Grey threads

I forgot all about my socks
the greying worn-out ones
threadless and bare and scuffed at the soles
My feet are naked and inconsolable at their tremendous loss.

The socks went on a roadtrip though
Right through double-locked suitcases and
endless goodbyes that didnt say hello frequently enough
They seem to be wiser, for all I taught them.

That seems to happen more and more, the
more I crumple up words and forget to write
because the papers too new,
the feelings too old,
the everything's just not enough to become a
something that I'll keep with me long enough to love.

Still.My feet are inconsolable at their loss.
I've reassured them with promises of blankets.
Not so snug as socks but
comfortable enough to
keep aside on those hot
long-winding summer nights.

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.

The Final Cut

....and you're gone into the night.

Hours spent waiting,and waiting.And waiting some more,with a familiar sinking feeling.
Of loss?Or what else?
Did I already know it,and perhaps prepare myself for a rip in the mesh of my carefully constructed universe?
At first,it was a perturbed sensation.Why you didnt call.Why I feared that Id lose your presence at the worst of moments,when I most wanted you gone. Why,during a presentation on Goya's black paintings in class,that I blinked and saw myself in the artists' deafened world,engulfed with the blackness and sorrow and self-involved madness. My dreams deafened me and kept me from sleeping for many a night.
Worse yet was Bobo's funeral in May. I saw it happening.I felt a linkage,and kept my eyes and mind open for every single little thing,telling myself "you're going to be in this again sometime soon.And you know with whom."
Thats why I didn't go for the cremation today. An oven,blackened smoke,the creaking of gears,the heat and rippling terror of what is about to come. The final cut.

Waiting.

For Friday night to end and the rambling conversations,unnecessary packs of chips and cake("you must eat!")and abrupt,fearfully tight hugs to stop.
For sleep to evade me on the flight;it never did.
For the 11am call in Chennai-to resolve the confusion.My grandmother says-'say your final goodbyes.' The doctor says-'Hes gone.'
I say let it be,and sing a sad song to make it better.

Waiting.

To tell myself that that waxy yellowskinned man is not my father, that when I kissed his cheek it wasnt the stark,soiled bandages that were dead and cold to my lips.I pressed my lips to his face once again to make sure.
Those eyes didnt move under the film of tape when I spoke,clutching the now bony,fuzzy hand.
Thats not my father, he moved on a long time ago.
This is but a body,whose chest is being artificially pumped with a ventilator.
Exactly what kind of life support,I asked myself.Waiting for an answer and stiffening my features to look into my sisters eyes.

"A face to meet the faces that you meet".(TS Eliot)

I masked it well,perhaps to the point of seeming heartless.In response to the emotional irrationals of those around me,in response to that little voice that sang "no I wont break down.."

Why do we sing these ridiculous songs in our heads at times like these??

Waiting. To hear family friends say "you're too young" when someone had to sign the permit to take him off life support.

Technically holding that power in my palms,if you call it that. So i went into that blindingly white room all over again,where men strapped into faded white beds thrashed and moaned and frantically fastened their eyes onto anything around.Or simply lay still.Alive. Until I reached a corner with a lone red sign-'Handle With Care'.
I thought my first glimpse would be my last,but its inevitable that we have no choice when we want one most.
Thats not he,and so I signed.A mere formality.

Waiting till I fell asleep in a strange,impeccably cleaned apartment with neutral toned furniture. Knowing that we were all waiting for that blue zigzag to become a clean pure line,so that smoke would be all that was left.

I waited no more,and we caught the next flight at 3 the next day. Not before going to the house,and gathering some of the last remnants of a man who left no trace,wherever he went. We're alike in that way.
Numbly,eyes stretched wide open and polite nods of the head mark my departure.
Ambling in the Mysore house,crickets chirp and foods a mockery.

I dream of campus, and otherwise feel as detached as ever.

Years ago,Jazz told me-" We all face obstacles we think we cant face,at some points in our lives.Yours are just earlier."

A silent,rustling undercurrent at the belly of the sleeping monster.

The Astounded Ocean

"The days are bright and filled with pain
Enclose me in your gentle rain
The time you ran was too insane
We’ll meet again, we’ll meet again

Oh tell me where your freedom lies
The streets are fields that never die
Deliver me from reasons why
You’d rather cry, I’d rather fly"

It was like I felt nothing at first..then I saw the coffin,and I heard the cries of family and lovers who were suffering at a level I couldnt possibly fathom,and it hurt me inside like a fist knocking at battered wooden door,the sound echoeing...
I cant believe he's gone,and I had to be so strong..for a person or two who needed me,and that made me feel all the worse.
Death isnt about being poetic and morbid, about wearing skulls on ur t-shirt or contemplating the art of a glistening blade against young skin.It isnt about using dramatic words and it isnt about watching movies which sell sorrow and darkness.
Its about thinking about life itself, and how it can just.....go. disappear. vanish.
Id never seen a cremation before, Id never really felt the pang of the death of a loved one,like the merry old uncle who succumbed to cancer the year before,burying our laughter and memories with him.
I realised it affects you more when the persons someone you've lived with,laughed with or at,argued with or even eaten with. Someone who breathed the same air as you did....and you didnt see it any other way.
Why would you,really?
We're coccooned,all of us,safe and insecure in our worlds that keep colliding,always bouncing back and taking the simplest things for granted.
It makes me want to appreciate what I have more.Its rare I feel this,for I feel few things close to me. I actually wanted to return to Mysore, and Im soaking in the feeling right now.
Im speechless,and Im blank,and I dont like explaining it beyond the fact that I want,want,want to be back on campus right now...

Just to know what it feels like again.

jam jar

Im caught in the jam jar.
That would have been the title for this illustration/painting,nearly 2 years ago now.
how the years have flown!
I remember I had fallen so low,sunken into my own head,all because of a little bit of paper Id received from someone.I felt utterly rejected and everything that goes with it,you know...
then an hour past that feeling,a friend of mine,lets call her gaycat(is neither and both of the two words)took me on a walk.

Small hands firmly grasped my own,and we walked furthur off campus.Past rusty gates meant to be opened,and past groves of trees which held the wind-cackling voices of the minions of witches,to be sure,at night.We kept walking.
Then the land dipped,and dry golden grasses scratched our arms and hid us.Then the land split,and rocks emerged like beached sea creatures.We lay on our backs,and the heat seeped through cloth and skin.
We talked of cabbages(the wilted ones) and kings(the many downfalls and triumphs).What we wanted and simply how we didnt know what we wanted.We were disappointed and happy and glad to be lying on bare stone in a bare land talking to the skies.
During an exercise at the study centre,with the commerce and humanities batches mixed,we had to speak of our happiest and saddest moments.I spoke of that day.
And then,one hour late,we strolled into art class.They were there,the friends and the mixed feelings ones and the small talkers.I swallowed in my disilliusionment and spread it out onto paper with crayon and ink.

of lost strings and buttons

along the way,you stitch your bit of fabric.
it was yeats who wrote a poem(which a certain fisheelaydy introduced me to)about how dreams are like sheets of embroidered cloths,with interwoven blues and golds..you had to tread carefully upon them for they were all he had.
the strings are the connections..the links to people,the knots that sometimes happen.they can tug at the corners of your mind,sometimes with a sharp,nagging jerk and otherwise mere reminders of what your pathway in life involved.

the buttons are the ones you sew on yourself.you make relationships and sometimes stitch them on extra tightly with the strings,hoping they wont fall off.
after all,you dont always get those neat little extra buttons(identically matching) in the inside of the fabric.

so what do i see now?
i cant find some buttons.there was a neat,perfect little pearltoned one iv had for 15 years.i didnt see it for a while but found some thread holding it on,however loosely.hope.

then the stubborn,hard,wooden one which held onto my fabric itself.i cut it off with a sharp pair of scissors and it fell down with a clunk.right now,im searching for it.not quite sure it has a place yet,though.
and theres the large red one,which smells of frenchfries,liquerchocolate,coconuts,the new year,cocoa,warmth,and something familiar which i havent found elsewhere.

it rolled off by itself into a dark little corner.there are times i see it glinting-but thats just to show its there.theres nothing connecting it to my fabric...except one worn,knotty little string.

the needles pricking my fingers and i cant be bothered to search for the other buttons...theyre drifting away into smoke,in and out,like mooring ships.