Tasting Travelling

I've started putting into practice the concept of myself as a starving, growing animal. 
The kind that likes her teas alone, and books tickets before the dreaded changing-mind-stigma-stodginess sets in. This year has sufficed. So far. And there's Bhutan to look forward to, in the next entry.

Why travel
because it isn't enough without
unless i do.

Because i want to physically feel something
new and bright 
that hurts my eye.

i want to always close my eyes 
and lie flat on my belly in Morjim
when it's most deserted
and no one else is holidaying except retired couples
and the lone woman beached like a whale
baking softly in the sun.
the sunlight is white
i can taste salt and warmth and you.

i want to lose my way over 
and over again
making a new friend to meet the Maha Kumbh mela
and walk barefoot on silver sludge
silver sky.
orange robe are walking by in hundreds
because every one is leaving,
it's over.
the humans are gone,
this is the end and goodbye.
i've only just arrived here.
(i know there's a we somewhere,
i just can't seem to find it.)
we're wearing three days worth of rain-soaked
mucky yucky
clothes on us,
layered like stodgy iyengar bakery cake
because the bus from Ghaziabad to Allahabad
dumped us in Kanpur and we walked a mile
at 6 am in jacuzzi rain.
putting on lenses like a pro at the deserted bus stand.

i'd really like to pour my savings 
into another spur-of-the-moment
Leh trip.
and never think twice.
eat a fat red chunk of melon flesh
and breathe deephardfast
as the Stok range looms around me.
Mordor could be right ahead,
and the Shire's already
a distant basecamp memory.
(i wish i had legs like a donkey.
you can't feel pretty on a high-altitude trek anyway.)

Rough,crusty beach of broken shells
at Bekal.
This is another way of seeing Kerala.
Shedding inhibitions
 and hugging myself underwater.
Swinging on a wooden bed
above the backwaters
but smelling salt.
Walking alone,
walking in the rain.
Gobbling kozhi rasam because
ohgodyes
I still don't feel the Malyali connection
in my blood.
(I do feel something else though
rushing.)

Either the food is a strong connection or
i'm a livingbreathingmass 
which could travel the earth on fours 
to taste something 
new on my tongue.

Hello Lover

Hello mouldy old blog
I've missed you so
You keeper of teenage angst
strongly brewed feelings
and well-developed adult harping
Reminder of how there are corners in my house that never get swept
and somewhere the sharp waft of all the new mouldy cheeses I've been trying out lately.

This was always my space to speak out more clearly; words weaving together smoothly and cleanly in a way that my normal fastfumblinglyvague conversation would sniff at with derision.
aaah xjhjsa dtcr3l3, #$%1, haan. 

The past six months haven't been a whirlwind, so to speak. I'd really love to use the expression 'whirlwind'. It's dramatic and breezy and very feminine to the core; of dashing skirts and lifted chins and sudden entrances into the room. Things I'd rather read about, than be.

The past six months have seen a new start in this city which is my third home, my forgotten home, the home I never really lived in and always wanted to live in for some self-forsaken reason. I closed some chapters, edited others and simply opened a few new ones.

Bangalore is beautiful and exhausting and just as comfortable as an old coat. I haven't worn it very often, but shelved it carefully in measures. The childhood memories I have here are clean and well-folded. Each weekend was an adventure, and I tried to forget that I'd have to return to another reality of steel scales, snipey eleven year old classmates and empty obligations that were only four hours away.

I'm working here now, and learning more about myself every day, and suddenly loving this amazing fact: that after nearly twenty five years in this universe, I've got so much more to learn. I want to devour every thing around me. In a parallel universe, of course, I'm painting my nose blue and writing some reallycrazyimportantintelligentstuffs. These universes always collide. I'm not very worried about the grass being greener thing.

My writings gone rusty, there are bits I want to chop off and fumble with to make them click and hum. I'm probably more aware of how my brain functions now, so this would be a great time to share what I have to say. Either here or another channel. Once in a full moon (that's not so bad, not at all) someone unexpected comes up to me and mentions this dusty space on the internet. The connection is stronger, the moment felt more deeply than anything I've designed or drawn for the past few years. We're full of emotion, apparently. So someone said. Without shame or regret, we're vessels. Pomegranates stuffed with solid ruby gimlets, packed against our skin.

I'm travelling more and connecting slightly more frequently with the ocean. There may be mountains in my near future, some crazybeautiful lifealtering ones. You just need to decide that something will alter your life, and feel it in your bones, and go ahead breathe deep. That's what I think.

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.

  
  

A Better place

Is it in vain
Is it a crime
Is it something I didnt explain?

Maybe I'll come by here again.

Maybe I sang too fast
And tripped over the words|
Getting pulled over for overspeeding|
Clutching the ticket and praying to a light
or something even greater up there|
Hoping I'd do it again.

Maybe I dreamed too bright|
Gulping down memories and
diving into them again|
Opening my eyes underwater
and breathing in till they burned|
Making new futures out of old paper boats
and setting sail again.

Or maybe I held my own hand too tight|
Walking on the edge of the knife
A snail on thin ice
Slipping into old skin
and slipping sliding fighting it
with worn soles
and a heavy rucksack

Preparing myself for the worst
and finding a better place,
After all.



I was listening to La Dispute by Yann Tierson.

Blue whale in the rain speaks of no trains.

By the sea
it rains
pours

endlessly.

buckets and katoris and spoons
of flailing cats and dogs
caught mid-flight, gasping
between the high and the fall.

a word-dismissive script
of piece-meal stories and haphazard,wide-eyed people
sits on my lap.

By the sea, the rain shivels into thread-bare ropes, and starts to sprinkle the city with images of what is now yesterday.

Batallions rise in the evenings
heaving over the water in blackening smoke-fish patterns.

and the nights grow longer,
and the rain plays havoc with trains,
and the pages get dog-eared with forgetfullness,
and rabbitty looking blue whale thumbs get lost in different spaces,
and an unexpected music greets the dawn,
and a new day that dissolves into the next and the next and the next one again,
and the weekend sprouts 2 extra limbs with a sudden,'hello'.

..When I go to Bombay and come all the way back.

Listen to 'Down by the sea', Morcheeba.

Dare I grow Old?

Musings.
Revisiting TS Eliots' Prufrock in Visual Language class
Memoirs of visiting Rotary Old Age Home in Mysore
Indigo train rides to Madras
and longer,whirlwind journeys to smaller towns
And through it all..
Grandparents
still holdin on to the last vestiges of loveliness
Gracefully falling.

Dear New Year Fairy...

Dear New Year fairy,
You are a product of my own imagination. As with most products, your functionality is baseless apart from your consumers' personal inadequencies and unfulfillments.We'd like to call it wishful thinking.
Since Xmas was uneventful and I gave up on feeling Herr Klaus's Xmas love the minute I left home, you're the only one I can write my wish list to.
The below agendas will make me a better person and a happier,more peaceful one at that.I predict that I'll become wiser in ways I can't imagine by engaging myself in things that I love and believe in.
I'm a strong believer in personal intuition and hate structured planning.So here goes.

1.Start finishing my graphic novel.The course I waited for too long for is over,and I need to keep this story alive for a very personal reason.
2.Listen to the lyrics of songs I frequently play.Its a revelation.Despite the fact that Im sorely tempted to just interpret them any way I want to.
3.Spend time at Byllakuppe, the Tibetan settlement enroute to Coorg.I get a short lived sense of peace rekindled by the feeling of slow-burning excitement in the pit of my stomach,every time we stop by.I'll do my dream project there.
4.Run my finger along the curve where the tree trunk coils,and sinks smoothly into the earth.I forgot how much I loved doing that.
5.A week at Auroville. With someone I love and respect for all their kinks.The coast,kilns,heavenly bakeries nd fascinating people there call.
6.Grow my hair till it resembles overgrown tendrilly vines licking at my bangles.The poor locks were shorn this summer and are still undergoing emotional trauma.They need respite.
7.Worship work. It distracts when you need it to.
8.Write more. It nourishes me. You need to keep doing things to remind yourself that you're alive.
9.Value the people I dont value nearly enough.And perhaps feel less,for those I regard by virtue of their status in various contexts and not for whom they dont project themselves as.
10.Laugh more.And hold that feeling inside,like tightly winding an escaping balloon's string around your finger.
11.Work more for Film Club. It's so much bigger than a free audi screening.
12.Not think about thinking too much because it all just adds up. I keep discovering exactly how much one can layer thoughts over thoughts. Chunky Bakery puffs are healthier!
13.Smell the rain!
14.Love aloneliness. Not loneliness,that can stay for the poetry and the blue funks on sunday evening. Aloneliness is letting go and liking yourself and feeling the presence of many strange and beautiful elements in the little bubble hemisphered world around you.
Amen,
it's not too much to ask now,is it?