Juni

I was missing Juno today.

Her babies had more babies a month ago, 

and the house is filled with a veritable army of mini fur-blobs, 

racing toward the fish and rice mix 

as if their lives depended upon it.

 Mum keeps them safe and warm and loved in that

 not-so-empty-now-renovated 

household.

Juno came to us when we were in between flats and farmhouses (as usual; it feels like we've just made a home and it's time to shift again for all the wrong right reasons). Her first month was in our tiny cottage, before it's walls and floors split, broke down and slicked up to became a fancy paneled house. She was a funny reddish-tabby-striped one, with these yellow eyes that went hard and cold when she wanted her alone time. 


Typical, sniff the dog-lovers in all their superiority.
The apartment, in 2010, was all white shiny tiles and make-shift settled-in. You know, with tapestries making do for curtains and all our paintings strung unto the odd hook in the wall. Landlords have a deal with the damaging relationship between hammers and nails. Juni made it a home; she cuddled into every crevice and fallen tapestry-curtain and cried to be cuddled. We two sisters and mother would watch re-runs of Lie to Me as cups of strong filter coffee, cheese-encrusted knives and bakery bread spread around us.


Juni missed the fresh air and open space of our farmland. One fine evening, she hopped into the car with Mum to see the renovation site of the cottage. Ran about sniffing and prancing up from among cables and wood panels. Even in the apartment, she was this unchanelled little wild sprite. Hunted down pigeons, rats and everything else that moved. Her hunger to prey was insatiable; it was as if she had a one-woman mission to conquer the mini-jungle of shrubs and palms between flat blocks.


She disappeared one night. A hunting expedition gone wrong, perhaps. I was in Ahmedabad, as usual, and the news came over the phone. 


I transferred my energy to coddling the bigger of a teenage pair of cats that haunted the library corridors. It was soothing to run fingers through the shallow field of short fur and hear that reassuring purr.

Magic without a T.

Image from somewhere in the internet's depths.

I have an archive of beautiful images from around the place.
Photographs, posters, fashion and artwork which is exciting, inspiring, technically emulative or simply something I'd love to keep around me.

The above image popped up and reminded me that today is

The Day I Gained Purpose in Life! 
The Day I registered my grad film, my final year project!

that I don't write much save Tweets or the teensy blog/ DA posts.
Which is sad, really. 
There's just so much less to think about when I write. It's easier to put words together in text, than have face-to-face conversations or participate in stilted Facebook chat sessions.
(I should just post on my Blog. And tell people to read the daily RSS before we meet.Simple aforementioned problems solved.)

Coming back to the point,
Words are powerful. Radical Self Love from my favourite blogger in the world confirms that.

The more I realise that the only thing constant in life is change, I love life a little bit more. The minority of happy people on the planet can subscribe to that notion.

The Now is:

The unbeatable roasted lush of Coorg coffee, made in a steel filter every Ahmedabadi morning
September weather spells of warm wakings up in the cold morning
The unavoidable,hilarious and exasperating daily updates of the neighbour dogs,brought to you by your lunch buddy 


Skinny lizards skating over  the peppery ceiling searching for roaches
The new forevers of rediscovering Neruda on a tattoo quest
The old forevers of Radiohead,Jefferson Airplane,T.S Eliot and
the blazing nows of the Xx, HerSpaceHoliday, Vampire Weekend and all the indie music in the world made for you and only you


Ego-tickles and skin-tickles and goosebumps,
Beer and perfectly made eggs in honey-teriyaki sauce to share,
Letters from never-lost long-ago-still-here girls in penguin swimsuits who
made houses out of orange tang, dinosaur baths and magazine covers FYVP  when
the roof tiles were unguarded and  comfort came years, years later in a car-ride


Sister cats waiting in Mysore town with babies that are sprouting like acrobats
Photograph sleeping in folder not awake not  yet not again
Insomnia over  coffee dates and dirty drawings of furtive couples in stretchy pants and brown sugar

spells now in not so many words,

none at all.

  
  

Things I love When Im Wise

Things I Love Appreciate and Hope-to-think-of-more after having my wisdom teeth pulled out(yank,to be precise!) a week ago.

-My growing collection of teas. It's like organic farming out of a packet.Out of the nine current lovelies, its organic tulsi-ginger which does the trick and washescleanthebloodstream. Organic India,you're rather wonderfully good for me.

-Giving the mirror LESS IMPORTANCE.Its amazing how a swollen jaw can distort your entire appearance, to your own eyes.I still can't recognise myself(and apparently,neither can my family hair stylist who thinks Ive aged centuries!)but hey,it's okay.See next point.

-Glowing,healthy skin(It glows in the dark too.) which must credit from The Mummy's endless doles of turmeric curds,chocolate cows milk,soaked almonds and...

-Papaya sitafal passionfruit yoghurt smoothies!Yum,yum,yum.They can pass me shady lines at any given time.

-Finishing a really well written book in one go. Thank you Michael Cunningham,for giving meFlesh and Blood. The cover was nearly as irresistable as the throw-away sale price- FIFTY RUPEES!Horrific,no?

-My green room,tantadantaaaadah!

-Got to love hand-me-downs!My aunt's plastic earrings from the 80s.So plastic!The Mummy's aerobics tights in with neon pink,black and blue swirls.Also from the 80s.

-Setting my caller tunes so I feel different inside each time the phone rings.(Hello,I just love some people a little more.)

-Watching Very Trashy Reality TV. I even saw a re-run of EMOTIONAL ATYACHAAR with full devotion.

-Getting a high score on Mah Jong Titans and vowing to play for real. I am so multi-cultural. I think I love myself a wee bit more; it's addictive. Next I will wear that new velcro-attachable saree.

-Revisiting a piece of art that means that little something more, each time.

Thanks to GalaDarling, one of my favourite bloggers for rooting these things out of my head and into the air!

These are a few of my favourite things.

I've never considered myself to be the home-sick type.
But I'm staying back these vacations, working toward our-very-own animation film festival Chitrakatha,that's happening in just a week now,
and the hostel passages are clean-swept,
the birds' calls are shriller and more in number,
and the room's colder and smaller,
when I return to it.

Which is nearly every hour.

So all of a sudden I miss being alone at home, in my sister's quiet little room behind the staircase,with my mum in the next room fixing something light and appetite-friendly in a large ceramic bowl.

There's more.

|The smell of baking is overpowering;chocolate cupcakes and slightly crackly coconut biscuits and lemon tart.Sitting on the cool granite counter and licking cake batter off your fingers.

|Boiling hot filter coffee with a comfortingly burnt,bittersweet after-taste. The second sip( after the tongue-scalding first one) comes close to heaven.

|Heavy footsteps up the wooden ladder;feeling the walls becoming hotter with your fingertips as you climb up,and taking in a deep breath as the terrace door swings open with a rush,as the bracken-filled fields,dark green tamarind trees and peacefully inclining hills greet you.

|The whisper of furtive post-dinner plans with your grandmother.She swings out a bottle of mint Baileys from Thatha's wine cabinet(Johnny walker being the most wine-y of the lot!) and declares that there's no one she'd rather 'get tipsy with'. As the years go by,the company that you drink with can be strange,fruitful and myriad all at once.

|The couch. It's chequered and slightly squishy at one end. This customisation ensures maximum compatibility with my holiday schedule of bed-roll-shift-loo-shift-sofa-shift-bed. Interspersed with fridge breaks.

|When it rains, the whole farm goes silent. Everything is rained upon, and the coconut fronds drop like muted bombs in unison. Every single person stays silent when they look at those blackening clouds. The earth opens her parched throat in prayer. The feeling of being washed over,washed away and being cleansed by something earthly and powerful is prevalent.

|Mor. I see buttermilk being poured in a jug shaped like a bunch of amazonic bananas. If that's not exotic sounding enough,there's so much to see and inhale in deeply. At the bottom lie black til seeds,crushed whole ginger,garden-fresh kothamali(coriander) and chopped green chillies. An day's visit, before the rains set in.

|The gleam of yellow bulbs through cane landshades,over hot-cooked meals, spells familiarity and comfort.

|Being able to look through old photographs of those you've lost in your own time,not seconds borrowed or stolen. And finding it easier to not avoid that hollow feeling, when all you have in your hostel room are passport size nothings.Thats the real comfort of being surrounded by what makes your home.

|Tilting a bottle of mineral-rich and slightly sweetish waters at your lips for a good 30 seconds and staring at the ceiling fan. This beats icy steel cooler water anyday.

|Hill-top breezes in speeding cars with a hot packed drink balancing precariously on your lap, as the city slowly becomes a jewellery box of twinkling, firefly-like dots and patterns.

This is all I remember for now.

Goodbye Summer,Im out of love with you.

Dear Summer,
It was nice knowing you. We spent two months together and it was grand.
The couch was our home, and reality show ratings went up.
I started swimming again cause of you, and proclaimed my love for getting myself back in shape. Truly a landmark moment.
The proclamation,I mean.
I created mine own muse, fashioned out of ingredients that I dare not spill out here. The wall posts have ears. So I painted on rainy afternoons, went vegetarian on and off, learned to dance (Or rather,dancing came to me.Okay,I Wish.) and became a Deviant. and most importantly, listened to lots of music alone. Unremarkable that it may sound, I rarely have put in effort to listen to a piece of music without multi-tasking.It's like eating without a book in hand, or a face in front of you.

But Im out of love with you, because I'm moving on. You see,I have a wonderful room that faces the riverside and keeps itself supremely clean and resounds with Morcheeba, Chopin(!),Radiohead and the Beatles. Beyonce is good stuff as well,thank you Jazzy for opening my eyes out to the world of dhinchak phun music. White curtains and incense and them trippy moringa lights on the walls, my goodness, it's almost heaven on earth.
Did I mention that I'm there only after 1 in the morning?
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.Absence makes cellphone clocks wear the battery down more. Absence sounds like Absynthe .It's a nice word.Horrible taste.
* Absinthe, an alcoholic beverage
* Absynthe (album), a 2003 album by Monsieur Camembert
* The Absynthe, a Trent University campus newsmedia organization
* Absynthe, A song composed by Paul Kalkbrenner, part of the album Berlin Calling
[Thank you Wiki.]

So, I will continue to spend my life in such self-sustained peace(That's not entirely true,I like people lots.) and
~Go to Jaisalmer/Goa/Hampi this year.
~Soopertamify and work on Cut Here, the Film magazine.(Shreyas, you can take a bow.No wait,I will.:P)
~PS,I'm continuing to work for Film Club this year as well. Old habits die hard.
~Make posters(Spirited Away,coming up:))
~Think of more things to do, make bigger lists with extra neon smileys,


and then get back to be less frothy and more cynically myself.

Wonderla.
Ta.

The smell of Summer

It smells of dust.
Dust along the underside of the wall that bellows up when I push my bed closer to the fan.
Dust on my bookshelf; there's a faint odour of guilt staining the edges of pages I haven't visited for many moons.
Dust on the rim of my purple spectacles.The closest anyone's come to doodling my likeness is when they colour in chunky purple frames. This is regardless of the fact that I barely wear 'em.
Dust on my sore pink toes and dust inside my Rockstar chappals.

Two glorious months in which anything can happen. I could go to Hampi or paint a pretty picture or read LOTR for the five-and-a-half-eth time.
Better yet, finish my comic book. Yet again. Surprisingly,I never got bored of it. The story refuses to die- I suppose it has links too personal for me to not imagine recreating it over and over again.
Oh, and how about baking a storm?A literal mountain of mousses and brownies and lemon crumble cake. That recipe for Banana-peanut butter bread has been stalking my brain for months now.

And I'll finish listening to all the assorted,much advised music on my I-tunes. And listen to Rubber Soul for the billionth time in a week, as it sounds better each time it flows through me.

And I'll make more resolutions and keep working like the day's going to die soon and plan and plot and feverishly obsess over exactly how profitable and 'all that' my next semester will be.It's nice to become this different sorta person over two years.

And I'll breathe in clean air that smells of sunlight and lazy sprinkler-studded grass and dream some more.

Hello,Summer.

Classic December.

If you're from around my campus, you might recognise the title as the theme for this month's Film Club screenings.
It's also apt for my mood of the month.
I was looking through a senior's blog, and discovered what it was like to feel inspired and let-down at the same time. I think to myself:Girl, start working. Forsake the idea that your coursework is draining/de-inspiring, and start imagining the exciting. The nouveau. The ideas you used to have that would have you frantically grope around for a pen, only to scribble a barely decipherible thought for later reference.
It's interesting how my state of mind can affect so much.

This is a classic December, with a wee bit too much of the December doldrums thrown into it.Maybe Im worn out from feeling too much and too little and trying to forget all those little cuts and scratches from a black t-shirt that lies beside my pillow....
I've stopped feeling as enthusiastic and charged up about 'things' like earlier. You know,Things.
Strange feelings, interesting people, new music.
Coming across a book in the KMC about ancient oceanic art.
Shooting the extraordinary Thangka paintings at Bailakuppe.
Sitting at Chai Gate- an official addict- and just looking at people,smiling inside all the while.
Stopping after 3 pages of a book and going back to read a line that suddenly made too much sense.
Laughing when iTunes opens a Portishead song from shared folder, bringing back memories of cackling girls and dim lights and 3am scrambled eggs in 12th std.
Going over and over the thought that Sekhar had put forth in August -"..this will make you a better storyteller.I am sure of it."
And then theres that greenish light filtering through the studio's thick, rippled glass panes.
And going by the brilliantly twinkling rich reds, virulent greens, burnt yellows, rani pinks so fast that they shriek like cloistering,glittering, colourful stars.Your eyes burn. Thats Law Garden, from a speeding auto. A distant roar of hawkers shoppers corn-eaters honking autos.

My plane will touch Bangalores concrete shores on friday evening. And I'll speed down the highway, that long winding road of blur and splattered watercolour trees in twilight.

And the skies will be purple and orange and dying yellows, because thats how the road from Mysore to Bangalore always looks.

And I'll laugh when Ma calls me morbid and hugs me, and my sister grumbles because I always steal the pillow, and the driver Deva grunts because that still-faced daughter is back and will demand the windows to be kept down so she can hang her hand outside to feel the window whip it turbulently.

Didnt you know that your hand could get cut off that way?
I always have.

But they still are glad that Im home, and the sun will set differently every evening for me.