He fell in love with me in a crowded dream. He had eyes only for me. The first man who wrote me a poem.

The dream brought you so close and disappeared with the despair that dreams alone can bring. And you did not know.. and I did not know how to let you know.

I am awake now and the world is pleasant but the dream remains in the distance, incomplete and unanswered. This pain will never die.

I miss you and it hurts. Who are you?

I am sorry if I ever wrote anything that made you want to throw up simply because of its intensity and openness. I just read something like that from someone else’s blog. Some things are best left unwritten.

I have come to believe that writing does not happen when one feels complete.

I scattered some plans in the wind
Caught in a moment forgot
Then rain ate some lines on a paper
Words I never recalled

I lost a friend’s second name
In the untraceable directories of childhood

And a white frock with flowers
To rain and sun and running colors

A blotted paper boat
Floating down a trickle stream of rain
I lost

And a forgotten umbrella
In the bus
Honking and absent

I lost
A pen to a stranger
Lid intact
And a carton full of attic treasures
Letters and candy wraps

I found
A sheaf of papers
On irretrievable thoughts

A phone number
Dangling mysteriously
A report card and a stopped watch

I found a key to a door demolished
And wisdom for a problem from the past

I found a feeling and lost a word
When I could not
I had found loss.

I spin this tale of inane consequences in a dream. Had I the luxury of a ray of sunlight and a parchment I would have written this down with my blood. However, I who had been condemned to the depths of oblivion in a cavernous dungeon had no such privileges. I would certainly have drawn the last of my life’s energy to put this down, not out of the vanity of being a man of words, nor because it would have made my days any better but simply because it would have given me the consolation of a moment’s tryst with memory and what has gone by.

I do not remember how many days have passed since I was violently thrown into these catacombs while lifeblood still surged with vigour in my veins and the fragrance of youth still burned in my chest. I had dreamt of escape and redemption. Now, I wilt quietly like a shadow that has been swept into the farthest corners of time with nothing left to hold on to but memories. The outside world rumbles on, or so I imagine, with fresher crime, fresher power and fresher pain.

I used to be afraid to move. I knew the presence of other men in here, the numbers of whom I dared not count, if only for fear of finding livid pleasure in finding company in a place like this. My initial days were filled with hate and resentment for the stench that surrounded me and the wails and groans that contaminated my ears. Alas! Those were the days my senses had still been intact. I could see the silhouettes of ghost-like forms moving about, craving a drink of water, or dreaming of butterflies that existed in the world outside.

The walls of this evil home of mine trickled with substances and moss. What places life chooses to establish itself! Little rats and spiders scuttled on me from time to time conveniently mistaking me for food. In the beginning, I had fought them like a fool. I had built mental barriers of prayer to keep these invisible enemies away. I started at the slightest feeling of a feeler on my skin. They had eyes that I had been denied and sight that accompanies the secret veil of darkness. They leered with victory at my human ineptitude to see in the dark.

(To be continued…)

Inspiration like a raven swoops
Under flimsy, barren summer clouds
Poetry looks up with hopeful eyes
And crumbles in a reality check.

Golden girls and lads
and Chimney-sweepers
Resurrect

Ashes
Apathy, the cast iron gate, rusty and ivy-decked
Despair, a cat on the wall, hungry and licking paws
Idiot Metal and terabytes of stifled love
Shining badges, glory and green
Ashes

In a failure to be interpreted
Defeat dies an inconspicuous death
Loneliness waits on the road less travelled
To be christened by the pioneers.

Stammering, they pause
And flounder like dust
Dust indeed – another brick off the wall.

With rejection came relief.

Because every open door means you are forced to relinquish the other doors
and every closed door means you can keep searching…

*Removes thinking cap and wears mad cap*

I have always had a conflict about writing about my body. It has been a very personal space. Certainly, for someone who thinks and feels about everything under the sun, my body has been a ground for a lot of thought. I have been through a lot of physical pain and torture because of which I tend to detach myself from my bodily needs and look at it objectively. I am beginning to think about how I interact with my body. Also, being a woman, I am not very comfortable with discussing my body in a world of men, most of whom do not have very good intentions for a woman who can openly talk about her physicality.

I was attempting to translate a poem called “Female Author” by Sylvia Plath. When I encountered the word “pink-breasted”, I almost wanted to give up. Then I spent a moment thinking about the consequences of translating this word. Personally, I am more comfortable than most women, with my body. I have been laid bare in laboratories, testing centers, and an operation theater and I learned to understand the perceptions about the female body.

I have also come to understand that the female body is often used as a means of intimidating women into fear and submission. A lot of women are embarrassed of their proportions and spend all their time in trying to change the way they look. I don’t! In fact, I am the big woman who takes the second helping of a chocolate cake because I don’t care! I have one life and I care less about who is watching than about my own desires. Women are embarrassed about the parts of their own body and attempt to tell other women to cover them up without so much as understanding why they are afraid.

I am as comfortable with my breasts as my eyes or nose and I cannot be insecure about them forever. I would certainly like to protect my body from the invasive glances of perverts but I cannot live in constant fear of them and make my own body an inconvenience. While we studied Foucault, we studied about “internalization” and the “gaze”. Women tend to internalize the feeling of being gazed at by men and years of telling them to be ashamed of their own body has made them insecure and inhibited.

I have often seen men on the road who spit at me because they don’t approve of the way I look or dress. Then I begin to analyze the kind of person this ’spitter’ is. What is his life like? Perhaps he has no life. He must be a loser who has achieved very less in life. He is probably someone who has a complex about his own status. He is most probably not so well-dressed or well-groomed himself. Then, why do women react? Have our self-respect hit rock bottom that we have to react/respond to the man on the street who has no name or address? He is probably a street-cleaner who is there not because of a lack of choice but because he treated people with disrespect all his life. Perhaps, he is a college student who fails all his subjects because he has not begun to understand what learning is. Why should I react to a person who does not have the status to judge me, let alone value me?

I watched a documentary called “SheWrite” at college, and I loved it. It was about a few Tamil women poets who have started exploring the realm of the female body in their stories and poems. A whole lot of controversy has hit them and there are men opposing them everywhere. I have come to believe that a man can never look at the woman’s body the way a woman looks at herself. Then how can they judge what she has to say about herself? Isn’t it too intimate for him to comment about? What does he know?

This poem evokes so much beauty and a tiny chuckle from me because I can identify with it. I nod in understanding. This poem has been written by a woman and translated by a man. It evoked a whole lot of controversy from several Tamil lyricists (yes, the ones who write sleazy verse for movie songs) who wanted to take this to the level of Witch Burnings.

Breasts
by Kutti Revathi

Breasts are bubbles, rising
In wet marshlands
I wondrously watched — and guarded —
Their gradual swell and blooming
At the edges of my youth’s season
Saying nothing to anyone else,
They sing along
With me alone, always:
Of Love,
Rapture,
Heartbreak
To the nurseries of my turning seasons,
They never once failed or forgot
To bring arousal
During penance, they swell, as if straining
To break free; and in the fierce tug of lust,
They soar, recalling the ecstasy of music
From the crush of embrace, they distil
The essence of love; and in the shock
Of childbirth, milk from coursing blood
Like two teardrops from an unfulfilled love
That cannot ever be wiped away,
They well up, as if in grief, and spill over.

(Translated by N.Kalyan Raman)
Click for more poems by Kutti Revathi

I happened to read the article called “Landscapes of the Body” (The Hindu, Sunday, Dec 07, 2003) by C.S. Lakshmi a.k.a Ambai, one of the earliest forward-thinking Tamil writers. She has analyzed the politics of the female body while being cynical and caustic about the fact that men cannot understand the way women feel about their own bodies. I would not blame men. They have also been brought up to believe that the woman’s body is an object of arousal and requires to be covered at other times. Some men cannot appreciate the little moments of loss of self-restraint in a woman, when she is twirling her skirt in joy or lets herself go in laughter. Their first reaction is the need to control her. Many men imagine that a woman who is open about her sexuality is either trying to “titillate” or “seduce” or she needs to be controlled/fixed. I would not blame them because this attitude is not uncommon in older women in the family who have “internalized” the male idea of what is right or wrong for a woman. I have also noticed that men tend to be extremely private about their bodies. They do not want to explicitly express the sensitivities in their bodies because they are afraid of being taken into control. They observe their own physical needs as a weakness.

The body is something we live with day in and day out. While it seems perfectly sane to discuss “breast cancer” or “breastfeeding” without rousing a controversy, a woman is not allowed to talk about her breasts in other contexts. For a writer, it is completely natural to want to express every experience and how is one supposed to categorize these needs and inhibit oneself?

I also think the psychology behind such suppression and repression is the truth that rarefying the body makes it more mysterious and exploration-worthy. Perhaps this is why men try hard to preserve the secrecy about the female body to keep their own libidos working. It is only natural to lose interest in something that becomes commonplace. I cannot help but wonder why pornography  and Savita Bhabhi are  so welcome but a woman talking about her own body is not. The male psyche is still in denial, of course, but they have got their logic mixed up.  It won’t be long before women realize the logical flaws and loopholes in the patriarchal belief systems and discard them.

I had earlier posted the letter I wrote to G. Gautama on my blog. I received his reply yesterday and it was one of the best things that happened to me in a long time.

Please look at my earlier post to understand the context.

I am publishing his reply with his permission. Although the whole mail is full of gems, I have highlighted some of the most beautiful lines. His words are lucid and genuine and his thoughts are so well accommodated in words. I am indeed lucky to have approached him with my questions. I am posting his reply because his message could make a difference to all of you.

Dear Matangi,

It was a surprise to receive your mail. The few paragraphs that you have written express your position, your questions and your thoughts. I must say that you write beautifully and express yourself very aesthetically. This is a rare gift!

Each of us in our life has certain abilities and capacities. What is not clearly seen most often is that we are all disabled as well. In most of us these are concealed and permit us to cope with life. We are conscious when the disabilities are physical. Someone may need a crutch to walk, a wheelchair to move around. Another may need a pair of spectacles for reading, like I do, a cane for walking, hearing aid for listening clearly. Less visible are our disabilities with language and mathematical operations. These are the ones most used in schools, unearthed so to speak for evaluation … Even less visible are our disabilities with music or dance, movement, people and communication, understanding of space.

It would not be wrong therefore to say that each of us has disabilities. You must have heard of artists who paint with their mouth because they do not have hands. Or people who paint with their foot. The finished work of such artists evokes a great deal of admiration and wonder. Rarely do we give thought to what must have been the first attempt of such an artist. Would the first swabs of paint have been artistic, beautiful?

It is quite apparent that whatever efforts human beings make, if we get to hear of them, or if we draw satisfaction from them, they are the product of persistent hard work. There is the famous story of an accomplished violinist. At the end of a concert a man came up to him and said “I would have given my life to have been able to play like this”. The violinist said “I did”. Could this violinist, as a budding musician, when he picked up the violin of the first time, could he have been adept or skilled? Would he not have fumbled many times to get the right note, to get the right combination of notes?

I say all this to place in context your own situation, renal failure at a young age necessitating a renal transplant. Surely a difficult situation! I’m sure you must have felt very sad about this on many an occasion. However you must also have felt that you’re luckier than many others. If you do not misunderstand me I would say all of us are in the same zone — some things to celebrate, some things can be better.

On the other hand life is a design opportunity. I never tire of using this expression. There are cards we have been dealt, there is a time we have been given. What we do with this time is the question that life poses for us. Often we are overwhelmed by the difficulties, the problems we see and the disabilities we encounter. We do things which others expect us to do, often halfheartedly. We do things which take our fancy. And then we drop them, disappointed, unsure, dissatisfied.

There is another dimension to our lives. We are also wounded children as a priest I know mentioned. We carry wounds from our childhood encounters with the larger world of adults. These wounds do not heal that easily and the painful memories are stored in our being. The violence, the exploitation, the harsh words, the agony of near and dear — all these we carry, mostly unconsciously.

So not only are we defined by our abilities and disabilities but also by these wounds and the memories that we carry. These define the things that we choose and those that we adamantly reject.

But then the question remains. Given who we are, disabled as we are what is it that we could be doing with our time on earth. This is not terribly clear to most of us and that only intensifies our agony.

Some of us are lucky because there is a deeper intimation of things. Something inside draws us to certain things. It is almost as if we have no choice. Some of us do not see clearly what is it that we need to do. We pick up something that appeals to us a little bit and then work quite hard at it. The journey and the end product turn out to be satisfying in various degrees. But most of us seem to spend our time, this one lifetime that we have been given, sitting on the fence trying to decide what is it that we should be doing. The other thing we end up doing is complaining. And this becomes a lament, which slowly fills our life.

As a young person it is a bit sad that you encountered kidney failure so early in your life. You’re also extremely lucky that your father donated a kidney to you. Given your interest in writing, teaching and trying out other avenues, it does seem crippling that you have to earn enough money for your medicines. It is also understandable that you do not want to be dependent on other people.

I do not know if I have much advice to offer. For each one of us there is one thing we bring to the table, every moment — a slice of our lifetime. What would we like to give our slices to is one of the decisions we need to make and almost each day. I know people, mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, who devoted their life and time to taking care of people – young ones and older ones. I also know people who devoted themselves to dance or music, almost not caring about anything else. There are people who lead their lives with a smile on their face and others with unsure tense faces.

How would you like to choose your time? What dance would you like to dance and which song would like to sing? It actually does not matter who is looking. This is your time, and your action may be a gift to somebody else, but more than anything else it’s an expression of your own being, and a gift to yourself.

Playing it safe is not going to make one feel satisfied. You will have to ask yourself, looking back after 10 years what would you like to be able to say. “These are the things I tried” or “these are the things I avoided”. No audience outside of us matters because the rewards and recognition have a very short shelf life and are barely satisfactory in the long run.

If something that I’ve written is not clear please do not hesitate to ask any questions. If you wish to share some thoughts you are most welcome.

With warm regards and best wishes

Gautama

If you can read Tamil, you might want to check out this new blog of mine.

குட்டிச்சுவர்

I was looking at the January 2008 newsletter of “The School – KFI” and there was an article named “A Study of the Cholas – A Quick Report” by Akhila Seshadri (Teacher of History) on their visit to temples built by the Cholas, a dynasty of kings who ruled in Tamilnadu until the 13th century.

Darasuram, Gangaikondacholapuram, Brihadeeswarar were the three Chola monuments we visited. The man in whose times the temples were built – the so called creator of the huge temples, the architect of a marvellous kingdom, Rajaraja is now represented by a black stone in an unmarked and unnamed field in a village called, Udayalur. This stunned the students who had seen the Thanjavur temple. I think they became immensely thoughtful after this. “Is this it?” was one question on many lips.

This reminded me of the poem, Ozymandias by Shelley although this was the first time I could relate to it directly. My grandmother hails from Tanjore and I have lived in Trichy for over 13 years. I have visited the magnificent Brihadeeswara temple and awed over its splendor and this news was a little saddening.

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

My father once told us about a man who had a paan shop at the bus stand in Trichy. He claimed to be the descendant of the Cholas. The Government had seized all of their property and they had been reduced to the state of menial workers to eke out a living.

In this context, I was also reminded of the Julius Caesar that Shakespeare wrought. He proclaims that he is as constant as the Northern Star only to be stabbed to death immediately afterward.

Cæser: I could be well mov’d if I were as you;
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me;
But I am constant as the northern star, (68)
Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumber’d sparks,
They are all fire and every one doth shine, (72)
But there’s but one in all doth hold his place:
So, in the world; ’tis furnish’d well with men,
And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive;
Yet in the number I do know but one (76)
That unassailable holds on his rank,
Unshak’d of motion: and that I am he…

Julius Cæsar by William Shakespeare (Act III. Scene I.)

Yes, this is it!

My company blocks the Krishnamurti Foundation of India website under the Websense category “Non-Traditional Religions and Occult and Folklore”

Hilarious and highly creative,to say the least!!

Note: There are many people who are scandalized when I speak the truth, I cannot be fulfilling their need to be in denial.

Dear sir, I read through your article titled “Reflections on Career Choices and Success” on your website. I need some help with understanding my own choices in life and I believe you can help me understand something that will make my inner confusion go away.

My father is Mr. R.Ravichandran who was your batch mate at the IIT and he had mentioned you to me several times with reverence. I also think that you must be a very different kind of a person to have followed your calling and not fallen for what is popular or mainstream. I have read just one book by J.Krishnamurti named “Freedom from the Known” and I altogether gave up reading and so many other things after that. Although I started reading again, the messages in “Freedom from the Known” were strong enough to make me discard most things that are projected as superior in the world.

I had a kidney failure at the age of 20 and I was on dialysis for almost a year after which my father donated his kidney to me. I suffered a lot of physical pain which cannot be dealt with either philosophically or rationally. However, that period helped me evolve into a quieter being. My awareness for experiences heightened and I am my own master. Due to this, I am sometimes perceived to be irrational, impulsive, arrogant, irreverent or rebellious.

My health condition means that I must earn a good sum of money to provide for my own medication. I have worked for some major corporates in the past 4 years (including Wipro and Accenture) and life is increasingly monotonous and pseudo. I have repeatedly considered becoming a writer, a translator, a teacher, an artist and a number of other things. I also applied at “The School” over 3 times and did not attend the interview when I was called (because I had got a job at Wipro.) Over a period of time, I have also become a cynic because of disillusionment. When money governs art, teaching or writing, rules have already been laid out for how things should be done. Even ‘passion’ is defined and art often involves fake social interactions, lies and deadlines. Why do human beings transform everything into a process that produces an output? I have sometimes written pages and not saved them because the process of writing was more interesting to me than the byproduct that was on the paper.

Would you tell me if there is some work I can do apart from the moneymaking that I have to force myself into? I want to spend time with real people and learn from them about being uninhibited, creative and honest. I am tired of the know-it-all box that binds me in its clutches. I fear becoming broke and penniless (and becoming a burden on others) but I still have conflicts with the work I do and I am always trying to escape towards that ideal world and a dream job. Is the struggle endless for all humans because life keeps brewing new conflicts? I am asking you because somewhere I imagine that you have managed to merge “what is” with “what should be” or have you?

It is not necessary for you to reply to this mail but I am sure it will make a difference to me if you did.

This was one of my favorite poems from college. Still makes sense!

Poetry Of Departures
Philip Larkin

Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.

And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detest my room,
It's specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said

He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard;
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me to stay
Sober and industrious.
But I'd go today,

Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo'c'sle
Stubbly with goodness, if
It weren't so artificial,
Such a deliberate step backwards
To create an object:
Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.

A giant rusty lock

Smog and astigmatism

Umbrellas

Enclosed cubicles, coffee and frenzy

ATM receipts

Hypothermia

Sweaters and misty glasses

Politically-correct lingo

Evening sky on fire – Arson without evidence

Rain pitter-patter – Evading slush

Disorientation and pain.

I am drowned in dreams… somebody stop me.

All my life, all I ever had was language.

After my first breakup, I did not cry. I wrote a poem.

When my mother died, I wrote some more.

Whenever I felt like there was no escape, I turned to writing… that is the only thing I have ever had.

I regret choosing technical writing for a career. I am not technical or structured. My mind is way too amorphous. And I learned my lesson when I was told I am not good because I missed an article out of a sentence.

I am quitting. About to start from scratch as an artist, an insane creator and a passionate poet.

Be there with me.

Watch this space…

It’s sad to realize that people we give our souls to, do not even give us their phone numbers.

I prefer to write shorter things nowadays. Maybe because after a couple of thoughts everything is silent.

I have a secret blog where I had been writing. And I also started a book and stopped after a few chapters. It was anomalous.

Waiting for the drizzle to turn into rain… meantime ..more silence.

I was trying to read Finnegan’s Wake and then I remembered Schizophasia.

1. I have had a haircut and now I sport some bangs.

2. I can make some yummy sambar, rasam and mac&cheese.

3. I wash my own clothes.

4. I sweep and mop the floor at home.

5. Bangalore is heaven on earth.

6. Kisses taste good.

7. I wear two gold rings.

8. I visited 3 temples last month but did not pray even once.

9. I light a lamp in the Pooja room at home but that is just functional.

10. I found time to read “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini in the second week after my wedding.

After a hiatus of over 4 months I have returned. As a different person. This blog reminds me of the Bohemian past that I had once inhabited. Insanity, impulsiveness, rebellion and restlessness. That was me.

Now I have calmed down a great deal. Silenced all my histrionic narcissism and the need for drama. The inferno has been quelled and my mind is now a gentle oven for incubation of thoughts and secrets.

I have found a special world in secrets. In quietness. In control.

On the 8th of May I got married to a very lovable and gentle human being. Now I have found more time for life and less time for rants and raves.

The poetry that frothed and foamed like a wave is now contained like a mirror. And in its reflection I see tranquility and purpose. I am not a driftwood any more. A wandering soul picked me up from the shores of forgetfulness and gave me a name and a concept to personify.

Knowledge does not pain me. Predictability does not bore me. I have discovered that I too am living the human destiny of innocence, rebellion and eventual acceptance. Life is a beautiful religion.

Peace.

The purple cat has forgotten to dip its tail in ink

The purple cat sits in a gilded box all day

The purple cat is fading like a sunburnt fruit

The purple cat is losing the memory of space

____________X____________X______________

Nobody knows why I love forgotten talking horses in the corner of the world.. or strange snakes with moulting skin… or an eccentric marijuana rabbit with springy hair… or some bookworm … or a short smiling big-eyed doe or a drunk dark chocolate in a red towel … or convex lips… or a huge furry bear… or a lazy elephant with a dimple..or a vehemently loud owl… and a kookaburra.

Nobody knows except me.

Are they trying to tell me that there is no more birdsong or butterflies? Are they able to see more than I can… and I’d like to believe them because I’ve failed so many times.. but isn’t love all about forgetfulness? I still trust.

I want this secret flower to grow in my dark world. It’s not for other eyes. Perhaps he thinks I’m insane… or that I’m hypersensitive.. or that I will not survive the real world’s aggression. I’m none of these… I’m merely in love… with many many things – A bit lost but not because I have no control but because I don’t care. I belong to a constellation of frozen stars gestating in the wombs of unquenched fires.

The fact that he makes me write should be good enough to lose several hours of sanity for him. Perhaps he does not think of me at all, but I fear the day he would leave my world, carrying his overwhelming presence with him.

It has been days since I felt thankful for another paper to write on… it has been days since I remembered soporific music or drowned in inane dreaming.. will he bring back the nostalgic tune? Will I be kissed by a rose on the grave?

The irony of all this lies in the strange setting… real world rambling on in its monotonous bouts about materialism and money. Is this the atmosphere for love? Is n’t love supposed to be born in the moonlight? Under starry skies and dragonflies? Why would love choose this oppressive atmosphere to walk in like a breezy touch of hope? Love is a sly god.

I love his fingers too for they gesticulate with his eyes and create lovable pieces of writing. Why are they making me believe that he is not the man I’d love to love? They are liars but they could be wiser than me.

Thus I go on… in relentless…. intermittent… hope interrupted by fear, stereotypical warnings and hopelessness – from myself and others. This muse is enough although at a distance.

I think he knows.. I think he is a magician who can read into my hidden pages with his iridiscent eyes. I think I’m tripping on him and I’m beyond redemption and this time for real…

Note: I could not help it. Being this friendless being, all I can do is just write and trust me I have not mended my ways much. Lol!

This noon is soaked in caramel poetry. Anything cloying is inadequate. Your sweetness is devouring the otherwise inedible pieces of time. I want to write a lot for you. Your eyes with their drops of moonstones dipped in earnestly intrusive observation. Your voice that provokes me to effervesce with imagination of a thousand conversations. The distance where I feel safely in love. The secrecy in which I explode into effusive dreams. . the little bits of fragrance you left behind in a hurry. The frightening tears that bind… your hair that I mentally stroke with my fingers… the little granules of attention you give and which I use to build my castles in the air.. my own comforting insignificance and pleasant invisibility.. the way I’m a non-entity in your busy world and a little awareness that you know me. This inspiration that you brought for me and the elating realisation that someone like you exists … someone who will not rebuke the child in me. Those petals called your lips touched by loving truth that ate into them.. why you may understand what I’m living and how you liberate me from needs. Why I never want to know you the way others do and how I want to remember this dream.. you are a dream come true by the mere fact that you are. How you make me leave this world in cathartic flights of fantasy… how you mean more to me than most people I’ve known all my life.. and I’m in love not because you’re beautifully kind but because you’re a silent fragment of me that I searched for… A hint of solace that I yearned for in dark grief.. because you may revoke my flamboyant addiction to language and accept my melodrama.. you are what I wanted when I sighed and you’re the first drop of sleep in my reticence-stricken eyes.. eyes that escape into sleep and not travel through it.. eyes that avoid your gaze for fear of being discovered. I want to write to you because I don’t need you but I love you and because you slay my suffocating loneliness by slipping into the layers of my mind… and because you are mine despite the truth that you are a stranger in the distance.

Due to a great need to start from scratch…. I won’t be posting here any more.

Thanks for all the love you have given me so far.

I will be posting stuff on brokenbits.tumblr.com intermittently.

Bye!

I was telling a friend about some of my favorite paintings by Dali and then it struck me that I could blog about it.

I’m not a Dali expert but as an ordinary art lover I like these paintings which might be pretty basic for any Dali admirer.

The Persistence of Memory

The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory

And I like the Angelus series by Salvador Dali. The Angelus is a famous painting by the French painter Jean-François Millet.

The Angelus by Millet

The Architectural Angelus of Millet by Dali

Gala and the Angelus of Millet Preceding the Imminent Arrival of the Conical Anamorphoses by Dali

The Spectre of the Angelus by Dali

The Angelus of Gala by Dali

Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet’s Angelus by Dali

The Eye of the Angelus by Dali

I think you all can figure out the impressions of the Angelus in all the paintings. Dali is pure genius. Now look at the title of this post and tell me if he was wrong!

But she pines for you
Sleepless with songs
Like a dying swan
When stars come out
She dreams of death
To reincarnate in you..

She dies and dies
But every dawn resurrects her in you…
You are the promised land to her
The prophet who never came.

Thousand nights
Of carnal wine
She incompletes in you
You cleanse her lies
Her tarnished soul
She cries its stains away ..

You are her crux
Her moral home
Her purpose constancy

You are her soul
Her world within
Where all her dreams begin

There is no “her all the way”
If it were not for you
You are her god
Her mind and muse
You are her only truth.

I was reading about Chuck Klosterman and his book named Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto. Apparently, Klosterman has made a list of 23 questions he would ask anybody before deciding if he could truly love them. I found the questions to be intriguing and interesting and I decided to answer them. I thought this would be an exercise in understanding my own psychological processes and why some people love me to death and others hate me to death.

1. Q: Let us assume you met a rudimentary magician. Let us assume he can do five simple tricks — he can pull a rabbit out of his hat, he can make a coin disappear, he can turn the ace of spades into the Joker card, and two others in a similar vein. These are his only tricks and he can’t learn any more; he can only do these five. However, it turns out he’s doing these five tricks with real magic. It’s not an illusion; he can actually conjure the bunny out of the ether and he can move the coin through space. He’s legitimately magical, but extremely limited in scope and influence.

Would this person be more impressive than Albert Einstein?

A: Why the hell has this magician chosen to use his amazing skills to do stupid magic tricks? Einstein on the other hand might never have known how to perform these tricks but he could use his knowledge for scientific advancement and progress. I would still be skeptical about this magician.

2. Q: Let us assume a fully grown, completely healthy Clydesdale horse has his hooves shackled to the ground while his head is held in place with thick rope. He is conscious and standing upright, but completely immobile. And let us assume that–for some reason–every political prisoner on earth (as cited by Amnesty International) will be released from captivity if you can kick this horse to death in less than twenty minutes. You are allowed to wear steel-toed boots.

A: I understand that the political prisoners that Amnesty International works for the release of are prisoners who have not committed or advocated violence. I wonder if such people would support the brutal killing of a harmless animal. Whoever is giving this offer might be playing a really cruel joke. I cannot trust that person or organisation. I would be willing to kill myself instead but only if they can make a promise in front of the whole world about the contract.

3. Q: Let us assume there are two boxes on a table. In one box, there is a relatively normal turtle; in the other, Adolf Hitler’s skull. You have to select one of these items for your home. If you select the turtle, you can’t give it away and you have to keep it alive for two years; if either of these parameters are not met, you will be fined $999 by the state. If you select Hitler’s skull, you are required to display it in a semi-prominent location in your living room for the same amount of time, although you will be paid a stipend of $120 per month for doing so. Display of the skull must be apolitical.

Which option do you select?

A: Wikipedia says Hitler’s skull was burnt to ashes before being dumped in the Elbe River. Give me the turtle please.. I love turtles. My friends Pingu and Agni have 2 of them.

4. Q: Genetic engineers at Johns Hopkins University announce that they have developed a so-called “super gorilla.” Though the animal cannot speak, it has a sign language lexicon of over twelve thousand words, an I.Q. of almost 85, and –most notably– a vague sense of self-awareness. Oddly, the creature (who weighs seven hundred pounds) becomes fascinated by football. The gorilla aspires to play the game at its highest level and quickly develops the rudimentary skills of a defensive end. ESPN analyst Tom Jackson speculates that this gorilla would be “borderline unblockable” and would likely average six sacks a game (although Jackson concedes the beast might be susceptible to counters and misdirection plays). Meanwhile, the gorilla has made it clear he would never intentionally injure any opponent.

You are commissioner of the NFL: Would you allow this gorilla to sign with the Oakland Raiders?

A: I don’t know shit about football but hell yeah! Gorillas are fun!

5. Q: You meet your soul mate. However, there is a catch: Every three years, someone will break both of your soul mate’s collarbones with a Crescent wrench, and there is only one way you can stop this from happening: You must swallow a pill that will make every song you hear — for the rest of your life — sound as if it’s being performed by the band Alice in Chains. When you hear Creedence Clearwater Revival on the radio, it will sound (to your ears) like it’s being played by Alice in Chains. If you see Radiohead live, every one of their tunes will sound like it’s being covered by Alice in Chains. When you hear a commercial jingle on TV, it will sound like Alice in Chains; if you sing to yourself in the shower, your voice will sound like deceased Alice vocalist Layne Staley performing a capella (but it will only sound this way to you).

Would you swallow the pill?

A: I would break the backbone of the person touching my soulmate’s collar bones. So I don’t have to swallow the pill.

6. Q: At long last, someone invents “the dream VCR.” This machine allows you to tape an entire evening’s worth of your own dreams, which you can then watch at your leisure. However, the inventor of the dream VCR will only allow you to use this device of you agree to a strange caveat: When you watch your dreams, you must do so with your family and your closest friends in the same room. They get to watch your dreams along with you. And if you don’t agree to this, you can’t use the dream VCR.

Would you still do this?

A: Oh yes! I know my family members would leave the moment the pink flying piglet with the bell on its tail shows up… and what about the purple komodo dragon that loves to play Yahoo Graffiti. Yeah! If my family members can make sense out of this stuff, that will be cool! Hehehe!

7. Q: Defying all expectation, a group of Scottish marine biologists capture a live Loch Ness Monster. In an almost unbelievable coincidence, a bear hunter in the Pacific Northwest shoots a Sasquatch in the thigh, thereby allowing zoologists to take the furry monster into captivity. These events happen on the same afternoon. That evening, the president announces he may have thyroid cancer and will undergo a biopsy later that week.

You are the front page editor of The New York Times: What do you play as the biggest story?

A: Bigfoot

8. Q: You meet the perfect person. Romantically, this person is ideal: You find them physically attractive, intellectually stimulating, consistently funny, and deeply compassionate. However, they have one quirk: This individual is obsessed with Jim Henson’s gothic puppet fantasy The Dark Crystal. Beyond watching it on DVD at least once a month, he/she peppers casual conversation with Dark Crystal references, uses Dark Crystal analogies to explain everyday events, and occasionally likes to talk intensely about the film’s “deeper philosophy.”

Would this be enough to stop you from marrying this individual?

A: No. Actually I am planning to marry someone similar but who is obsessed with Rajni’s Padayappa instead!!!

9. Q: A novel titled Interior Mirror is released to mammoth commercial success (despite middling reviews). However, a curious social trend emerges: Though no one can prove a direct scientific link, it appears that almost 30 percent of the people who read this book immediately become homosexual. Many of these newfound homosexuals credit the book for helping them reach this conclusion about their orientation, despite the fact that Interior Mirror is ostensibly a crime novel with no homoerotic content (and was written by a straight man).

Would this phenomenon increase (or decrease) the likelihood of you reading this book?

A: Decrease it. I am supremely homophobic.

10. Q: This is the opening line of Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City: “You are not the kind of guy who would be in a place like this at this time of the morning.” Think about that line in the context of the novel (assuming you’ve read it). Now go to your CD collection and find Heart’s Little Queen album (assuming you own it). Listen to the opening riff to “Barracuda.”

Which of these two introductions is a higher form of art?

A: Huh? *meh*

11. Q: You are watching a movie in a crowded theater. Though the plot is mediocre, you find yourself dazzled by the special effects. But with twenty minutes left in the film, you are struck with an undeniable feeling of doom: You are suddenly certain your mother has just died. There is no logical reason for this to be true, but you are certain of it. You are overtaken with the irrational metaphysical sense that — somewhere — your mom has just perished. But this is only an intuitive, amorphous feeling; there is no evidence for this, and your mother has not been ill.

Would you immediately exit the theater, or would you finish watching the movie?

A: My mother is already dead. Bummer!

12. Q: You meet a wizard in downtown Chicago. The wizard tells you he can make you more attractive if you pay him money. When you ask how this process works, the wizard points to a random person on the street. You look at this random stranger. The wizard says, “I will now make them a dollar more attractive.” He waves his magic wand. Ostensibly, this person does not change at all; as far as you can tell, nothing is different. But–somehow–this person is suddenly a little more appealing. The tangible difference is invisible to the naked eye, but you can’t deny that this person is vaguely sexier. This wizard has a weird rule, though–you can only pay him once. You can’t keep giving him money until you’re satisfied. You can only pay him one lump sum up front.

How much cash do you give the wizard?

A: I give him a dollar and tell him I’m happy the way I am.

13. Q: Every person you have ever slept with is invited to a banquet where you are the guest of honor. No one will be in attendance except you, the collection of your former lovers, and the catering service. After the meal, you are asked to give a fifteen-minute speech to the assembly.

What do you talk about?

A: Umm…. an orgy?

14. Q: For reasons that cannot be explained, cats can suddenly read at a twelfth-grade level. They can’t talk and they can’t write, but they can read silently and understand the text. Many cats love this new skill, because they now have something to do all day while they lay around the house; however, a few cats become depressed, because reading forces them to realize the limitations of their existence (not to mention the utter frustration of being unable to express themselves).

This being the case, do you think the average cat would enjoy Garfield, or would cats find this cartoon to be an insulting caricature?

A: They would empathize with Garfield… and laugh to themselves smugly.

15. Q: You have a brain tumor. Though there is no discomfort at the moment, this tumor would unquestionably kill you in six months. However, your life can (and will) be saved by an operation; the only downside is that there will be a brutal incision to your frontal lobe. After the surgery, you will be significantly less intelligent. You will still be a fully functioning adult, but you will be less logical, you will have a terrible memory, and you will have little ability to understand complex concepts or difficult ideas. The surgery is in two weeks.

How do you spend the next fourteen days?

A: I already am very illogical with a terrible memory. I can’t understand complex concepts or difficult ideas. :p What fun!!

16. Q: Someone builds an optical portal that allows you to see a vision of your own life in the future (it’s essentially a crystal ball that shows a randomly selected image of what your life will be like in twenty years). You can only see into this portal for thirty seconds. When you finally peer into the crystal, you see yourself in a living room, two decades older than you are today. You are watching a Canadian football game, and you are extremely happy. You are wearing a CFL jersey. Your chair is surrounded by books and magazines that promote the Canadian Football League, and there are CFL pennants covering your walls. You are alone in the room, but you are gleefully muttering about historical moments in Canadian football history. It becomes clear that—for some unknown reason—you have become obsessed with Canadian football. And this future is static and absolute; no matter what you do, this future will happen. The optical portal is never wrong. This destiny cannot be changed.

The next day, you are flipping through television channels and randomly come across a pre-season CFL game between the Toronto Argonauts and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Knowing your inevitable future, do you now watch it?

A: Yuck no!

17. Q: You are sitting in an empty bar (in a town you’ve never before visited), drinking Bacardi with a soft-spoken acquaintance you barely know. After an hour, a third individual walks into the tavern and sits by himself, and you ask your acquaintance who the new man is. “Be careful of that guy,” you are told. “He is a man with a past.” A few minutes later, a fourth person enters the bar; he also sits alone. You ask your acquaintance who this new individual is. “Be careful of that guy, too,” he says. “He is a man with no past.”

Which of these two people do you trust less?

A: I would wonder what this acquaintance says about me to others. I would trust him the least.

18. Q: You have won a prize. The prize has two options, and you can choose either (but not both). The first option is a year in Europe with a monthly stipend of $2,000. The second option is ten minutes on the moon.

Which option do you select?

A: Europe. There is more to see in the Europe than on the moon.

19. Q: Your best friend is taking a nap on the floor of your living room. Suddenly, you are faced with a bizarre existential problem: This friend is going to die unless you kick them (as hard as you can) in the rib cage. If you don’t kick them while they slumber, they will never wake up. However, you can never explain this to your friend; if you later inform them that you did this to save their life, they will also die from that. So you have to kick a sleeping friend in the ribs, and you can’t tell them why.

Since you cannot tell your friend the truth, what excuse will you fabricate to explain this (seemingly inexplicable) attack?

A: I would kick him and then pretend like I have a seizure for 15 minutes. Hahaha!

20. Q: For whatever the reason, two unauthorized movies are made about your life. The first is an independently released documentary, primarily comprised of interviews with people who know you and bootleg footage from your actual life. Critics are describing the documentary as “brutally honest and relentlessly fair.” Meanwhile, Columbia Tri-Star has produced a big-budget biopic of your life, casting major Hollywood stars as you and all your acquaintances; though the movie is based on actual events, screenwriters have taken some liberties with the facts. Critics are split on the artistic merits of this fictionalized account, but audiences love it.

Which film would you be most interested in seeing?

A: The former. The latter would be like just another movie.

21. Q: Imagine you could go back to the age of five and relive the rest of your life, knowing everything that you know now. You will reexperience your entire adolescence with both the cognitive ability of an adult and the memories of everything you’ve learned form having lived your life previously.

Would you lose your virginity earlier or later than you did the first time around (and by how many years)?

A: Never. :p

22. Q: You work in an office. Generally, you are popular with your coworkers. However, you discover that there are currently two rumors circulating the office gossip mill, and both involve you. The first rumor is that you got drunk at the office holiday party and had sex with one of your married coworkers. This rumor is completely true, but most people don’t believe it. The second rumor is that you have been stealing hundreds of dollars of office supplies (and then selling them to cover a gambling debt). This rumor is completely false, but virtually everyone assumes it is factual.

Which of these two rumors is most troubling to you?

A: The second one obviously because it is false.

23. Q: Consider this possibility:

a. Think about deceased TV star John Ritter.

b. Now, pretend Ritter had never become famous. Pretend he was never affected by the trappings of fame, and try to imagine what his personality would have been like.

c. Now, imagine that this person—the unfamous John Ritter—is a character in a situation comedy.

d. Now, you are also a character in this sitcom, and the unfamous John Ritter character is your sitcom father.

e. However, this sitcom is actually your real life. In other words, you are living inside a sitcom: Everything about our life is a construction, featuring the unfamous John Ritter playing himself (in the role of your TV father). But this is not a sitcom. This is your real life.

How would you feel about this?

A: Just like now. Lol!!

To the people, who read this far. I’d be your friend even without these 23 questions. *hugs* Lol!

I should probably stop worrying about who is watching and say a couple of things here because this blog is the only outlet I have got. Why am I so stuck up? I cannot play the low games that other people play and I think it is unethical to be political. I am going to be trampled over and killed in the rat race because I don’t fight.  But somehow I prefer getting out of the race to becoming the leader of all the rats.

I wish I could be a clerk in a dusty room full of files and a ceiling fan. Will people leave me alone then or will they still find reasons to play political games involving me? I am not sure. Is this how some people live? Gossiping, telling tales, manipulating and doing dirty things to get to a better position in life? I honestly don’t care! If they want my position they will get it if they ask nicely. Lol! They don’t have to try and play filthy games.

I dream of a workplace where people don’t tell sneaky tales and where they help each other grow so the work can get completed. Alas! This is going to be a pure dream. If I ever ran an organization of my own, people will be human beings first, and not slaves. I think people should get flexi-timing and work-at-home options when they want them. They should get to eat their food. They should get their sleep. Why do these big corporates imagine that the average office-goer is a slave who should do the big brother’s bidding at all hours? Are they buying work or buying a lifetime? Can an individual not have a life outside of work?

I think the workaholics of the world can celebrate their anti-social and obsessive disorders. The workaholic zombies who don’t have girlfriends or ignore their girlfriends when they have work; the ones who have eating disorders like anorexia and sleeping disorders like insomnia can celebrate! The corporates need them. The corporates will pay them all their money to continue their non-existence. Blessed are the workaholics for they shall inherit the bloodsucker kingdom!

Some tips to steer clear of problems at work:

1. Never disclose at work that you are happy.

2. Never disclose at work if you have completed your work before time

3. Never do anything to have fun in your leisure time and even if you do keep it a secret.

4. Never announce before leaving for home.

5. Be wary of the earlier morons who have climbed the corporate ladder owing to their skills in manipulation.

6. Never blog about work problems (Lol!)

7. Swallow bullshit by the tonnes.

8. Pretend to blog about advancement in technology relating to your work and share the links with your manager.

9. Say “Yes!”

10. Don’t say “No!”

Of course, I am Mathangi. I will not follow any of the above tips because I always do what I please and thank heavens I still have some life left. I am talking to the potential workaholic zombies who are vying to sell their souls to the corporate devil.

How many times will I fall and how many more times will I rise.

People have been watching all my one-act plays. They wonder what color this creature would assume next and what metamorphosis this mutant would undergo next.

I thought compromise was a challenge but now I know I don’t care for that kind of a challenge.

I am not going to settle for anything less than the best that I knew and loved.

I know why I stop myself just before the last step.. it’s the fear of losing him. The day he leaves me for another would probably be the day I die.

I remember you said I will always have a corner in your heart… it means the world to me and I will live in that world.

Despite my many moulds and many seasons, he is the only thing that has kept me going. I have tried to make my mind believe that I have gotten over him… maybe I have gotten over his absence..

Why do I wake up in the morning and feel like nobody else can take your place in my life? Why does physicality seem irrelevant when I think of you… even your absence does not hurt any more…and I feel like I can live the rest of my life with the images inside my head.

Why do I go back to you when oppressed by superficiality?

What is it between you and me? Why do you haunt me?

Why does it pain so much…. and why do I try so hard to replace you with obnoxious others? I know I’m fighting a losing battle… you will win eventually…

So they brought the speechless eyes
And the funereal rose
Wilted
With the memories of a dying fragrance
And laid it on the ground
For silence to surround
O the pain and the endless sighs

In silence they bustled
For a piece of rope
To suffocate the moans of the restless dying

In the arms of loneliness
And the throes of darkness
They clamored for a piece of peace

They pounded at the glass walls of coffins
To open the lids on what was dead
To resuscitate the warmth of the fingers
And inject life into the stiff bones
O the failure and the misery of humiliation

They were the undead lovers
Zombies that thronged
In the heart of a parched world
Running after souls to resurrect
With love and bitter kisses

In moonlight they lifted their withered arms
And cried like a dying bird
They bled for love, the fools
O the vicious cycles of loss
O indifference unattainable
Remnants of eaten hearts.

Last night there was a power failure for 4 hours. I thought to myself “This is how it feels to be alone in a dark and silent room”. There was a thunderstorm outside.

Then I remembered the homeless man I saw in the evening. He was crouching on the sidewalk with a plastic sheet over his head to protect him from the rain. The place where he usually slept had drowned under a puddle of water.

How does it feel to be alone in a dark and silent world?

In the evening, I was with the pioneers. Music makers. And there were children as yet uncaring for the world’s approval. I was with uninhibited animals and big eyes. And there was music – noise and otherwise.

Then I played a game. I created a sense of purpose and argued for it. I was amused and animated. I made them believe that I had a point of view. Points of view are dangerous things. I mostly stay away from them. Yesterday, I was with some non-violent people and I decided to have fun.

I argued for two hours till my eyes ran away from their sockets due to the pressure from my hyperactive brain. But I smiled every time someone countered me. Hahaha! I was an evil con artist. I was a parasitic psychic vampire. I contradicted myself freely and dilly-dallied in pointlessness. I was sophistic and painful. Their retina reddened with rage. (Lol!)

My argument was said to be “Vulgar, discordant, unmusical and unartistic” and I had an enormous feeling of warmth crawl down my insides.

It was sad that they did not know I can be post-modernist when I want to be. I can also be biased, irrational and hedonistic.

It seems I subscribe to a number of borrowed philosophies and there is nothing original in me and I only speak language in a convincingly logical fashion. Unfortunately, they did not know that I do not stand for anything and therefore I am not afraid of anything collapsing. Despite the children around we were stupid.

Theism can collapse. I will not. Love, music, laughter, pain and memory can collapse. I will not. Because I am not.

You are afraid of defeat only when you fight for something. When all you want to do is have fun with concepts, everything is irrelevant. When all your props are gone, the very act of fighting for something becomes funny. You take sides with something not because you want to protect your sanity and retain your conviction but because you can take sides. You can take sides with anything and not get attached. It is fun to irritate the more serious ones.

He asked “Why should you argue so much about something that is irrelevant?”

Because “Irrelevance is the only relevant thing.”

Seriously! What gives!

She could not talk. That was her problem. And she could talk. That was also her problem.

Where the mindless noisemakers thronged in big cities wagging their tongues, she was silent. She did not laugh to their predictable jokes. She laughed at times. But she was laughing at them and not at their quips. She laughed at their absurdity. Where the power mongers debated on falsities, she did not talk. Where there were controversies on religion, politics and science, she looked at her toe nails and imagined other things. She did not listen and she did not talk. She switched herself off where the manipulators sprinkled cautious gossip around. She would dream of purple horses and non-existent ideals. They called her many names. She was the “dumb”, “lazy”, “psycho” who did not talk. Who did not know what to talk about. Or they imagined she was too haughty.

In private chambers where mind met mind, she poured her heart out. She laid her thoughts bare, teddy bears, crazy theories, songs, philosophy and giggles – merging into one another but undoubtedly ringing of truth. They laughed at her now. “What a simpleton!”, they thought. Why will she not talk about quantum theory and integral calculus? Why does she forever talk about people, animals, flowers, stars, poems, songs and love?

And then a glass bottle fell down and broke. They all ran around bustling and screaming. Somebody stepped on the glass and bled all over the floor. Someone else mopped the blood. Someone slipped on the wet floor and scraped their knees. Someone else boiled some water to cleanse the wound. Someone scalded their fingers with boiling water. Someone else went to get some ointment. Thus they leaped around with their complicated lives, brewing one problem after another. In the middle of all this she just sat. Like a stone frog.

How they hated her nonchalance! Why was she not anxious and panicking? Why is she not crying? Why is she not breaking down? Why? Why? Why?

I

A childhood it was between the first and the second
Each day ended like a spent taper
A mirror you were to me my friend
A diamond unique, refracting my beams
A multifoliate rose, multiplying my dreams
There would never be another.

II

You were my feather, the first and the only
A daily oracle descending from heaven
My sensitive wells of poetry and theory
With you they ended, my absent muse
You left me with nothing else to lose
Still less to be given.

III

If my sadness were rolled into a moon
You are the light in its deep dark core
All you gave me retracted too soon
No reason remains but there is rhyme
The distant, disturbing rusted time
And “Never more”.

IV

Inside a cocoon hibernates my soul
My secrets concealed in preconceived smiles
I live in parts as a shadow of my whole
Tears are too uninspired to be born
Words have left me longing forlorn
Across many miles.

V

I am an echo in the no man’s land
I never existed between then and now
The only blessing was a kiss to his hand
The semblance of life in a hollow body
Walks the streets like a tattered effigy
Futile love.

A sloppy sappy kiss to everyone who visited this blog regularly and bothered to comment on all my rants and raves!

My blog stats says that the blog has crossed 50000 visitors so far! This after I moved from Blogger in 2006. Thanks a lot to all my readers!

*Hugs* :>

So you asked me

What am I to you?

To me

You are that recurrence of hope
And an anticipation of pain

What is one more breath of oxygen
To a dying man?
Everything and Nothing.

What are you to me?

You are a wall
On which I paint forgetfulness
Forgotten pasts
Forgotten betrayals

And you are a window
To a world next door
Near yet far

Somewhere I don’t want to go
For fear of coming back
Some road I don’t want to take
For fear of losing track

I believe in love
And I think people speak the truth
After fifteen lies they would.
They have to.

They would be tired of inventing lies.

Then their truths would break all floodgates
And rush at me in glorious ugliness
I would gasp in gratitude
I prefer ugly truth to beautiful lies.

You are a little golden pin
In memory’s casket
Hidden for another day
A day that will never come

You are not poetry or rain
You are not the raven’s black
Or those black veins throbbing with vicious urge

You are simple, stolid and plain
As a book
Square, sweet-smelling
And full of pain

I remember I imagined love once
And I imposed love once
I remember I wept for love once
And I laughed at love once
I held tightly to some
Who never were there
And let go of some
Who were constantly around

I remember I saw his brown pupils
And loved them with all my heart
I could have held his curly head
In my bosom forever
But he was too beautiful a book
To be trapped in my claustrophobic library.

And there were many men
Many children
Many rainy days
I loved them all
To the last drop

I loved. Always. Silently. Somehow.

You.
Will be my silent sable
A table upon which I lean
And write
About precious hours
Of precious colours

You are the one
I would never possess
Never smother
You are mine
You are mine

You never gave me poems
Or songs or dreams
You gave me time
You gave me space
You gave my love its beautiful place

I can think straight
My feet are not off the ground
I will not dye my thoughts
With insane crimson and twilight pangs
But
I see us together forever
And along with you,
my love
and me
We have arrived.

Cunning men play
A game of cards with hearts
And betray

Ambitious women delude
In blossoming grey cities
Dry and nude

Melanchoholics weave
Odes to Auld lang syne
Pen sieve.

The last few times.

Every time I wrote I borrowed some love.

I stole some apples from someone else’s basket

I stole some crystals from someone else’s goblet

I sneaked like a thief and sipped on someone else’s fire

Now I am crumbling like a humiliated question mark

Sorry. I steal because I starve

I walk with watchful eyes from one pyre to another

And steal the flesh that falls from burning hearts

My vicarious children

Their rainbows and fishtanks

Something to keep me alive.

Some poem or

Someone else’s privilege for sanity

Someone else’s dreams

Some comforts…sleep and otherwise.

Ah! At last I have found some time to post in my blog.

Though this break would have reduced my regular readers from 2000 to 2.

I am currently at Hyderabad. Yes friends! I got here last week. I am currently staying at a posh locality called Jubilee Hills. I get good food and go to work. My work is not very hectic either and I kinda love it. Therefore this trip is akin to a paid vacation.

I am yet to go looking around the places. The roads are amazingly good at Hyderabad and the traffic is manageable though not during the peak hours. They have an excellent airport and very amiable people who are ready to be of any help.

I went to Hyderabad Central last week for a huge bowl of icecream and also had some Veg Biriyani (Yeah! I know! Non-veggies can stop sniggering) at Hyderabad house. I visited my dad’s best friend’s place on Saturday and they were really sweet to me. That uncle and my dad are friends for 35 years. Whoa!!

My childhood friend Ganu is also here and works for the same company though our offices are in different areas. I met him for a few minutes when I was staying at the guest house close to his office. He has put down his papers though and will be leaving Hyderbad soon.

I will soon be checking out Charminar, Golconda fort, Chudi Bazaar etc. I love the rock formations all around Hyderabad and plan to go on a photo walk of some sort to capture some pictures.

My best friend has not called me in ages. I think he has forgotten me. I have left my bike with Jai while I am away from Chennai. Will update when I find the time to do so.

Bye guys!

Mainstream Hindi music is painfully boring. I give up!

BTW, the title of this post is my friend’s way of referring to silly songs.

How the heck does it matter anyway as long as I have rainy afternoons, pudgy cupcakes with mushy romances to read!

Why is Asterix so tiny?

I love Snowy. He always imitates Tintin’s facial expressions.

Fluffy needs to be taken out of his plastic cover prison as soon as I get back to Chennai.

Crayons don’t taste as good as color pencil tips. Nor do they color that well. I used to hate crayons because they assumed

they could leave some portions of my picture uncolored.

Yes. I think retarded thoughts. But I also think about shopping lists, cellphone recharges and powercuts.

I need a large strappy white belt. For no particular reason.

The red towel disappeared from my life without warning. I need it back.

Google tires me with its ancient typography and in-your-face white. !@%$!%*

The best joke of the year was when he told me I am not strong-willed. Yeah right!

I once had a small Ganesh statue that drank milk from a saucer. I swear it is true!!!!

What the hell is this font called Marlett in my MS – Word. It is always a bunch of squareS, arcs and things.

When I was younger, I used to have these red kerchiefs with big sanrio kitties on them. *sniff*

I always stain my white shirts when eating.

A friend named Sowmya wrote to me after 10 years and another friend named Sumitha called me after 6 years. Miracles!

I once lifted a little pup in my hands and realized that it had peed recently. Not a nice discovery let me tell you!

Likewise, I had my aunt’s huge German Shepherd sprawled on my lap for an hour. When he got off I was covered in fluff.

The natural texture of my hair is pathetically frizzy. I straightened it and it took me four ruddy hours!!

I used to have an elephant Doy soap a year back.

I hate drinking water. Why the hell is it not flavored?

I pick flowers and twigs off the street. Some of my friends hate me for that.

I have an underwear that has pink, green, blue and white stripes. It looks like candy. >:)

I swear I have some floppy disks at home.

…and the greeting cards that S.P gave me. (I am a sentimental fool!)

I used to say “All Indians are my brothers and sisters (except 1)” back in school during the National pledge. Forethought,

they call it! Hehehe!

I love swings.

I love sharpening pencils. I glue the shavings to my notebook and make flowers.

Note to self: Ok enough. Shut up.

Freedom comes with the unimaginably wide horizon of possibilities. It takes my breath away.

Am the happiest because I escaped a wrong choice. What a relief!

I bet nobody else gets so many opportunities as I do and so many escapes! I swear am lucky as hell.

I have a plan for my future and it is would involve me and a very few close friends that I trust. Everybody else can stay in the periphery. I have had enough of being nice to useless strangers. I know who my valuable friends are and they are the ones who accept me as I am and guide me when I am wrong. They don’t reject me or hate me when I make a mistake. They take time to support me and stand by me at all times. I am thankful for a few good friends I made despite my general inability to judge people well.

I am also going to pay attention to my family because they have done so much for me. I think I have had enough of being selfish. I have always loved my family though I never expressed it very well. Now I will take time to express it.

And they won’t hate me even if I make stupid mistakes. They won’t ask me to go away. My best friends Jai, Rajesh and Arunkumar have stood by me at all times. While Jai and Arun have got me whatever I needed even if it was beyond their reach, Rajesh has been my mentor and guide. I am indebted to these three people.

I also have a few friends who let me be myself and accept me. One of them is Vivek and the other one is Shashi. Eventhough I have had epic fights with Shashi, we always ignore it and continue to be friends. I really think of him a lot of times and even he does not know about it. He has encouraged me and advised me when required. Vivek has accepted me despite my meanness to him and he has been kind to me though in his own silent manner.

I think I am going to erase all the mean things that some immaterial people told me and concentrate on what my friends and family have to say. I have buried my past and it is of no use or relevance to me except that it serves as the ashes from which I rise again in better form and with greater vitality.

Good bye to all the unnamed losers!

I’m in a bus

Where is it?

On a bridge

Is it hot?

I see a window

Who lives there?

People perhaps

It’s dark inside

It’s 10 am

Dinghy and dank

Is it a room?

Low ceiling!

Claustrophobia

I see people

Oh ok!

Mother and child

Are they happy?

Can they breathe?

Look away.

How can they?

Welcome to Mumbai.

When entwined like the ends of a barbed wire,
Where does my space end and yours begin?

In an unspoken word that the cigarette swallows,
Where does silence begin and smothering end?

The traffic offends on tarmac roads
Where does trust begin and anxiety end?

Midnight sweats like an unanswered panic
Where does empathy begin and selfishness end?

Loneliness strangles in the arms of strangers
Where does freedom begin and dependence end?

In the depths of pain, a craving beckons need
Where does growing up begin and childhood end?

Merciless coldness is dubbed as maturity
Where does anger end and limpness begin?

In the heart of thought, an instinct tempts
Where do necessities end and rules begin?

The past haunts endlessly staining the now
Where does begging end and choosing begin?

All gestures are misread and opinions formed
Where do masks end and realities begin?

All life is change and everything dies
Where do laws end and where does love begin?

I came to Pune on the 4th and I will be leaving on the 17th. I really like this place way better than Chennai. The streets seem quieter because I live outside the city limits. I like the people because they are very helpful and friendly. The guest house I live in is a huge bungalow with a beautiful view of the hills beyond. As the evening approaches, the city lights begin to glitter like little stars on the hills.

Last week, I was submerged in work. I had planned to go to Mumbai on Friday and come back on Sunday. However, I had to work on Saturday. Therefore, I took a rick and went to a place called Wakad bridge on Saturday evening and booked a Volvo bus to Mumbai. I quickly got myself some food from a nearby restaurant and was all set for the journey. The bus took off at 6.45 pm and I sat next to a friendly North Indian lady. I cannot speak Hindi very well.. only in bits and pieces. Luckily for me, this lady could speak English. So we made some conversation. It was a super comfortable journey. I loved the way, the bus wound its way through the mountain roads and tunnels. The cities down below shimmered like a thousand jewels. My heart leaped with happiness because this was quite an adventure in my uneventful life. I fell asleep for about one hour. When I woke up I figured that the back of my seat had automatically lowered itself and I was being stared at by the man in the back seat. I was literally on his lap. Lol! I sat up and gazed around till the sleep left my eyes. We reached Mumbai by 9.45. I was supposed to get off at Chembur Amar Mahal where my uncle was waiting to pick me up.

Suddenly, somebody told me that Chembur had already passed by. I heaved my bag and everything and went to the door. I asked someone to enquire in Hindi if the bus had already crossed Chembur. This man said, “I cannot speak Hindi either”. I was like “Oh!” and he asked me “What do you speak?”. I said “Thamizh” and he asked me where I was from. I said “Chennai”. He was like, “Hahahah! I am from Chennai too. I am an orthopaedic surgeon. I came to Pune for a surgery and now am at Mumbai for a convention.” I was like “Wow!” and he started speaking in Tamil. The bus had stopped at a signal. I tried asking the driver if I can get off because I had missed my stop at Chembur. Suddenly, the driver started speaking in Thamizh. Hahah! He said “Idhuthanga Chembur. Erangunga.” (This is Chembur. Get off!) Rofl! I was like “Thank you!!!!!!” Then I got off at some random place. My phone had 0 balance. I had recharged it online in the morning but the amount had not got credited. I walked down a road and saw a Vodafone mini store (I know!!). I recharged my phone again and called my cousin. I told her that I had missed my stop. I planned to take a rick to the Chembur Amar Mahal and go home with my uncle. My cousin asked me to come home straight. My uncle had no phone.

I told my cousin that I would go looking for my uncle. I took a rick and went back to Chembur Amar Mahal. I looked around for my uncle and he was nowhere to be found. In the meantime, my cousin called me and told me that my uncle had waited for me for 1 hour and had got back home. I took another rick to a place called Pestom Sagar. That is where my uncle and cousin live. Finally, I got home. I went in and gave my cousin a bigggggg hug! Lol! I was seeing her after ages!

I went to the bedroom and checked my webmail to see if there were any issues at work. I had my dinner and watched some cricket with my uncle. A friend who I called, pissed me off. So I called my bestest friend ever. He made me feel better. Then I had dinner and went off to sleep.

The next morning I visited my 86 year old grandma (my grandmother’s sister) and a host of other relatives. I had a good time going around the place with my uncle. In 4 hours I visited 4 houses. By 5 pm I took a bus back to Pune. I made friends with a girl sitting next to me. There was a little baby girl in the front seat, who kept talking to me in Hindi! Hahah! I took some pictures of her and the lights on the road. Then I slept for a while. When I got back to my guest house it was 9 pm. I ordered some food from a hotel nearby, watched the first half of  ”Sweet Home Alabama” on Zee Studio and fell asleep. 

Yes sir! I don’t know shit about IPL or why Harbhajan slapped Sreesanth! I also don’t know that Balaji made the first IPL hat trick in yesterday’s match! I cannot sing Dard-e-disco and don’t know who the eff is Deepika Padukone!

Now go leap from the nearest building!

I think I’m the most out-of-touch person after Obama!

When all else is dark

Give me some light

From the glint of your eyes

O, inconspicuous black bird.