Even if we could turn back, we’d probably never end up where we started.

I understand that I need to believe in heaven. I need to believe in a heaven for those who have suffered and died, like the young girl in my city, like the old man I had known. I need to believe in a God who smiles and treats all his children alike. Who tells me that it's alright to not understand the world and its ways, to not know what to do with my hands on some days, to not know what I'm talking about. She says quietly as she hugs me that I must put up a brave face nevertheless. I must believe and move on. It isn't easy but it is the only way. And everyone's doing it. The bug of melancholia has bitten some and some are crying louder than the others. But everyone's doing it. Everyone's carrying on. 

“And I guess I realized at that moment that I really did love her. Because there was nothing to gain, and that didn’t matter.”

 She is Cristina, she is Meredith, she is Clarissa, she is Peter, she is Florence, she is everyone; in that moment she’s everyone. 
I don’t even remember the season. I just remember walking between them and feeling for the first time that I belonged   somewhere.
 It’s a state of mind, this thing called time. There’s no today no tomorrow, no past no future. Only now and where you want to be, here. She’s here, I’m here. We’re over thinking things, maybe. But we don’t care.
 In that moment we’re not just two lonely girls, we’re them and they’re us.

Expect nothing. That way, each time you're loved the feeling will be new and it will hold its own.

"Though these mornings I wish books loved back."

The Man With the Horns

I was Florence last night. I remember it very well from my dream because I had her hair, and the same luminous face-Snow White. Meryl Streep was to play the Evil Queen. Instead she was acting frisky with some dark man with horns on his head in a changing room near the beach somewhere. I had a feeling the man was Prince Charming, faceless as usual.
One of my friend's ex-boyfriend was also loitering about in the dream but I have no idea what he was doing there.
I was living in a tree house in one of the two rooms that were connected to each other by a rickety bridge. The wood in my room would creak even when I lightly paced in my violet nightgown. Outside my room there was a mirror and a black sink. I came out to oil my red hair.
Then I spotted the man who played the oompa loompas in Tim Burton's version of the book. I suppose he was to play one of the seven dwarfs, or all of them, or whatever. He looked up, I smiled at him. He nodded his head, looked away and then looked back at me like he recognized me. I knew I was in trouble then. In a couple of minutes he brought the man with the horns with him who tore down my tree house and took me away with him and that was the end of it.

Swimming

I find myself here when I crave the water and I'm thirsty tonight. I've put the blue lights on. They're beating the drums. I'm dropping quickly, head first. And deeper into the drink. Come, open my mouth and stun me with the force of the ocean. Knock me into a trance. Shake me up. I was sinking but now I'm sunk. Clap your hands over my ears so I hear nothing else. I will scream, and scream louder and louder till this scream turns into a mermaid song. Bite my neck and suck the water out of my chest. 
Come. 

You keep me high minded

You get me high

Though I hardly know you I think I can tell, these are the reasons I think that we're ill.

Have you seen The Piano? I think I am obsessed with the idea of drowning. Septimus Warren Smith dreamed of drowning too. A few days before he took the plunge out of the window. I suppose once you give up the struggle it would be as easy as crossing a bridge. He's an explorer, like Darwin, the champion of humans. He simply passes through a green mist. He's tossed onto the shore, where he lies for the whole world-the battered soldier of death. In turn I let my head fall in a tub of water for I want to feel what he felt. He's able to describe his dreams to Lucrezia. She loves him but she's horrified. Even more so because he isn't. He should be. His naked eye is looking at the emptiness she cannot see. She cannot understand the madman's ludicrous fancy, that Violet could for Virginia. I want to be able to have that knack, you know. For saying the right thing. To save him from drowning. I want him to put his head on my knee, so that I can stroke it and kiss it. But for that I must save myself first. 

‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.
‘I don’t much care where -’ said Alice.
‘Then it doesn't matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.

Alice's Theme - Danny Elfman
 S has impeccable taste. She should chuck what she's doing and become a wine connoisseur or something.

He wants to die where nobody can see him but the beauty of his death will carry on, so I don't believe him.

Half blind, half drowned, I turned around. Like always, I had difficulty describing what I saw. The island escaping my line of sight. The smell of salt. The scorching sun slowly baking my skin. The immensity of the sea. The periodic roaring of the waves that brought something new from the sea each time. Green. Blue. White. Everything together. Me. Here. I was a part of this. But I closed my eyes and I turned around. Like always, I was going back, taking this moment with me. I would relive it in my blanket many times in the years to come, for I was a coward.    

Ramin Djawadi- What Is Dead May Never Die

"There is voluminous filth in beauty.

The word beauty stultifies itself

as it tries best to be enslaved by homogeneity.''

Hum mann ke dariya mein doobe. Kaisi nayya, kya manjhdhaar.

I decide to spend some time in her head. It's not easy. I need Ali's voice right now to cloud my mind just as she needs another refill of rum to cloud hers.

I look down and inside. She is contained; deep but impenetrable. A dam. Thoughts begin to pelt on her like the rain and they've all jumped in. The ghosts have. The ghosts have met. She wonders what they have to say to each other about her. She can barely hear them inside her. Crawling out now, drenched, they carry small parts of her to feast on. It's pouring again. She pours more alcohol until her bosom swells with pain and she can't take it anymore. 
Chhad duniya de janjaal, kuchh bhi ni labhna bandeya de naal. Alif tells me. I tell her. Or the dam will break.
We are drowning in our own selves. There are no boats, no storms. Only truth. 

Mumbling #20

It’s not the same here. The expensive shoes I had picked out of their translucent paper this morning are now muddied. I didn't agonize over dirty shoes back home. One could walk bare feet for miles there.  The soft earth was damp most of the time, weeping with pleasure, grateful for your return. It seemed to graze wispy kisses on your feet.  The forest fascinated me. The trees closed in, whispering in your ear, stories of no great concern. Calling to mind passions… of no great concern. I had grown up like a tree.  My mind had been like the trunk, even and robust. But as I grew up I branched out into a million things, splayed-out wildly in every possible direction. I stopped near one and looked up. It was perfect. What does the brain matter anyway, compared with the heart? 

Simple poetry is not reflection of a simple mind.

Mumbling #19

There is no room for doubt here. One needs to have faith in something, ANYTHING! Something to make you believe what you're doing today is right. It is justified, at least today. Maybe that's why I gave up debating in my first year of college. I am the most fickle minded person I met. My thoughts are disjointed and it has always been excruciatingly painful to take a stand. I could talk about something with the greatest fervor one day, thoroughly impassioned, and dismiss it the next. I'm a difficult friend, even more difficult a lover. I don't make sense. I run away. I scratch out too many lines. My headache is gone now. I've probably given you one.

The things I feel for, the things I can describe lucidly are perhaps too trivial for you to take notice. In a recurrent dream I'm crossing a bridge, following faceless people. I keep saying something, but there are these screeching sounds that take over and drown my words into nothingness. 

I love Yeats. I love his poetry. In his time, Yeats created a world of his own that explained everything. I love Vincent van Gogh! Where else do you find such honesty on canvas? I would've married him if he was alive. I'd love him ardently. Every evening after supper, we would sit together and sip on wine, and look at the nameless walls on which his portraits would be hung. 

You were given a sharp, acute, uncomfortable grain- the actual meeting; horribly painful as often as not; yet in the absence, in the most unlikely places, it would flower out, open, shed its scent, let you touch, taste, look about you, get the whole feel of it and understanding after years of lying lost. 

They come in with their black machines that make clicking sounds. They ask her if she has nightmares. Does she imagine him falling dead after another one of the machine's click?
The educated can articulate their pain, even glorify it. They're privileged, protected. What about her? If she could tell her story, would you listen?

Gunnamma, widow of Barikayya Battina, who died of a bullet injury after being hit during a police firing at Vadditandra.

     

       ''How can you, of all people, dispose of yourself without affection?''

        ''How can I dispose of myself with it?''

           Runaways - Adrian Johnston                                             

Quiet descended on her, calm, content, as her needle, drawing the silk smoothly to its gentle pause, collected the green folds together and attached them, very lightly to the belt. So on a summer's day waves collect, overbalance, and fall; collect and fall; the whole world seems to be saying 'that is all' more and more ponderously until even the heart in the body which lies in the sun on the beach says too, that is all. Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall. And the body alone listens to the passing bee; the wave breaking, the dog barking, far away barking and barking. 

Mumbling #18

Find a new sense of the world. Fragments of self are left behind. Too much is lost, dropped and broken on the way. Thin lines mark her face, divide it. Her footsteps are heavy, they resound in the corridor as she tries to find the new entrance to the old library. The pieces, like shards of broken glass, glimmer in the winter sun, waiting to be picked up by someone else. Perhaps she spends too much time by herself. Reads too much and sees too little, that she cannot feel. There are strings of thought. Seemingly never ending strings of thought. Different colored strings of wool in her head, bungled. Her tired eyes wolf down the words on the yellowing paper, deprived still. Little beads of sweat line her upper lip.Words come out, but with difficulty. They always have. The knot in her head is loosened but it refuses to open. Perhaps it's best to leave it as it is.

Shaman

Hybrid bodies are ambiguous not only because they can't be easily categorized but also because they incarnate our ambiguous feelings towards our own bodies.

The figure of shaman, as conjurer of spirits, trickster and healer, able to transmute himself into powerful animal forces in the shadowy depths, epitomizes a a world of continuous mutation. Shaman's body emphasizes that unity is an illusion by disrupting the boundaries between human and animal, the natural and the constructed, the physical and the non-physical. There is something chilling about this message. But there is also a promise of a world where we may not need to fear the partial and the contradictory identities, and may actually enjoy the idea of a continually disassembled and reassembled self.

Writing is like a little door. Some fantasies, like big pieces of furniture, won't come through.

This is so delightful, I couldn't help posting it :)

Black Venus, Vol. 1. Portraits by Maxim Vakhovskiy 

The Cherry Blossom Girl

She is looking out the window. The wind is kissing her face. It makes a resplendent picture.

I am feeling very warm right now.

Air- Alone in Kyoto

Lay me down. Let the only sound, be the overflow.

I like how sunlight peers into the water and helps you look inside and around. I like how you would go to the bottom, even with your  lungs bursting and look up, the sun blinding you. 'Cause she's a cruel mistress, and a bargain must be made. As you look up longingly, you realise that it makes you love the land more, makes you grateful for what you have. But oh, my love, don't forget me.  I like the ocean. I like how it has a heart big enough to take in all of you just as it gives back whatever it has to offer. It is unselfish. Like Her.  
But would you have it any other way?
Would you have it any other way?
You couldn't have it any other way.

Dreams trapped in purple perfume bottles.

In her rare moments of sanity, she picked out fresh flowers and curled her hair. She cut the chicken, marinated it and put the baby to sleep. Then she dressed prudently and met friends for lunch.


Monday 25 October (first day of wintertime)

Why is life so tragic; so like a strip of pavement over an abyss.I look down; I feel giddy; I wonder how I'm ever to walk to the end. But why do I feel like this? Now that I say it I don't feel it...Melancholy diminishes as I write. Why then don't I write it down oftener? Well, one's vanity forbids. I want to appear a success even to myself...I think too much of whys and wherefores: too much time of myself. I don't like time to flap around me...

-Virginia Woolf, 1920
                                                                                 

Warning Sign

I think of how I could have done it differently. Or how you would have said things you never did, as you sat there in your bullet-proof vest. With all the windows closed.
I lost a friend because he couldn't be my lover. I've never lost a friend before.
It's beautiful in here, you know. It's pure and resplendent. Magnificent. But it's in my mind and that's why no one will ever know it the way I do. 

The flower he tucked behind my ear fell out miles ago. It was a cynical gesture anyway; he knew my girliness was a bit threadbare.

“I’m an eye. A mechanical eye. I, the machine, show you a world the way only I can see it. I free myself for today and forever from human immobility. I’m in constant movement. I approach and pull away from objects. I creep under them. I move alongside a running horse’s mouth. I fall and rise with the falling and rising bodies. This is I, the machine, manoeuvring in the chaotic movements, recording one movement after another in the most complex combinations. Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I co-ordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever I want them to be. My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world. Thus I explain in a new way the world unkown to you.”

-Dziga Vertov

I think love has happened.

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

But that night, everything seemed against me - the hardness of the boat, the sound of the water and wind, the novelty of it all - everything kept me restless and disturbed. I dreamt I had swallowed a sovereign and someone was cutting a hole in my back to take it out. I was so troubled by my dream that I woke up with a start. The boat seemed stuffy and my head ached. So I crept out from under the canvas onto the bank. 
It was a glorious night. The moon had sunk and left the earth alone with the stars. They awe us, these strange stars - So cold, so clear. And yet the night felt so full of comfort and strength. In its great presence, our small sorrows creep away, ashamed.


-Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

Sometimes I dream of winters and cold morning walks. 

Mumbling #17

The boat is damaged, bruised. Her name is Rebecca. She is married to the water. The relationship has become more abusive than usual, lately. The top of her mast hangs broken and wind has made his way through her bright blue sail, which was once her glory, perforating it. The air seems to be clearing a bit now. A small ray of golden sunshine after days of nothingness. She moves through the mist, despite her cracked hull.  A shadow, a glimmer behind it, she has seen the land after a month. It was always good to her, tending to her wounds. Few moments of respite. The land cannot keep her for long though and she has come to accept that. There isn't any purpose she could serve here, besides becoming home to the waterfowl who would wake her up every morning with it's quacking. She has her own home to return to; the sea. She is married to the water.

This blog is drowsy today.

Add caption

A woman's whole life in a single day. Just one day. And in that day her whole life. -Virginia Woolf

I’ve been spending a pretty uneventful summer break at home. I don’t like staying here all day and I don’t like to have too much time to kill but most of all I detest having nowhere to go to every morning. I sleep for long and I think about death, about life and life’s triviality. I yearn and I pine but my feet are cold, frozen. I don’t move. I think about love.  Love that’s lost, love that we would love to talk about because we have nothing else to do, but we cannot articulate it. Just a bunch of words we put together to make some sense, but don't.  Life that we are bound to, and the hours we keep running from but cannot. Cannot escape. The Hours. Insipid and unstimulating. Blown off in smoke.


A very good friend of mine leaves for another city tomorrow morning. She’ll be gone for a year.  I’m going to miss her.

Secret Lovers

Just sit here with me, by my side. You don't have to say nothing, just smile.

I know she said, 
That I don't need her, 
cause everytime I call, 
she's sitting sweeter, 

I know she said, 
to get near her, 
but I'm feeling cold, 
and I must leave her. 

Sat down here with my head hung down 
and I just seem to find 
a bit of peace, 
a bit of love, 
a bit of something left behind. 

Sat down here with my best intentions, 
nothing said, nothing lied, 
a bit of peace, 
a bit of love, 
a bit of something left inside. 

And my heart's content, 
I say that to please her, 
happiness is on her face, 
it's the mind that greets her, 
only my disgrace, 
to admit I need her, 
but we all fall from grace, 
dust me down and keep her. 

Sat down here with my head hung down 
and I just seem to find 
a bit of peace, 
a bit love, 
a bit of something left behind. 

Why does she go about cleaning the house when the home is broken?

Today is a special day. I am a round number now.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua2loiGHZ38

Perfectly Lonely

Had a little love, but I spread it thin
Falling in her arms and out again
Made a bad name for my game 'round town
Tore out my heart, shut it down

I've always consciously avoided listening to John Mayer. He just makes me incredibly sad. He speaks the blatant truth,  his smooth voice runs down the throat like brandy would on a cold winter night. It is bittersweet. Makes me very uncomfortable.

You know how going places is one too many people's dream. How most people would just collect all of their life savings, put their home in a backpack and get the fuck out. You call them crazy because they are. They leave behind everything they have. Friends and lovers. Both old and new. With only memories to live by. They would sometimes send picture postcards during festive seasons. I envy those people the most.

I wish to share a moment with strangers, then turn to another street and forget them completely, never having to know them. I wish I could be that detached.  I wish that a quiet life didn't drive me mad. But most of all I wish to be perfectly lonely someday, just like him.

Mumbling #16

It helps me process and prioritize. It makes me call people I love. I even enjoy my music better. Alcohol is good. This is not a drunk post.I never lie when I have alcohol.

Draupadi

Her mind stopped a moment.. .what does it mean to have loved? Ulupi, Chitrangada, Subhadra — Arjuna had loved so many women!.. Or had he? Had Arjuna given his heart to any woman? Women had loved him but he had given his heart to Krishna. She knew how from the beginning, from the settling of Indraprastha, Arjuna and Krishna would sit talking by the hour. In their talk there was always some new idea — perhaps about building a city; but they talked as friends, each one speaking from his heart and listening to the other. No woman could win Arjuna’s heart. .. Is love always like that? Is it always one-sided? I pine for someone who doesn’t return my love; someone else yearns for me... Suddenly, as if shocked, she stopped. The realization pierced like lightning; there was one who had given his whole life for her. She sighed with her new understanding. Again pictures came before her eyes; Bhima along with Arjuna, fighting the enemies outside the svayamvara pavilion; Bhima ready to burn his brother’s dice-playing hands when she was dragged into the assembly; Bhima, so angry he had to be held down by Arjuna; Bhima, comforting her when she was tired; Bhima, bringing her fragrant lotuses; Bhima, drinking the blood of Duhsha-sana; Bhima, plaiting her hair with gory hands. Arjuna could have killed the Kichaka, but it was Bhima who did. How many things she remembered — greedy Bhima, rough, tempestuous Bhima, always railing at Dhritarashtra and Gandhari. In the same sense that Draupadi was earthy, so was he. She was a daughter of the earth, he was a son. Draupadi heard a dragging sound, then a great sigh. Her whole body quivered with fear. She had been waiting quietly for the moment of her death. Was a wild animal coming? A hyena? In all the days of walking on the plateau they had seen no animals. Better that it fastened on her throat at once, without mauling her. She closed her eyes hard. As she lay waiting for the unnamed danger to strike, suddenly a shadow fell over her eyes. A curtain had dropped between her and the sun. A low deep voice called, “Draupadi.” It was Bhima’s voice. It was he who had dragged himself, gasping with effort, over the ten, fifteen feet that separated them. On the way he had seen Arjuna, Nakula, and Sahadeva lying dead, and had thought Draupadi must be dead too. When Draupadi, frightened at his approach, had quiversed, he had caught with joy this sign of life. “What can I do for you?” The words came out with difficulty. It was the same question he had asked all his life, but in this situation it was utterly meaningless and incongruous. Draupadi smiled. Bringing Bhima’s face close to hers, she said with her last breath, “In our next birth be the eldest, Bhima; under your shelter we can all live in safety and joy.”

Excerpt from Iravati Karve's Yuganta

"I love you, Dominique. I love you so much that nothing can matter to me-not even you. Can you understand that? Only my love-not your answer. Not even your indifference." -Gail Wynand, The Fountainhead

Mumbling #15

I got home from a weekend trip with my family a few days back. I've seen, those who drive the trailers and tempos on highways are madmen! It seems like they like living life on the edge. They change lanes without warning and swish past driving the living soul out of me. My father swooshes his own humble vehicle here and there as my brother cheers him on, my grandmother screams curses between her prayers while my mother nibbles on a piece of orange. I look around incredulously for a second, wondering if the madmen are outside the car or inside. Then put on my music and try to concentrate on the pretty fields of rye we cross. A young man inside the truck overtaking us grins, exposing his pan-stained teeth, like there is no greater pleasure. Chris Martin then whispers in my ear, trying to explain: Honey... It's been a long time coming, and I can't stop now. Such a long time running, and I can't stop now. I don't think I can understand, still.

Squirrel

"All this had happened so often, both in dream and reality, that I could no longer separate one from the other. Neither did it seem all that important to do so. It was a fact that the pages crumbled and fell into pieces beneath my fingers. A fact that the crumbling bits stuck to my fingers...But this happened many times, both in dreams and in reality. that's why I didn't try to separate the two. When I was sure I was dreaming, the electric fan would suddenly stop and I would find myself bathed in sweat. Certain that it was real, I would raise a book in order to smell it, be awakened by the raindrops splashing on to my face through the open window. I didn't worry about it. Isn't it possible that some relationships should extend from dreams into reality, the others be spillover from reality into dream?"


-Ambai, Squirrel, originally published as Anil, October 1986

Mumbling #14

There should be background music playing all the time.
Sweet and low on some days,
Deafeningly loud on others.
Boom boom booming.
Drowning your words,
Letting me look into your eyes better.
And the strange way your lips twitch.
Boom boom boom.
Words can only say so much, you know.


Now Playing:
Youth by Daughter
Thank you Shiromi

Browning says,

It is the glory and good of Art
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine, at least
...Art-wherein man nowise speaks to men,
Only to mankind-Art may tell a truth
Obliquely, do the thing that breed the thought,
Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word

So we'll use it a little. To form shapes in clouds and tiles in the toilet. To form creative lies. To find half-truths. To find the other dimension. Without turning into drug addicts of course. And then we'll smile a little.

But thank you.
It's a fucking relief.

Maybe you'll get what you wanted

I want a library of my own. One that smells of old wood and paper. Where sunlight peeps through windows, sometimes falling on faces of strangers. Making them seem familiar. I want a big jet plane, the windows of which I could roll down and put out my head to taste a cloud or two. I want to put every beautiful song I hear in a locket that I could wear. I want an imagination so vivid, that I could draw my own paradise and live in there forever. Maybe get lost in a city I never saw before. Trod though streets in my pretty shoes and never retrace my steps again. I created my bubble after that night. Told you I had got what I wanted. So nothing could break my world. No one could take my moment. I've wanted lots of things. I always have. You gave me a closure. Perhaps I wanted that too. For now, my pillow will do.

Maybe you'll get what you wanted
Maybe you'll stumble upon it
Everything you ever wanted
In a permanent state

Maybe you'll know when you see it
Maybe if you say it, you'll mean it
And when you find it you'll keep it
In a permanent state, a permanent state

Mumbling #13

There is something supremely wonderful about home. No matter who you are with outside, no matter who you are outside, at home you’re still the mundu, running around doing chores in old and funny looking clothes. There is something supremely wonderful about getting hair oiled by your mother or grandmother. They comb your hair and then put it in a braid. And you feel like such a good girl, again.

It’s getting so much easier to just be. To just stop fidgeting for once, and just be. You cannot realize that till you spend time alone, in your company. Just as you cannot experience being alive without realizing that you have to die. But it's just as impossible to realize that you have to die without thinking how incredibly amazing it is to be alive.

Mumbling #12

Where do you find you? In your favorite song? In the ring that remains on your finger even while you sleep? In your closest friend? In the old, frayed kurta that you wouldn’t let go? In the tears that would soak your pillow at night, for no reason? In the kohl that you would line your swollen eyes with, without fail? In the blemish that you would try to hide with make-up? In the you that gapes wildly at you post a couple of beers in the Ladies Room, when you're quite drunk to look properly and yet sober enough too see through? In the arms of a lover? In the words you weave.

Love

I like sleeping next to her. My mother, I mean. She’s a very quiet woman. We’ve not been in the habit of speaking too much but we find comfort in each other’s company. In fact, it’s only been a couple of years that I would say she’s opened up to me. But should I call it that? See, that’s the strange thing. She doesn’t seem to be the kind of woman who would necessarily want someone to ‘open up’ to. She’s seems very…appeased. To the extent that some would think of her as dispassionate.


I like sleeping next to my mother. Did I tell you that she’s a very quiet woman? Also very gentle. She pays attention to the littlest details. The other afternoon I saw her lying on her side of bed, in her blanket, trying to catch a wink. She likes to nap, you know? The fuzzy blanket coupled with the untroubled look on her face was too inviting for me to pass, so I kicked off my shoes and got in.


Did I tell you that I like sleeping next to her? She would take my hand and then obsess over it like she never saw it before. She says it’s too small, like a child’s hand. But it is very soft and warm. ‘’Your husband will be happy’’, she says. I’d laugh a little with amusement. Then she would rub her hand on mine gently till she'd recede to a soft slumber. I would too. Later, I’d wake up again to see her, awake, facing the other way and looking out the open door of our balcony. Her eyes always seem very distant, you know? She has green eyes. I don’t know what dreams they hold. But then she seems so calm that I wouldn’t go and ask.


She’s a very quiet woman, my mother. But when I sleep next to her, I unwind. She makes me appreciate little things and be grateful for them. Did I tell you that I love her?

O Fortune,like the moon

you are changeable,

ever waxing and waning;

hateful life

first oppresses and then soothes

as fancy takes it;

poverty and power

it melts them like ice.

Fate – monstrous and empty,

you whirling wheel,

you are malevolent,

well-being is vain

and always fades to nothing,

shadowed and veiled

you plague me too;

now through the game

I bring my bare back to your villainy.

Fate is against me

in health and virtue,

driven on and weighted down,

always enslaved.

So at this hour without delay

pluck the vibrating strings;

since Fate

strikes down the strong man,

everyone weep with me.

"The strange thing, on looking back, was the purity, the integrity, of her feeling for Sally. It was not like one's feeling for a man...and besides, it had a quality which could only exist between women, between women just grown up. It was protective from her side; sprang from a sense of being in league together."


Of love notes, among many other 'firsts'. :)

Mumbling #11

I realised I get up to write either early in the morning or late at night, never during the course of the day. I think my writing has a lot to do with my sleep. When I’m not getting any and I need to get something out or when I’ve magically figured something out in the slumber and want to put it on paper. Having said that, I feel very labyrinthine now. Good shit.

But of late, I’ve been utterly incoherent in my thoughts. Maybe because so much has happened all of a sudden or I’ve tried to make so much happen all too soon, my days are flying past me in a whirlwind. And by the time I get back home, I barely have time to breathe. And think.

The DU fest season is a little too disturbing, especially when you’re sitting very close to the stupid sound system while watching the performances, where everyone is intending to blind you with their shininess. The energy levels are intimidating. After all there’s a year worth of hard work and a lot (a hell lot) of sweat going into it. Pancaked and dressed in the frilly clothes, they step on the stage, risking the fact that they will probably only be laughed at.

Throughout these performances, I'd only been looking around, trying to figure out things for myself. There's so much hope riding on the action of the artist and the reaction of the audience, you could almost bite into the tension in the air. And only when you look at the face of one of the judges, bored and distant, probably thinking about his kid back home, do you understand that most of these emotions on and off stage are exaggerated and unreal. And this pattern of excessive emotionality only leaves us exhausted and empty at the end of the day.

I'm probably just typing shit now. But you just can't stop typing shit precisely because it is. You can't just stop playing because some of them in the audience are deaf. Or blind. Or stupid. You got to do what you got to do. And somewhere on your way you will find what you'd been looking for. One way or another.

No one will take it away from me.
Not even You.
There will be no white flag above my door.

Mumbling #10

It’s amazing how Coldplay has managed to be the only band I ever heard that has been so easy on the ear and yet most resounding in the long run. Possibly because it has been heard over and over again, some will dismiss it as being too mainstream. Pappy and limp like the pillow I long to rest my head on after a tiresome day, this band is unbelievably uncomplicated. What if that is what scares some of us?
Sometimes, when I’m walking back home from college,against the traffic and plugged in, I wouldn’t care so much for a truck, if it ran over me. So much is given and taken in the few minutes a song bursts open. A moment is found. And in that moment, peace is found.
I want them playing on my funeral.



It's a Happy New Year. And this is a Happy Post.
Just saying. :)