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.

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.

  
  

It's on Loop.

I'm so lost that it's wonderful and not asking to be found.

Lost like

Songs on loop about the sea and and finding the stairway to higher hopes.
Finding a way to the ocean after wanting it for a year.
Air travelling into one ear and out another one.
Burrowing into comfort.
A lot of chai all at once.
A really long movie that felt less like a speech and more like a lyric.
People appearing like a cloud of smoke and dis-apparating right before brain freeze.
A line of books ready to be drank into skin,lined up on a clean shelf.
Consumerism over comedy.
Foolish frivolous talk without the alcohol kick.
Headphones is ignorance is bliss.
Treetops over very deep blue brightening skies.
Eyeball seeking dark room in bright house windows closed.
Writing today because inkpot is brimming.

So lost that I dont ask you to find me with a blissful smile.

My Sister and me

We're so very different,
can't you see?

Mixed blood and shifting last names,
Stronger and milder bones in between each other,
Running colours in different lights
at different times

We're so very alike.

The Lady of Shallot

Sideswept
windswept
The words pass me by
Hair covers my eyes and
falls into my mouth.

Speeding cars
Tails of light and blur
red and bright
clashing
clanging
A sound that's too far away
and too close for comfort.

My elbows rest on the rubber edge
crossing
bending
as I peer
Searching past the motors and mouths( which in all probabilty,are the same.)
The rear view mirror catches everything and
nothing
A nothingness that falls like glass and feels like falling.

A strange sense of being the Lady of Shallot,cast upon the river of traffic.

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.

Oinkey's Eyes

Oinkey's eyes
they spell of surprise
of nights in canteens and everlasting sighs

They split their lids and
widen
with fang-toothed cries
of enthusiasm and
terribly excitingly methodically designed despise

They spell of shadows beneath lashes
that hide beneath whipped-up tinsel-town porches
and flickering light bulbs
that cast outlines
around figures
in the
dark.

I could long to see them intoxicated
feverish with hot evenings and cold coffees
dinner across the table
the orbs blinking
snapping wide open
enraptured,even

exactly the way they
intoxicate
me.


A love poem to Ankita Mukherjee,who owes me a dinner date.
And yet we sit here, at 2 AM, with cold sweetened chai and our lives ahead of us and beckoning,behind.

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.

My ceiling is the sky tonight.

Wait,
was that you calling out to me?

Yes,you.
The one with the lost eyes, the one who's staring
Staring right up at the sky
Almost as if he's expecting it to hurl a thunderbolt right at him
and burn him to the ground.

It's me.
The one you woke up last night,
with firecrackers of memories
and a torrent of luckless afternoons to boot.

I thought I heard you calling me
and so I awoke.
Heart iced frozen solid
lips cracked and forming
slightly forgotten(now) and fragile words of hope.

Who wouldn't?

Wait,it was a false alarm.
It must have been the wind breathing through the curtains.
The switchboard that bent its spine and brushed against my foot.
Unloved dogs seeking solace under my bed
and instead murmuring funny familiar fanciful and forgotten words
that crept their way into my pillow-case.

I stayed awake for a long time,
perhaps hoping to be on a beach.
The floor looked so smooth,speckled and polished,
stretching like the Chennai bay beneath a landing plane.

Moonlight played sail boat with my slippers
and the ceiling dissolved into a sky
of glue-on florescent stars.

I breathed deeply,until I could smell the salt and the warm dust.

It's funny how you were still standing there,
pale fingered.
With your toes slipping
slipping into the sea
and away from the shores that suddenly clung
clung to my feet with an urgency

"caressing and possessing me.."

A 4 letter word.

http://what-kaveri-seas.blogspot.com.
Thats my new,renamed domain.
For the art that I do,the scribbles I scan,explorations Im lucky to get myself into.
Its still called Sea of Inky toes,but the earlier http://moonskulled-sea.blogspot.com has died a premature death. I let out a silent sigh of relief.

Why the sudden change? No,its not the jibes at my poetical nonsense.(Ok I just added the poetical bit,certain fellow illustrators/batchmates giggle at the randomness!)
I appreciate poetical nonsense,why,Ogden Nash thrived on it like a glorious,absurd little hog-rose.
See,hog-roses dont even exist and yet a Nash fan could agree with me.

Ive been doing some thinking lately,as a student of design(yes,im embracing it) and loyal practitioner of the intangible nuances of WhatTheyCallArt. Conversations with Prof Ranjan (http://design-for-india.blogspot.com) have also lent me a certain amount of understanding regarding the clash of great minds between aesthetics and functionality, in the process of creating something.
Im all for 'art for arts sake',hell,Im a good example of someone who toes the line by doing a lot of work 'because I feel like it/it looks pleasing/I love blue',etc etc.And Im definitly not product inclined,viewing the act of creating as fulfilling the needs of the masses or redesigning for better functionality.

However,when does your work become faff?
Its four letters,and can be as dirty as you want to be.

Im coming across a lot of similes in my contemporaries' work these days. The overuseage of death,of so-called morbidity which means repeated usage of the words 'alone', 'depression', 'pain', 'black+(add another word)', all disastrously in the same context.
Paisleys.God save me.Please look up the usage of the symbol in fashion today.
Hindu Gods.I find this extraordinary. If one does not follow/believe in a part of what they are promoting in their work, then how is it personal?How can you call upon the bad girl sex appeal of Kali or the boy-next-door charm of Krishna to sell yourself?

For it IS selling yourself.
Indian street graphics. Its a category of its own, I love the way people celebrate it in posters and coasters and ove toasters.But there's Autooverload. Bad imitatons of Sabyasachi's bindified and goggle-eyed ramp models. Truck art to shame all trucks.Gods with blue eyes.Blinded by this blasphemy of 'culture'.
And then theres the genre of individuals who freely place copyrights on the lyrics of The Beatles ,Floyd,The Doors,I dont know,choose your poison.
The Blogsphere is scarily full of it.

For it IS selling yourself.
Faff.
In this whole struggle to be noticed, no one seems to notice that the limelight's turned a rather unpleasant shade of red. A virtual bloodbath, with schools of fish trying to be individuals.
Its a troubling question,for who wants to be caught in the trap?
I find myself hesitating to illustrate songs I like,for fear of pretentious dragonflies omshantioms and washes of colour that will drown whatever Im trying to say.
Do I dare?
Do I dare disturb the universe,after all?
The sacred order of things that makes cash flow and the world grind to a screeching halt every once in a while?
Faff.
Precisely why I am no more http://moonskulled-sea.blogspot.com,
I'm joining the squad of sheep grazing on yonder side of the hedge.
Wish me luck.

Dear Reader,your comments and criticism will be appreciated greatly.I place my words on the table and invite you to a pleasant debate, over one of my more opinionated posts.

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.

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.

Jamaican jerck chicken-Eliots beach-GuindiSTOP.

Before you
step
into
unconsciousness..

Where in the world is Guindi?
I staggered,rather than hopped,off a crowded Madras local train at that very station into blinding sunlight.Looks like the world still does manage to go on after 12 years living away from it.
Mum thai's musty,dusty and eternally dim-lit cluster of rooms inside corners.Cold maroon tiles,cold creaky door,and endless glasses of cold milky throat-ravaging liquid that I was gratified to refer to as 'moere'and not chaas.
What are inheritances.
And how ethical is it-in whatever context you may place it-to help tabulate your own?Lets eradicate,for a moment,the rare-case scenarios. I find that classifying every other scenario ends up in insulting the idea of 'once in a blue moon'. The question still buzzes.
Sorry reminders,overexposed photographs.
'Oops,I spilt rum on your mattress.'
Burden me,burden yourself. Burden the whole world by unburdening yourself upon an ungrateful multitude. Even better,stop thinking and start living a well-baked life.
Quite like the Jamaican jerk chicken I ate at something called an 'American Diner'.The sauce tasted like lemoney rasam,and the rice like puliogarre.It was divinely exotic,I might add.
Tamilian waiters can sound like Americans(Oh my GAAD!),and Malayalees like the English.(Oh my GOAWD!)That was the most edibly enlightening bit of conversation Ive had in quite a few months. Sorry National Institute of Dejine. My heart lies in south after all.

Paperback writer,write me a song and I'll sing along.
I go,I go,in search of peace and a happy means to an unpredictable and inconsequential end.
And I end my 2-week sabbatical with inky eyes,eyes ready to spill out your story and mine.

Coastward bound.

Im coastward-bound again,next wednesday.
I'll smell the peculiar saltiness of Eliot's Beach again,which reminded me of sweet corn chicken soup when I was a 5 year old on the seaside roller skating rink.
I'll go to Kilpauk and reside there,my first time in twenty years.
I'll gasp and make fisheyes at myself in the auto rear view mirror as usual,because Im two decades old and still consider it twenty years born in that not-so-little burning sandy signboard-cloistered city of Madras.

"I grow old,I grow old ,
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."

In between,I'll continue to develop on this wanderlust that seeks respite in the passages of my bloodstream and dream of the Orient,cherry cheesecake,blue bath tubs, tirupathi laddoos that I can never have,and that cold crimson-tiled house with one markedly empty,suddenly devoid little upstairs room.

I'll also say to myself:"Sing a song of happiness"

Of loss and love and learning to fly,of writing words that have a life of their own and spring across the page like jackrabbits.

a rainy afterthought.

heat rising like clouds,
from the heavy trampling on black tar of baked,lethargic bodies.
eyes blinded,traffic lights a blasphemy.
throats parched and seeking respite.

.........and then it rained.

grey skies blew torrents at muncipal market square.
heart felt light and sang softly slowly skipping a beat every once in a while.

mellow,mellow memoirs of a foggy window.of a lily pond with darting nibblers,of her tinkling laughter across the other bed,while she spun stories and kept me feeling alive and oh-sp-happy to be myself.

that unforgettable feeling,that the whole world could be yours if you just painted it yourself.
that happiness could lie in two burnt cookies with milk,and imagining everyone 'ten years from now..'rich and struggling, page three four or five.climbing the golden ladder or still lost somewhere down below at 25.

when it didnt matter,or mattered too too much.

when we'd leave after school and grow old together or maybe-
cynically,casually,caustically-
lose touch as most people do when they begin new lives in new worlds.

a happy beginning to that ending.


to you,achala,and rainy confessional auto rides,and green goop corner house sundaes.

Speedy Gonzalez and I

I am the cat on the moon.
I am the sea that bordered my neighbourhood when I was young,that clamoured with ship-lights and spilt harsh grey into the blue horizon.
I am a hundred years and a thousand unspoken words all into one.
I am the deepest trenches of a split,quartered and seamed heart,rustling with dry leaves and strumming the wind.
I am a small,inobtrusive bundle of letters in a rain-chewed notebook with a picture of a cat in a fishbowl on it.
I am an armful of glass,bone,silver and plastic bangles that spell a lullaby for every godforsaken morning I wake up to.
I am a believer in the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.The ideology of a million spot reduced to nothingness.
I am the song that flew into my window this morning,and settled in a cloud of dust.
I am that layer of brown which paints the inside of a bone-white china tea-cup.
I am the Mean Green Amrikan Switt Corn eating machine.
I am constantly put off by battalions of che gueveras asking me "Why so serious?" when the Dark Knight released a few meaningless centuries ago.

I am here and you are there,and my words go into nowhere with the rush of Speedy Gonzalez....

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.

returns,reminsces.

This is it.
I return tomorrow,
to the city of walls.
many threads left knotted and
still others wrapped up.
I cried my heart out and
slowly pulled it back together.
found some stones amidst the shards of glass.
Theyd reflected off the newfound-sungod which was left in.
laughed,accidently.
then god said it was good,so I laughed some more.

its still happening.

a long way to go,
and Im leaving on a jet plane!

dust smoke blurry eyes dark ledges off which you stare into the lawns
and attain enlightenment.

at 5am,in september.
wake me up when it ends,
for Im happy and Im alive and Im leaving tomorrow to NevereverherenowLand
and relief trepidition excitement familiarity is crowding my senses.