ply their trade there, and you are crippling them smartly, saying you are enforcing the law? I saw them as I walked, a little faster than I would have because I was also going to get lunch some way ahead from one such seller and didn’t want them to have broken this guy’s stuff as well. They just looked on with staring eyes, without reacting, as their stuff was taken away and went back to gathering them together. A little ahead, people hurriedly put them away, to stop them being taken away, I guess. I am sure this is not a particularly smart thing to write and there are nexuses within nexuses, but let me indulge myself, for once. This is not the way to do it, that much I know.

And something else, that I can’t remember now. My heart is clenched with apprehension.

Edited to add:
The other thing I wanted to say: uh, am I the only one who does not care to get pregnant and spawn children at the stage I am in my life, meaning, with job, potential marriage person and on wrong side of 25? It’s slightly sickening. And its not that I don’t want kids, I am just not seeing a reason to have them anytime soon. I don’t care for the sight of young, pleasant looking women carrying kids.

2010-01-25T17:18:00.001+05:30

This photo for lack of anything better.
So, so, will I be hated if I say I didn’t mind the Sex and the City movie? One likes the laughter, the luxury of having all your friends in the same city and the even greater luxury of having the time to meet for endless breakfasts and dinners at the hippest restaurants, pubs ityadi. Of not being married at 40. One likes to see a woman who does not want to settle down and is happier alone, at 50 too. One likes to see a woman who is the bigger earner and is a lawyer but is apparently at peace with marrying a bar tender and says ‘I changed who I was for you’. And one sees Carrie Bradshaw, who does all he big talk, but is in a sado-masochistic relationship that has brought more sadness than smiles. And she is even getting married to the man. It makes one think, even dream. Even at the sight of one’s worst fears being acted out. One also likes how airbrushed it all is and wonders if New York really is this magical place that lets this all happen. One also likes the bear-like Chris Noth as Big, beside the pint-sized Carrie Bradshaw. One likes being enveloped completely by a much larger-proportioned man.
One does not like the old horsy Sarah Jessica Parker.

2010-01-18T20:20:00.004+05:30

This was a much-loved film at the beginning of college. I remember arguing with my first boyfriend that Winona Ryder was wearing something to make her skin fairer because it looked painted and he telling me that I should take it from him that Caucasian women could be as pale as her. Or was it the other way round?
I was reading the plot of the film now, because I had forgotten it, really. The review says it captures appealingly the lives of people in their twenties: of Lelaina, who wants to be a ‘videographer’ and Troy Dyer, a slacker who loses one dead end job after another and is a nihilist grunge musician by night.
Well, this: I am in my twenties, very scared that it is almost at an end and I have done nothing but slacken. Yet, yet, the film seemed magical when I watched it, full of promise. And well, the old story: what we had dreamed and what we are living today and 20 years later, this will seem shiny: eating porota and kosha mangsho alone at Golbari, followed by a heavenly nolen gurer mishti and roshomalai at a shop nearby. It wasn’t the happiest moment, but compared with those that happened immediately before, it was free.
Because because, I can’t live down that life, love, was supposed to be magical, however much I might take solace from the mundane.

2010-01-16T13:45:00.000+05:30

I am coughing from nail polish fumes.

I don’t know why I remember baba so strongly now, meaning since yesterday. Is it because I am stressed with the new pup, stressed by the uncertainty of keeping it alive, like the uncertainty of baba living then? Or is it the anger and resentment about boyfriend? Or is it the drawn-out death of Jyoti Basu being played out by so many people: you see the markers and remember? (Forcing a city’s people to live the death of someone who brought so much misery on them?)

I’ll say again what I was remembering: baba after the fall, the hemorrhage, when one of his pupils was off-centre, inward, while the other was in the centre, when I saw him like that the first time after he recovered consciousness after the fall, his moaning when they took him to the scanning machine: I was allowed to enter the room wearing a special coat thing to calm him, stop him moving, the many walks to and fro on the bridge thing connecting two departments, walking in giant sneakers without socks and blue pajamas: food tasted like food, meant for nourishment, to keep one going. And then, how, slowly, he died. Like a long long fall in slow motion where he would fall into my arms: it seems one way of looking at it now. I let him fall, that day, when he fell, it was on me.

How I told Amlan da how scared I was I’d forget it and he said he knew: how incredible it was: his understanding: how incredible that another human being should understand and give credence to something you are afraid is an indulgence.

And the memories do fade, they seem to float away sometimes, and you look, almost not caring.

Yesterday night, I said, I thought, I told God, after he had kept the pup alive and found it a kind person who’d taken it in: that it was wrong that baba had gone when he was 56. Basu is 95. Baba had a lot more to do, to see, to give. This is so a very bare fact, so not an indulgence: there are more to some people, there isn’t as much for others, perhaps. I am not singing a paean to a parent. It was a smart, agile and confident mind that was taken away, that went away, and I daresay, a heart that would have learnt a lot about affection in the years to come if he had lived. It is not fair. And yes, the same God kept that pup alive, quite defying all possibility: a very very little animal that can’t even walk properly, so small that it wouldn’t be seen by drivers of vehicles, it walked a very long distance to the istiriwala who turned out to be a kind person and didn’t think that he didn’t want to take on a responsibility, when I had left it on the footpath in God’s name and left.

So yes, I miss baba: how much I don’t know myself. It’s one of those things you don’t realize because you are still living it.

2009-12-30T18:59:00.001+05:30

I must be the kind of person who is rarely interested in the lives of others unless they are entangled with mine, preferably not very tenuously. I am not going to be bothered about how hard-worked someone is, I am tired of being sad. I want to have fun.
I feel more and more at ease about not answering mails from friends because I don’t want to, though I hate it when some people I want to respond to mine, don’t.
I am not very pretty, am I?
So this year will end tomorrow, another of many, no different from the last, mired in boredom, my mind as fetid as in the last. I will write something wonderful when things change.

2009-12-28T21:41:00.001+05:30

Uh, the reunion. Bad pictures, so those won’t be appearing anywhere. Except for this one.
The feeling is slipping away, but there was so much I wanted to write about while they were happening.
It was a beautiful sunny day, glorious really, more charming because I am either asleep or in office or at home when this happens. The campus is very manicured and is perhaps a good thing. Yes, it is good to have clean grounds and green grass to lay down on, as I suppose is the giant entrance at Bengal Lamp, but well, it’s new, is all.
Somewhere towards the middle of Bibek’s band’s playing, I realised I was more relaxed than I had been the whole day, that I felt the way I did in college. Great comfort, knowing that there was no reason to question your presence here. Bibek’s harsh voice and Sujoy’s seamless singing, the mandolin played on. I speak like I know them, I don’t, except of stories I’ve heard from friends, but surely you can speak of what you loved with some familiarity? And then there was a time, when two ex-students, who had been in a relationship, hummed along to Mirna Guha’s song. And the rhythm of their heads shaking to the music was the same, though they didn’t look at each other much. I wondered then what we had started out with and what we had today was different, sometimes so far away.
And when you are that relaxed, you want a body to lay back against or somebody to laugh with, old, known jokes and uncontrolled laughter. I missed Oli. It was one of those moments, when things seem as if through a haze and you feel warmth for everyone who smiles for the same reason as you.
As I walked out of the Bengal Lamp gate, I could smell the openness I inhabited in my head once and that now it was different, and the choice had been mine and it wasn’t so bad: there is much warmth, but when you go back, you remember such longing, such desperate longing to live that way again.
And sudden kindness that I am quite certain I don’t deserve, Supriya di’s, Rimidi’s, and Dipta da. I felt so out of it for such a long time, I have, er, outsider issues.
I wish there were more people from my class. But there was Arati, Karishma, V, R, Dipta da, Ditto da. Sreetama was in the city, but dunno how, had NO idea the reunion was on. It would have been ever so nice to meet.
It makes you restless, it makes you want to leave your present and get out again. It makes you very restless, to not reach out for all that you want.

2009-12-24T16:05:00.000+05:30

I have discovered the blog of another colleague. Hyuk.
So much feeling. The universe would explode under the pressure of it, if it knew. This is just as affected as the blog I discovered, was.
Then, a few days ago, I was checking the visitor stats of a classmate’s blog, a blog that I viciously dislike for its pretentiousness and then I checked mine and snnrrkd. My classmate might have thousands of readers in l’Amerique et a l’Inde, but I have the solitary reader in Turkey that my classmate doesn’t have. Snurf.
Ami asholey kintu eto vicious noi.

2009-12-23T21:33:00.003+05:30

Someone is saying repeatedly Ridiklus state of affairs ya Ridiklus state of affairs.
Accha, so, I am wondering if two-year-old condoms serve any purpose, because I shall throw them out if they don’t and not endanger myself in the distant future when there might be an opportunity to have sex. This is just a way of saying I have had sex, which should not really be something that one shall have to state at my age. Also, that it has been off my mind for a while now, no thanks to my own natural inclination for, whattosay, more constructive activities. If I were offered sex now, I wouldn’t jump up in delight, I’d be considering and say: oh, you do? Well, why not.
Secondly, a colleague’s cat died today after being sent to stay at an animal shelter/ ngo for seven days, of blood dysentery and apparently, worms. It reinforces what one knows, that there’s no place your pet is safe except at home, or with other animal owners.
A junior has said that dogs with ears standing erect are usually mischief-makers. This makes me consider my dog in a wholly new light.
There is a very bad peon person in my office who was asking for tickets to tomorrow’s match. He is very sly and sneaky. I bet if he could've got them, he would have tried to sell them for a lot of money, even though he was saying some bullshit like ‘khela r jonne amar mon bhore othe/ knepe knepe othe’ or somesuch.

2009-12-22T19:46:00.003+05:30

Bhogoban, ami ar ar parchhi na, ami bari jabo. Amar matha byatha korchhe, ghum pachhe, amar kaaj karar kono ichhe nei. Ami para r kukur der katha bhabte chai na, oder obostha dekhte pari na, amar mon bhenge jaye. Ami K er kachhe jante chai na je o overworked, annoyed, or cricket match dekhte pabey na, or off day r din off pabey na, why it is a luxury to demand to go eat at Mainland China because it is Christmas and it's nice to celebrate, when he is having trouble getting through his days, so much work he has. I don't want to know, I want someone to laugh with, wear old clothes and walk with. I also want to go home and sleep. Without my mother complaining, without the dog doing things it shouldn't. I just want to put up my mosquito net, take my dog in, wrap my arms around her and sleep.
Look, my eyes are filling with tears at my desparation.

Edited to add:

Bend me

Break me

Anyway you need me

I am subbing a copy that makes me feel like this song from Garbage.

2009-12-20T21:50:00.002+05:30

I wish I was a person who could sport ethnogrunge look. You know, long earrings, thick kajol, occasional bangle. Trouble is, it also requires you to wear very good quality clothing, accoutrement, which you then proceed to destroy and call grunge. Or let it just become out of fashion and call it grunge. Which makes grunge a look, which is such nyakamo, really.
I do not wish to sport that look. If you are all nihilistic and feel nothing about the world, you can’t possibly have all the patience to paint your white, back and red.
I used to love dressing in raggedy clothes and I wish grunge was actually that, where you could sport comfortable tatter and still appear attractive. I look nice with kajol, but comfort really matters more and I take public transport and I sweat bucketfulls, so no kajol in summer, or lipstick for the same reason. And bangles make my hand look like a jhee’s. And I won’t buy clothes that cost more than a certain amount, because after all, they are clothes and are meant to cover your body. And waifish choppol, forgyet it. I hate dry, dirty feet.
Ethnogrunge, my foot, nc.
This is also occasioned by Dakota Fanning’s look in Push, a film that could have been so much more but which I still liked very much. Sure, the film’s yellow pallette will all turn out to be Wong Kar Wai-like and boyfriend will tell me o-my-god-eta oita!. Kintu ki korbo, I think I really like all these mildly sci-fi like films and fantasy toh I definitely like very much. Well, so Dakota Fanning had this shock of unruly hair with pink highlights, which I would love to have, except that my hair is in a very bad way and is a sensitive issue and probably won’t survive pink highlighting.
Another thing is the academic I met towards last weekend for an interview. It was bad and therefore very disappointing, but she had seemed so beautiful, you know. That’s the reason why I had hauled myself to meet her in the morning, waking up at 9.30 for god’s sake. And would love to put up her photo, she still seems beautiful to me. So intangible, perhaps therefore beautiful. After speaking to her for a while, the smile didn’t seem so lighting up the place anymore. And the book is perhaps as many academic tomes are.
Lastly, William by Richmal Crompton. I wish I had bought the other one in that pile of nonsense books strewn about at our local bookfair and were selling for 20 bucks.

Can you believe, people in the adjoining cubicle are making obscene chook chook noises, which you otherwise hear on the street when people fancy you available. They are showing off who can do it best, oh such cool bhodrolok we are, we can do what is so bad without batting an eyelid and without besmirching our unblemished bhodrolokhood.

2009-12-18T20:29:00.000+05:30

2009-12-17T20:57:00.003+05:30

This is from The Sartorialist. The brilliant sunlight, the vibrant green, the floaty dress, even the green nails. It fills me with such impossibly deep longing, of walking down a road in a far away country, with the sun on my back, where I could wear this impractical dress and take a long walk, where no one would know me, so you could do all of this and not think how this could be fixed into your past and your future.

The closest actual feeling of this was in Darjeeling, where the weather got better each day and that day I took that long long walk to the Tibetan refugee centre, so far away from anything one knew.

2009-12-13T21:42:00.000+05:30

Achha achha, this is all very disgusting. I was reading a classmate’s blog and it depresses the hell out of me. Mane, okok, all right, I agree being married is difficult, mane even though I am not married. Adjusting with another family, I don’t expect to be fun. There’s my colleague, who does almost a picture perfect turn at it. And I hate the idea of it, but but, that’s not one’s whole life? Eh? Eh eh?
Gah, ami bhabteo chai na. Bloody depressing. You want to spit it out and rinse your mouth very well.

2009-12-06T01:18:00.002+05:30

Is my life good or is my life bad?

I gave two stories in the last two weeks and both were done while struggling maniacally to balance pages. I was a little glad of being able to pull both off.
And then there was today. Of course, remember dog, beautiful black, silky length of her, curling up beside you every night and looking up with soulful eyes, always. Which made me so content with the present that I didn’t feel the need to make vacation plans.
Yes, today. Harrowing, harrowing nightmare, of endless complaints, accusation, and I felt rage coursing through me like a living thing that could influence me in a way that seemed most tempting to give in to. I know, I now know what makes good people behave in ways that seem horrifying even to them, of ways of being that wasn’t a part of their images of themselves in the toughest of situations. ‘I am my father’s daughter’ is a phrase that resonates with me for all the non-praiseworthy reasons. I understand often these days what made him act the way he did all that time, what must life have been for him and what it must have taken for him to not drop it all and go away somewhere where there was not this.
And then again, perhaps we do not. Perhaps that is our culture. Perhaps we are quieter, in a very Buddha-like way, perhaps we accept that things will be a certain way and rework our worlds to accommodate it.

Uh, long talk break
Life doesn’t seem so bad now. Even though you have to demand that for your birthday you want a strawberry studded cake with dinner and boyfriend’s closest friends on the list of invitees, beaming for having been invited. Or at least I would like to meet them casually too. Though I don’t really mind for the most part. Being a giant extended family is eminently avoidable. Mane, I know what’s happening at their end and vice versa, I think.

So it’s ended for today, I think. What occasioned this lekha, ie. Will probably start again tomorrow.

I gave in two churidar kurta pieces to the tailor to be made. It’s a bad world out there, where churidar wearers are at the mercy of tailors. If you are very lucky, your tailor will get your design and fit approximately right. If you are not, you might lose the material (as it happened last time), you might get a completely different design (even though the tailor notes down the cuts and measurements on his part of the bill) or get clothes double/ half your style. I was outraged at this recently, till I found that this is de rigueur. And boyfriend agrees, and he comes from a, er, vintage tailoring family.

See, how all problems in life are solved not by taking steps to correct what’s not working, but by adopting a Zen-like calm, as Bridget Jones would say, to take everything in your stride. Crazy family, insidious tailors.

Edited to add: eeeeyuk, is this a smarmy post. Door how beyadob!

2009-11-19T18:33:00.003+05:30

Of course this is not the copy I am reading from.
So, basically, after a whole lot of whine, Edmund White kicked ass in the last chapter. Also, laughter, towards the end of the book, when the light was breaking on my night. I didn’t associate White with funny, but there were these moments of robust disgust. Mane, in the last chapter, he lets go of that careful craftedness and it’s more a human being, a boy who is not this distilled consciousness. The last paragraph reminds you of a poem.
(this poem:
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;

The worlds revolve like ancient women

Gathering fuel in vacant lots.)
So, well, a lot fills me with disgust and fear and sadness now. I thought of what it would be if I lost my mother and what would happen with Floppy and it made me sick with dread. What will happen to the dog about F’s age, who is going to have puppies? Another cycle of early deaths. What will happen to Flop when I go away? How can I give her away? She slept with her face jammed into the crook of my arm yesterday. Which animal but one who knows nothing other than to trust you does that? A tiger is dying of cancer in Lucknow zoo and they are thinking of putting him down. In Long Island, a woman would buy dogs, torture and kill them. A one year old pit bull was put down in Brooklyn because it was unfit to live among humans or animals, apparently. What does that mean? This after she recovered after she was thrown down a storey (or was it more?) by her owner and had a broken leg and broken something else. In her photograph, she had the most serene eyes ever, looking deeply.
I remember telling my cousin once, when I was in school, that I imagined what would be if I were in the same situation as a boy in a Hindi film I had seen, a boy of five or seven, who is left crying after his entire family is shot while they are going somewhere. And my cousin had wondered what a gruesome imagination I had. And then years later, I think I remembered what I had thought when my father died. And well, all the times I had wondered how I would feel if I lost him, he who I thought was the centre of the world and he was. Was that somehow responsible for bringing on his death? Can you wish people dead? How terrible it must be to wish people dead out of your indulgence to feeling. And am I doing it again? It is like a reckoning of your own love for those who are most precious to you, to imagine how you would react to their deaths. And do you reduce their life span by it? Like Donne had asked his lover not to sigh for him, for with every breath, she reduced his life a little?

2009-11-12T21:52:00.002+05:30

This is Edmund White with his lover Hubert Sorin and their dog, Fred. I am reading Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story and rediscovering why I was so taken in by him when I read him in PG II. It’s almost like poetry, and isn’t compulsively wordy like The Farewell Symphony. This one’s like delicately charting the rise and fall of a mental state, just as he says he wanted to do. And uh, so many thoughts. What we set out be, what we are. There definitely isn’t any place for wishy washiness. I’ll quote from him later, and buy his books. And he is becoming very pro-establishment. And I met Babu, did I say? The name written with a firm handwriting that echoes the stiff rhythm of his walk and the birdlike gestures. So many worlds feel alive in my head and sometimes I want to inhabit many at once. It’s like being high on Avil.

2009-11-01T01:24:00.002+05:30

The only thing that gives a respite is Questionable Content, trivial details about the lives of people your age that let you smile. That must be why bloggers who write about everyday rojnamcha are so popular. They summarise what overwhelms you.
Although it's always on top of my mind, I always tried so that I would never tell myself or another (I have) that I don't know what to do with my life next. I have tried to keep at least vague goals on the horizon, a rough sequence of events. I admit now that I have absolutely no clue of what I want next, only vague dreams and very little idea of how to realise them or whether they are realisable at all. I am on the wrong side of 25, time is running past me, I am answerable about my plans to another.
I feel tied up like a bundle of knots and unable to answer questions. I have no clue of where things are going to come from next. I can't abide my present, I can't conceive a future.

2009-10-23T17:59:00.002+05:30

Opinions that have changed since I was a teenager. A list Sunayana made.
I thought I’d write on what she wrote, but then realised that most of them didn’t really make that much of a difference to me. These do.

Abortions: One should be able to decide whether one wants to have a baby or be rid of it. I now believe this even more firmly than I did then. In school, the reason was simple, it’s my body, right? Who is anyone else to tell me whether I want or don’t want to keep a baby I make? Now, it seems much simpler. If you decide to bring another life into this world, one must be absolutely sure that one can guarantee it a reasonable degree of physical comfort and emotional security. If I have doubts about either of those, I would rather not have a child. A child can’t be a solution to my problems, it’s not really fair to think that it follows after having a baby that I will become more responsible and caring, ergo child will be fine, while solving my relationship/ loneliness problems by being there.

My parents: Ah, I do feel vastly differently now than then. Then, I was constantly angry, or hurt, or needing. Since baba died, though, it’s changed. Can I tell you how strong I feel when I accomplish each little thing that I once felt helpless about? I can’t say how it might have been if baba were still there. I would probably have been less tied to home, but I can’t even imagine what my mind would be like.
I crib furiously at all the responsibility, at how tied down I feel now. I did a terrible thing yesterday, exactly what I had hoped not to do, and exactly the opposite of the kind of responsibility I am talking about. But I sort of accept that I will not be footloose, that I have a family of sorts that comprises mother, I and dog. And did I say that I can talk with such assurance because I know that the guy I am seeing is my rock?
I love The Namesake very much, and someone wrote about the book that it was the story of Ashoke and Ashima, of a husband who showed his wife how to be free. But she wanted to be free, yea? The guy I am seeing, he is not a remarkable boyfriend, really. I think he would give the same kindness and understanding to all that were close to him. It is a tremendous openness that lets you go where you want, even away from him.
So, er, what I am saying is, I am still very angry at my one remaining parent, but will probably not make any plans without figuring her into it. And that I feel strong enough to live out the years without baba.

Clothes: I remember wanting them when I was little like a child wants toys, but even then, the wanting was in passing. One of the many reasons college was liberating was that no one gave a rat’s ass (with all due love to rats) what you wore. I was so used to complete indifference to what I wore that it took me quite a while into my job to figure that clothes did matter. They are functional things: they let you be seen, heard. I try (not very hard, still) to be dressed in clean, ironed, more or less well-fitted, not bizarre clothes. I like to buy them too. I found that out about two years ago.

Money: I feel as strongly about this when I was little as I do now. It matters a great deal. One must spend it prudently.

2009-09-27T22:58:00.001+05:30

Letter to dog:

It was sometime later in the year, last year that you came into the world. That was the Pujas too. I was busy with so many thoughts this time last year. I didn’t have any inkling that you were going to be born. I saw you for the first time when winter began to fall, as a wee thing, with your wee brother, both of you tugging at a sapling. The dog lady must have fallen in love with you, because the next time I saw you, you were already in the grill. And then I saw you. And you came to live with me.
Since then, you’ve torn both our sofas, don’t eat, you’re shedding hair like there’s no tomorrow. But I love to go to sleep with you on my bed, love to bury my nose in your fur and breathe in deep that unbathed dog smell. You are the best thing that happened to me in a very very long time.
A year has rolled by since then and it’s festive time again. You look out curiously when the beats of the dhaak sound, bark in fear and anger when the boys burst crackers. You leapt at me when I came out of the room wearing new clothes, rubbed your wet nose on them to get to know the smell. I wish I knew how to make a dog enjoy the Pujas, I wish I could take you to watch the Puja. But your birthday is around the corner, I swear we’ll have rollicking amounts of fun then. We’ll have mutton and sweets and ice-cream and I’ll get you new toys. Much love.

The pujas this year
It was like being a child who discovers the world for the first time. I saw so many Pujas and today, on Nabami, I wondered how I had not felt this deep deep enjoyment in all these years. I was passing by a puja in Dum Dum Park, and it was a homely one, really, no fancy pandals. I went up close and saw the faces of Durga and Lokkhi and Saraswati and the design on Ganesh’s shur, I saw the lines drawn in: the eyes, the lips, with such care lavished on each line, it seemed. You wonder about the reason for such love, it’s only a festival, no? and you know, that people do this, for things they love, there might not be much benefit to be had from it. Some unreasoned strands that make the cultural fabric of a people. How glad I am that we have festivals.
I saw a very small boy at Thanthania Kali bari. He stood behind the dhaakis who were playing, and quietly clapped to himself. He clapped and he clapped, amidst the tumult of people who passed to and fro, never minding them, who never minded him. And someone came and moved him a little to one side, out of the way of people, very kindly. And he went on clapping.
There was a couple, at that pujo near Gariahat, a daab seller and his wife. I saw them in a corner, hidden away behind the pandal passage. It was evening and they sat and spoke. The man was in his 40’s, perhaps, and the girl, in a sari, with her head covered in a ghomta very matter of factly, like your barir kaajer meye. But the girl was.. 13.. 14 perhaps and the moment they shared was so intimate and yet, she was a girl! Little more than infant! She spoke to him like an equal, like one would speak to a husband.. and yet, how can you live it down??? How can you live down her glaring youth? And that she was married to a man so much older. How can you ignore the tiredness in her face and that the youth that dripped off her was so at odds with her fatigue, her grown-up clothes and an aged husband?

2009-08-01T23:10:00.003+05:30

Incredibly depressed.
from The Songlines, Chatwin quoting Baudelaire:

This life is a hospital in which each sick man is possessed by the desire to change beds. One would prefer to suffer by the stove. Another believes he would recover if he sat by the window.
I think I would be happy in that place I happen not to be, and this question of moving house is the subject of a perpetual dialogue I have with my soul.

from Anywhere Out of This World!

2009-07-31T17:36:00.001+05:30

Another reaching out for distant possibilities ‘post’, if you will. I read an interview of Alexander Skarsgard, who plays vampire Eric Northman on True Blood. He is in his mid-30’s, Swedish and his father is Skellan Skarsgard (who has starfish growing out of his cheek in Pirates of the Caribbean 2, I think, and who plays the bullish math professor in Good Will Hunting. AND Goya in Goya’s Ghosts. It was very good.)
Alexander Skarsgard is a TV actor, mostly, and his home is Sweden. He talks about his work schedule, it is very gruelling and about staying with friends in LA and not wanting family right now. And well, how attractive that was. To be tall and work hard and alone. To be free of the compulsion to settle down, if ever. To do it tomorrow or when it came along. To not even have children, if it didn’t work for you. Even if children were beautiful and a nice thing to look forward to.
And I saw House, the first episode of the season finale of 5 where he begins to hallucinate. And there’s Cuddy, who is very much in love with him. And he is in his 40’s and she going to be, and they are still falling in love. She is. And he lives alone and he is, as David Shore says, incredibly self-aware and he has fears. He hangs on by a slim thread.
God, I shall not live by stereotype. I don’t think they make me happy. They are pretty, people with nice children and falling asleep sharing nitty gritties with a husband. But I don’t want em, not in that combination and not now. I am 26 and I am a little scared even to write this, at how big the words are. But I hope I live up to them.

2009-07-19T21:57:00.001+05:30

Was Chatwin a bit of an Orientalist, I mean in believing that the East stood for mysticism, where he would find a life that would be different from the frenetic pace of the west? Did he feel trapped in the torpor of the war that swung around him and did he find sunshine in cultures that lived unaffected by the Europe’s turmoil? I was reading a random page of The Songlines and the well, compulsive quoting from texts (very lovely, mind you) felt like a mind working frenetically to find a way out, to make sense.
Reading from a random page was soothing, without the compulsion of having to follow a storyline, but then, probably he felt that way too, the need to cut loose?
What I long for greatly now is to find my way to a small town in the Deep South like Bon Temps. I might hate it, never mind, but it seems so attractive perhaps because it has no frame of reference to my current life. I hate to say perhaps. I know that is the reason. I hate to have to give an adult explanation for a longing that sounds juvenile, otherwise.
But, well, what Chatwin says, that wandering is not the sign of neurosis, dissatisfied sexuality, but natural? What can I say? When I think of places away from home, I don’t think of forging ties, of friends (if I am lucky, perhaps), I think of a quiet heart, one that does not rage against its present, that walks in silence, utterly soothed by the sights it sees, the people it meets, without feeling the need to touch them, to form life-long bonds with them.
Is that the flaneur? Perhaps not. I dunno, it’s ok if it ain’t.
Here’s a few from Chatwin:

“Psychiatrists, politicians, tyrants are forever assuring us that the wandering life is an aberrant form of behaviour; a neurosis, a form of unfulfilled sexual longing; a sickness which, in the interests of civilization, must be suppressed.
Nazi propagandists claimed that gypsies and Jews – peoples with wandering in their genes – could find no place in a stable Reich.”

“A very brief life of Diogenes:
He lived in a tub. He ate raw octopus and lupins. He said ‘Kosmopolites eimi’. ‘I am a citizen of the world.’ He compared his wanderings through Greece to the migration of storks: north in summer, south to avoid the winter cold.”

“We Lapps have the same nature as the reindeer: in the springtime we long for the mountains; in winter we are drawn to the woods.
- Turi’s Book of Lapland

2009-07-17T16:16:00.000+05:30

I was subbing a copy on a science show. It dealt with pressure, density and vacuum and brought forth these images from Class VII, the terror, the rough-paper of the physics book with its killingly bland diagrams that today seems curiously maya makhano because I remembered baba drawing those experiments again and again to explain those principles to me. And they seemed so tough, so tough and baba would say, how can you find it boring? It’s so interesting, it explains everything. And pressure was a terror, and I was always a very average student, but I remember I did well in the class test and I remember the teacher’s opaque recitation of the principle, smooth voice and smoother handwriting and red lipstick. She thought she was explaining and the smart ones in class probably got stuff too, despite the bad teaching. But it seemed so like a puppet talking. I know because I have spoken like that sometimes, with my mind completely somewhere else, and people haven’t understood even though I wasn’t saying a thing wrong.
But think how pressure diagrams can seem so loving in recollection, even the fear and the hate.
Is literature, writing, feeling an exercise in indulgence? I thought I would leave all that behind, but it has gripped me again. And I am without any spine to deal with it except to take refuge in silence. Also, it seems so infernally stupid that I have nothing to say. So I choke with rage and sputter.
(the pic is a refraction diagram. Eta slightly easier chhilo)