Here's to You, Rachel Robinson

I was wondering about the book with which I associate growing up and I thought of Here’s to You, Rachel Robinson by Judy Blume. It was one of those books you only get to see in the school library but never borrow, just like Nancy Drew Case Files, in which Nancy’s boyfriend happened to make appearances more often. 

Anyway, this Judy Blume novel had a green cover and a teenage Rachel, with bitten, pink lips, looking directly at you. 

Each time I think of that book, I think of walks in parks on cold evenings, strawberry flavoured lip balm and kissing a boy for the first time.

Things I learnt about myself when I was at a party

1. I have somewhat learnt the art of socializing and in a sense become the exact reason why I used to detest parties till last year.

2. I make chirpy conversations with people I would/could otherwise never speak with.

3. I'm a mean drunk. 

Tiddi

You are my greatest companion. Without even trying. I've been heavy hearted all day and I thought maybe I should write so I started scribbling about companionship and before I knew it became about you and all my sadness went away.

Dear God, make me either empty or full. Don't make me half filled with this taunting silence I cannot understand completely. 

Ek Machhar...

I don't know where the fucker is hiding right now but I had to tell you that this is the first mosquito that has followed me into my slumber. And it upset a dream to the point that in my state of subconscious I was hurtling across a series of epiphanies to realize that one of the big barriers in my attaining my highest creative state so-to-speak is my father! Surprise!!!

He is also, now that I think about it, the sole trigger for any imagination in me in the first place, if one is to believe that poetry spurts from suppression.

The point of this post is I woke up at two in the morning and penned it all down. It got me to write. I thank the mosquito by slapping it dead on my diary's page. It has clearly left a mark.

Spring Cleaning

Every few days I take a spade, dig deep in my chest and throw everything out.
Dump the carcass of my emaciated feelings.

It will stop hurting if I do it more often.
Same goes for writing.

I want everything the world seemed to promise me when I was a little girl, and some more. 

Solitude

The lesser I associate with other people the lesser terrified I am of myself. 

Today has been a great day.

Hello there.
Today has been a great day.
It is because I feel so.
There is a sense of things coming together to fit snugly in the small dark corner of my head.
Would you believe just yesterday I was feeling menaced by monsters of the waning moon.
Would you believe, if I told you, I felt yesterday's desolation with the same earnestness that I feel today's wholeness.
Actually,I'm not really asking you. I'm telling you.
It is because I feel so.
I would not doubt the reality of either. Both are first hand experiences and thus legit.
That is a scary thought.
I view my see-sawing equilibrium with equal fascination and terror. Early signs of madness?
That is a fancy thought.
Out of the two I would like to root for today because it has more promise for tomorrow.
It is because I feel so.

I seek and seek all beautiful things in the hope to become one of them someday.
Now is that sad? Or beautiful.

What to Make of Parties

"Every gathering has its moment. As an adult, I distract myself by trying to identify it, dreading the inevitable downswing that is sure to follow. The guests will repeat themselves one too many times, or you'll run out of dope or liquor and realize that it was all you ever had in common. At that time though, I still believed that such a warm and heady feeling might last forever and that in embracing it fully, I might approximate the same wistful feelings adults found in their second round of drinks."

Belonging

Some words set in motion a mood for bed. I catch myself in a half alive silence- just the noise of the fan running devotedly, cutting the hum of the air conditioner. It’s a constant reminder of how blessed we are to sleep comfortably every night.

I close my eyes, slip quiet hands under my soft, old t-shirt and draw faint circles on my stomach. I like my stomach. This void makes me feel whole.

I sleep next to Maa these days since Papa isn’t in town. I think my mother is her most beautiful a few minutes before she falls asleep. She lies down after a hard day, puts one leg over the other, her arm over her eyes and breathes deeply. I hold her Bandaid-ed thumb and wish it gets healed soon. I wish I could just press it and give her my good health. But she has pressed my hand first and given me some of her sleep so my worry deserts me for the night. 

“I suppose Virtual Reality will further expose the conceit the ‘reality’ is a fact. It will provide another reminder of the seamless continuity between the world outside and the world within, delivering another major hit to the old fraud of objectivity. ‘Real’ as Kevin Kelly put it, ‘is going to be one of the most relative words we’ll have."

-John Perry Barlow

Working in a Startup

On Off On Off Click Double click Tsk tsk Click click click click clickkkkkk clickkkk MOTHERFUCKER Bang mouse on the table Slam desk Heavy breathing Sigh Try again.

Most sighs come from workplaces I suppose. And bedrooms (?)

The promise of free internet browsing has possibly tricked a big chunk of our generation into desk jobs.

I'm not complaining though. I like my job.

"The best of life is built on what we say when we’re in love. Believe me, you’ll remember all 

the silly things you’ve said; and you’ll find that your life has been built on them. It isn’t 

nonsense, it’s the truth, it’s the only truth." 

-Virginia Woolf

A seemingly inconsequential thought slips and falls on the off-white sheet.

Breaks his nose, cries in defeat.

A hand extends to mend it.

Strokes the head a bit.

Everything finds value on my paper.

Self-Pity

I’m fantasizing about my future as a failed writer.

There’s some poetry in that life, there is.

In tall cigarettes becoming slowly stunted, like my hope.

In a quivering, wasted hand that couldn’t lift the pen in time; now clutching a heavy glass with cheap whiskey.

A failed marriage. A cheating husband.

And the absence of a child, who could’ve been my last chance at happiness.

There’s some poetry in that life, there is.

Perhaps then I’d hit it. Nurse all my grief like a newborn and then suddenly smash its skull on paper and create something heartbreakingly phenomenal.

By destroying myself.

Writing comes from suffering after all. Doesn’t it?

DOESN’T IT???

No. It doesn’t.  

Diary

On some difficult days it is like an overburdened closet.  I find no room for thought.

On other, even more difficult days I open it to see the Universe gaping at me.

But on all days I'm happy enough to be able to turn the page over.  

Driving home I see a playground but it's all wrong,  the swings are on the opposite side. 
"Oh Jack that's a different one" says Grandma.  "There's playgrounds in every town." 
Lots of the world seems to be on a repeat. 

Old Man

by C. K. Williams

Special. Big tits.

Says the advertisement for a soft-core magazine on our neighborhood newsstand.

But forget her breasts.

A lush, fresh-lipped blond, skin glowing gold, sprawls there, resplendent.

60 nearly, yet these hardly tangible, hardly better than harlots, can still stir me.

Maybe a coming of age in the American sensual darkness,

never seeing an unsmudged nipple, an uncensored vagina,

has left me forever infected with an unquenchable lust of the eye.

Always that erotic murmur,

I'm hardly myself if I'm not in a state of incipient desire.

God knows though, there are worse twists your obsessions can take.

Last year in Israel, a young ultra-orthodox Rabbi guiding some teenage girls through the Shrine of the Shoah

forbade them to look in one room. Because there were images in it he said were licentious.

The display was a photo. Men and women stripped naked,

some trying to cover their genitals, others too frightened to bother,

lined up in snow waiting to be shot and thrown into a ditch.

The girls, to my horror, averted their gaze.

What carnal mistrust had their teacher taught them.

Even that though. Another confession:

Once in a book on pre-war Poland,

a studio portrait, an absolute angel, an absolute angel with tormented, tormenting eyes.

I kept finding myself at her page.

That she died in the camps made her -- I didn't dare wonder why --

more present, more precious.

Died in the camps, that too people -- or Jews anyway -- kept from their children back then.

But it was like sex, you didn't have to be told.

Sex and death, how close they can seem.

So constantly conscious now of death moving towards me, sometimes I think I confound them.

My wife's loveliness almost consumes me.

My passion for her goes beyond reasonable bounds.

When we make love, her holding me everywhere all around me, I'm there and not there.

My mind teems, jumbles of faces, voices, impressions,

I live my life over, as though I were drowning.

Then I am drowning, in despair at having to leave her, this, everything, all, unbearable, awful.

Still, to be able to die with no special contrition, not having been slaughtered, or enslaved.

And not having to know history's next mad rage or regression, it might be a relief.

No. Again, no. I don't mean that for a moment.

What I mean is the world holds me so tightly -- the good and the bad --

my own follies and weakness that even this counterfeit Venus

with her sham heat, and her bosom probably plumped with gel, so moves me

my breath catches. Vamp. Siren. Seductress.

How much more she reveals in her glare of ink than she knows.

How she incarnates our desperate human need for regard,

our passion to live in beauty, to be beauty, to be cherished by glances,

if by no more, of something like love,

or love.

Judgmental Bitch

Judgmental Bitch sees all things around her in Black & White.

Grey is a silly little worm which is perpetually drunk on other people's blood. It prefers happy people because they are stupid and they taste sweeter.

Splat Splat Splat.

The Bitch uses an electric racket to swat worms like Grey on the reg.

Jo na jaane haq ki taakat, rab ne de usko himmat

Recreation

I want to write.
But I laze,
And let my fingers
Dissolve the words
In rounds
Of deep, wet circles.

Jazbaaton ka kya hai, aaj hain kal nahin.

I have discovered that I have a romantic inclination towards my new phone. It is my gift on post graduating this year. I realised this was more than just a new phone thrill when I caught myself the day before, laughing shyly and turning over in bed, my fingers sliding over its smooth sleek screen as if to push away strands of hair had it been a person. But it's not. I've even bought a dark purple cover for it. Purple is my favorite colour.

I take my phone for long walks in the park and I take my phone to bed. At night I listen to Chopin's piano preludes and stare at the beautiful screen long after its light has dimmed, though not dim enough for me to miss the slant of Chopin's nose that takes over the whole screen- my gorgeous baby, reflecting my senses that have been consumed by the artist. I change the music to Prateek Kuhad's, whose voice suddenly makes me think of several sad scenes simultaneously. But just as I begin to tear up, he croons, "Jazbaaton ka kya hai, aaj hain kal nahin."  The tear falters at the waterline of my eye, bewildered about what just happened. It chooses to stay in this night. 

How is one to explain such deeply moving experiences without the risk of sounding utterly ridiculous?

There's a bit of a complication however. I am unable write notes in it. I still need a real pen and paper to write. It's like you just cannot bring yourself to have sex with the person you love. I was devastated when I found this out for I could not claim my greatest pleasure. You know, the one that A. R. Rahman sings about all the time.

But like any other couple, phone and I will
 keep trying. 

Bite chunks out of me. You're a shark and I'm swimming.

Go alone my flower 
And keep my whole lovely you

Serious Men

Based on observation.

I met one boy who has thought so much that now I think he is capable of thinking about nothing. He doesn't care enough to tell you about it; what's there to tell after all. He doesn't care for conversation. He seems bored of the things around him - at the same time, when someone takes note of his camouflage, he responds with mild amusement.

I met another man whose thoughts never leave him. He is not big on drinking but he indulges himself when he is with us once in a while. I had hoped that that would help numb his senses but the opposite happens always. He is pelted with thoughts and words escape his mouth in the form of daunting questions with the stubbornness of a waterfall. He is an honest man.

I also met a boy who looks like the gorgeous hero from a superhero movie. He reads too- I've seen him many times in my college library. Once I saw him going back home with a copy of Persepolis in his hand and I swear my heart stopped for a few seconds. I mean, it must take a lot out of him to take his face away from the front of the mirror and put it between fat books that sell well-reasoned crap. (I don't mean Persepolis) I think it's a good idea to not have a conversation with him. 

The last one is perhaps the most interesting one I have met while I've been here. He doesn't talk much, especially on text. But holds a great conversation in person. I don't know what his purpose is but his purpose sounds better than your purpose. He's a man of action. The right kind of aggressive. Quick and light footed, he easily slips into his white canvas Bata shoes, (the ones we were made to wear back in school) and asks if he can get you anything. He gets his good shirts dry-cleaned and donates pencils for underprivileged children once a week for his little bad deeds. That seems neat, for now.

Photo from society6.com

Stet

stɛt/

verb

1. 1.

   let it stand (used as an instruction on a printed proof to indicate that an alteration should be ignored)

I want to wrap all my bullshit in beautiful words and feed it to you. Stet.

"Ousep and Mariamma are not ethereally fused any more, they drift apart, but when they attain a distance between themselves, from where they cannot hear the other but still see, they drift no more. They begin to orbit each other, like two equal planets that cannot let go. The distance separates them in the bed too, but there are times when they collide, searching for flesh."

Job Hunting: Malad Maladies

On my way I see an old despondent pedestal fan. It is made to stand in shame with its head down,  facing the wall of an equally old and despondent building.  
_______________________________________________________________

I'm at the office of Wcities. There's a flower vase on my right. It has flowers painted on it. The artist must have been pretty fucking uninspired to draw fucking flowers on a fucking flowerpot.

In that brief moment between hearing something and letting your brain perceive it, the universe explains to you the virtue of listening.

— Caesar (@ShiftedSands) March 31, 2014

Ms. Fix It

Every time life would blow at her, she rustled like leaves on a tree, swaying madly in love.

When it would blow too hard, a stem would snap and fall. And she would snap out of love

And fall.

Ms. Fix It was a hopeless romantic

But that was before she became Ms. Fix It.

Everything in moderation, including reality.

http://www.katywiedemann.com/Illustrations.html#

God Bless America

Panting, "Have you gotten better at this?"

"Maybe I seem more attractive to you now that we aren't together."

"That's such a mean thing to say."

_____________________________________________________________

"Kissing is too intimate."

"The other stuff we're doing isn't?"

Laughs, "No!"

Then goes on to make me come twice, using just his fingers.

"GOD BLESS AMERICA!"

"Despite what you’ve read, your sadness is not beautiful. No one will see you in the bookstore, curled up with your Bukowski, and want to save you. 

Stop waiting for a salvation that will not come from the grey-eyed boy looking for an annotated copy of 

Shakespeare, for an end to your sadness in Keats.


He coughed up his lungs at 25, and flowery words cannot conceal a life barely lived. 


Your life is fragile, just beginning, teetering on the violent edge of the world. 


Your sadness will bury you alive, and you are the only one who can shovel your way out with hardened 
hands and ragged fingernails, bleeding your despair into the unforgiving earth.

Darling, you see, no heroes are coming for you. Grab your sword, and don your own armor."

My friend came across this in a New York subway.

"You're living for nothing now. I hope you're keeping some kind of record."

I find it very unnerving when I set out to say something and suddenly conversations take ugly turns. I feel the control in my voice wavering and in this case frantic Whatsapp typos. My stomach begins to churn. I’ve always been very afraid to push the boundaries when it comes to interacting with people. I don’t like to feel vulnerable. I’m pretty sure nobody does. (I also don’t like to rant, which I’m doing now)

Sometimes I don’t communicate with people because I anticipate a certain kind of response from them. I have these probable conversations running in my head that suffice. I think I've been afraid because it is quite a task to understand someone completely.

But of late, I've become brave. I’m doing and saying things I didn't expect myself to. I’m not being afraid of what I feel about certain people and I’m not being afraid to say it. I’m failing and falling. I’m learning to not be afraid of falling. I’m beginning to take action. I’m trying to understand loneliness. I’m forgiving myself for writing too many words to express myself. I’m not being afraid of writing. I’m not being afraid of writing shit. This will diminish the idea of self I have in my head because I've always expected myself to be a certain kind of woman. I’m learning that I can live up to my ideal by just taking action every day and by taking responsibility for my action.

I’ll handle it. 

For Your Free And Easy Love

Close your eyes and open your mouth.

Your hands will briskly find somethings to gauge.

Some other things you'll have to do without

But that's the collateral damage.

I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun.

-Katniss Everdeen

Today I lied down in the basketball court of my college and saw the sky change its moods

And struggled with the thought of being without you

                                                               

"Can you feel it?

It`s the excitement of your mind
The old being left behind
And the new blowing your mind

Can you feel it?

It`s the universe in your eyes
The spirit realizing old lies
The nature expanding inside
And the seeds scattered outside"

G. Njaim

How to Write Nothing

I’ve walked into a book café for the first time with the agenda of writing something spectacular while sipping on hot chocolate and looking intent. Too much pressure.

The first floor has the kids reading section that leads to the café. Some of them are running around and I’m getting more and more miserable at keeping a sexy intelligent look about me. There is a young couple sitting across me. They aren’t talking. There’s also a very old man sitting beside me who has been shakily but determinedly turning one page every two minutes of these expensive magazines. I pick up on too. Not Vogue, no…I pick up The Economist. I browse through the Contents and select a story I would be able to fully understand. For the first time in living memory, inflation will drop below GDP growth. That’s a good thing. Growth is great. Now that I know the good news I decide to skim through the article…compares with $9000 in China…continental shift…yes yes, very well. I decide to study the graph, bend real low and peer closely- the blue and green lines begin to blur and I almost fall on my face in the book.

Perhaps this was a bad idea. I pick up Vogue and count eight different ways to put eyeliner. Across the road, through the glass pane I can see a woman with long brown hair and big pearl earrings (they must be really big because I can see them from across the street). Her office is furnished in white and she’s fixing her hair.

Twenty minutes after staring at disturbingly chic outfits in the magazine, I look up to see that the woman is still fixing her hair. I snap the big book shut; it must weigh five kilos and it costs a shameless 800 rupees. Back in Delhi, I had stopped buying glossy magazines because my grandmother couldn’t keep herself from tearing the pages to put them inside cupboards under expensive crockery. In case of magazines like Vogue, she would arrange the papers systematically in her attempt to keep the izzat of the half-naked women intact. 

God I miss her.

I wish to sit on the floor at home and have her lovingly massage my head. And as she rubs the mustard oil in, I wish she rubs in a fantastic story for me to write as well. 

(E)motion Picture

I like how in the movies, they have these songs playing in the backdrop as the credits roll. A song or a tune to affirm your lingering sentiment related to the movie or the person that movie makes you think of. You amble towards the exit door of the theater- a light at the end of the tunnel, beckoning you, making faint promises to you about how you will be able to see the world differently. Even if for a few minutes. 

Box Full of Terrors

Dadar is one station where the Mumbai local train vomits a scandalous number of people at all times of the day, and before the train can wipe its face and heave a sigh it is flooded with people again. If the train could have a face, it would be that of my mother's in her engagement ceremony video, when big round rasgullas were stuffed into her face by bigger, rounder aunties as a gift of congratulations.

I travel in the second class ladies compartment. The only difference between the first and second class is that the latter smells of cheaper perfumes and body odor. On my way back, I take the train from Marine Lines- it is relatively less crowded and you can find a spot where you might not be elbowed by perpetually pissed Marathi ladies getting back from work. 

Today was like any other day. The women around me were quiet- some were staring at their phone screens while others stared at unknown faces, carried away to someplace, any place that provided intimacy unlike that of the train- which is of the forced kind. Then Dadar station came and just like that everyone snapped out of their stupor. I saw a bunch of women get in, they struggled through the seats, spotted a bunch of other women and screamed in delight. The train began to move and the screams of delight turned to wails of delight closely followed by screechy laughter. At the same time in the adjacent first class male compartment something seemed to have triggered a fight between two men; their voices rapidly turning into roars. 

I took you through these three tiresome paragraphs just to tell you that together it was the the most unnerving noise I heard. Bloodcurdling noise. The kind that would make babies cry. And then one did.

Everyone is living the same set of stories over and over again. I've been using a different set of words to tell you the same stories over and over again. I add some fancy phrases to charm you and take away others. This way you are tricked into believing that they are new. Now that you know this, you must not be feeling very nice. Believe me, when I realised it I didn't feel very nice either. This a rut you can't get out of.
But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to get out of it.

Baa dum dum tiss

Blip blip bloop

Of all the things I miss

Today,I miss you most

Dear poop 

"There’s a lot of consuming and devouring and eating in Maurice’s books. And I think that when people play with kids, there’s a lot of fake ferocity and threats of, you know, devouring — because love is so enormous, the only thing you can think of doing is swallowing the person that you love entirely."

Never knew what Light was, Its meaning, I couldn't find. A plain simple color That guides my being, And people call me ‘Blind’ I wonder why they Look down upon ‘Black’, Why is it always maligned? A plain simple color That guides my being, And people call me ‘Blind’ Black embraces all with open arms, Nobody’s a winner and No one’s behind, A plain simple color That guides my being, And people call me ‘Blind’ What is there to see in the World of Colors? Where the spectrum of Thoughts, Remain un-aligned, A plain simple color That guides my being, And people call me ‘Blind’ ‘Darkness’ is what, you believe it to be, It resides in the nooks of your mind, A plain simple color That guides my being, And then You call me ‘Blind!'

My friend Sreejoni wrote this. She performed it along with her small speech on India's obsession with skin colour. She's one of the most wonderful people I have met in college and she has a voice to match her disposition.

Daadi Maa

All her fingers are a little twisted now. She might have gotten too involved as she kneaded the dough every morning to feed her seven children and now dead husband for so many years. Today when she holds an expensive glass in her hand , it looks a little out of place.

   Her hair has been the same ever same ever since I remember her-salt and pepper, diligently oiled after every shampoo and neatly coiled in a bun. The parting in the middle makes her already big nose look comical. From where she is sitting the sun makes her heavy gold hoop earrings glimmer, the weight of which has stretched the holes in her lobes to make them look like mouths open in horror.

  But she looks at me and smiles-a big yellow gap toothed smile. Daadi Maa is telling me one of her stories of childhood. I haven't heard this one before. In her excitement she spills a bit of her drink and promptly dabs her mustard colored handkerchief on her mustard colored salwar. She always matches the two.

"I turned around quickly, took my quiet desperation by surprise, and hugged it for a long time. It whimpers less now."

-Stay the same.
-Everything changes.

Lazy Boy

As I walked along the promenade, I crossed a small park
My eye caught a little child
Looking like a single cherry on a cream pie.
While other children ran around and fought over the best swing,
This suckling cuddled up in his mother's arms
And snored sweetly. Exhausted
Just by waiting for his turn that won't come.