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.

Pre Quarter Century Prose

Theres a ticking bomb before turning 25
It's not the fear of growing older less marriageable more cynical less understanding more closeminded less fresh more jaded 

Its more about the less is more worry

that i wont know enough

that i have to know everything

that there is a growing gnawing craving animal within me

with sharp teeth and furtive, restless claws

tucked inside a warm snug cavity with rock

and dirt and mud and gravelly gravel all around

dying to get out,

to escape,

to jump around and split some skin and taste something new

to absorb it all through newly pinked raw skin and breathe through enlarged pores

alive and fully aware that there this isn't enough,

no its not,

theres a whole world out there that i have to devour whole

but actually swallow in parts

chewing up the nubbly bits

i don't know enough and i need to know everything and 

keep feeling like everyone i meet knows something

knows nothing

that i already know feel think and need to share question and understand faster better clearer.

(Please don't squirrel at me for the dotted 'i'. I know my grammar. I also know Emily Dickinson.)

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.

Home Truths

Apparently,

I write better than I draw.

Thats the ultimate compliment,

 the overpoweringly orangely garishly pungent marigold garland of policitian fame,

for a writer.

No problem.

Very flattered, thenks.

Except that I'm supposed to well

be a designer

an artist

sometimes a lost cause

other times just a visual person.

Apparently,

I can draw better pictures with words.

Once

There was a time when I thought it was a really good idea to

Express myself without restraint through my art, because the feeling was new and fresh and exhilarating and hey, judgement was for losers.

Talk about what was 'real ' and dismiss anything that seemed layered with artificiality, little knowing that I would become layered myself, what with college and life and electricity bills and movingtimespaces, and it would be less like an iced tower cake and more like protection from the wind and rainfall.

Read depressing poetry about death and longing and loss and write a lot of it myself in dog-eared books and this very public journal. It was insanely intense, and now intense is just a funny word.

Believe in love akin to instantaneous  rasna powder drinks, which would make themselves without any effort on my part. A list  or recipe was key to such a belief, and   any deviation from the list meant that it was not.meant.to.be.
The phrase 'not meant to be' was what we call the universe today,when we express thanks.

Dislike a god, or denote a capital G. Hate crimes, moral police and fattening temple coffers are still my reasons, but Ive discovered Neil Gaiman years ago and once you fall in love with his gods, well, here's a speech to start YOU off.

Listen when someone called me fat,

Chat with strangers online,

Never change myself,
Classify myself according to my 12th standard abnormal psychology book,

Study my family's genetic history,
Relive the past like a stuck tape,

Call sappy moments and cliches uncool,
Judge someone based on their city,

Pretend I wasn't from my own city,

Play blame games like some people play SIMS,

Think cats  are the bestest animals in the world (They are, but dogs have crept their way in somehow),
and thereby
Define the very existence of emo-ness.

Instead I'm  happy and searching for more happiness and can cook for myself and buy overpriced things if I fall in love with them hard enough,
and  use the colour yellow with aplomb,

and have embraced my love for clothing without worrying about my image,
and  can laugh at myself loudly and  appreciate design and know even LESS about the future than I did 8 years ago, 

which feels great. Though I have already planned my dream home right down its wooden bookcases and flooring samples and wide, wide windows.

Actually I think I'm pretty damned cool. Not compared to you, of course. Just my old idealistic and introverted self, the one I don't miss anymore than week-old laundry.

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.

Basic.Space

So Ive been listening to a whole lotta The Xx lately, 

and they've been filling up a lot of

 the empty space around me.

Navrathri has swung it's way around Ahmedabad.
The season of sparkle dust high in the air, mirrorwork evenings are hot under yellow light and burning feet, people moving like cars on the highway.
I don't love this time of the year too much. The beat of the drums sounds funereal and disturbing in it's increasing feverishness, and reminds me of the same. You know, yellow fevers and 'passing-ons' (such a silly word, Whately, I know.) and bad news lapping over the mood. My asthma acts up and inhalerblue mornings last till the drugged hour post-noon. 


Most of all, my home is empty. Flatmates are off dancing in a blur of orangewhirl merry-go-round, and the night does that funny thing where it goes all cheap drugstore rubber-bandy on me. You know those yellowgreenred elastic pieces in packets for 5 rupees no? They stretch and stick to one another,mewling in horrid tones, and suddenly split down the middle in when you least expect it.


Last night felt particularly empty. The room was bereft of it's usual pleasant company and my laptop charging itself to glory, as shots from my film rendered away. My orange lampshade gave me filthy looks, as if to nullify it's function as a potentially warm friend. I could feel the hard, cold fingers of an off-mood reaching out to me.

 So I had to get a fix, yeah, I hadta getta fix.

Hot buttered toast, burnt on the edges and sprinkled liberally with cinnamon-sugar (My newest FabIndia love: loose ground cinnamon with brown sugar and nutmeg. Divine.) was followed by a mini canister of tea and might I confess, that I nearly forgot what coffee was for a second? Shame on me. So fickle in matters of the culinary heart and simple pleasures. 
I didnt even need a playlist to colour up the scene, and peaced out in a blur until company came around 2am.

Oh, the glorious phoenix arising from a simple gas-stove!

Basic space is all you need, apart from love and chai.

Ode to yesterday

That was a dream in the still of the day
that kept talking in a very soft
low-pitched, silvery voice
until I stopped listening 
at that very second when the fan switched on and the
little voice in my head pressed
rewind
and replay 
at a greater faster quicker volume
that beat too fast.

Today is-

“If suddenly you do not exist, 

                                                                                                                                     If suddenly you are not living, 

I shall go on living. 

I do not dare,

 I do not dare to write it,

 if you die.

 I shall go on living.” ― Pablo Neruda

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.