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.

  
  

She

Lashed shadows slept warm She smiled.

Sailboat

Kittens bones sink in and
out of
flesh like funny little masts
billowing out vast, white
sails of health and promise.

They curl within themselves in sleep
yawning in mid-unfurl
sleekly rowing against a larger version of
themselves
that purrs, exhausted
encompassing them in all that's good and safe about this world.

Happy Diwali.

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.

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!

Staple pins

I was lying in bed right up until a moment ago,going across the events of the past few days.
Feelings were swirling around inside me,much like stripes of airy, translucent strips of coloured paper in a windy void.

It had been two days of standing on the razors edge.

“I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That’s my dream. That’s my nightmare. Crawling, swiftly, along the edge of a straight…razor…and surviving.”
( Colobel Kurtz, from Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'-a book that has lived in me since the day I read it.)

Indecisiveness, and not knowing where I stand. Wanting to be this and that, and stamping my feet in the clouds of dust under the signs at the crossroads.

I wanted to sum it up. I took a few long walks at night, and played electronic music at low volumes, and thought about love and loss and love again, and the inbetweens which we all have to make work out, for our own sakes.

And then I was taking one such walk, with a chance friend, and we came across a puppet show, put on-campus as part of a workshop.
The loud chuckles and merriment caught my attention, as did the crowd being drawn to the display of brightly coloured, tightly wound-up folk toys.
I drew closer, still lost in my own world, and the crowd around me grew thicker as the puppet-play rose to a climax.

A young boy caught my attention;gawky and hunched. He seemed not to know what to do with his limbs, and swung around restlessly behind his mother, a local. Covering her head with her pallu, she was caught up in the excitement of the play and must have presumed that her son was doing the same.

He ran his fingers along the noticeboards propped up around the play.They served as boundary walls, and had battered looking board pins and staples stuck at odd angles, stuck in the rough cloth. I was curious. His eyes were unfocused, and his mouth half open. People pushed behind me, and I craned my neck to watch him, wondering if he had a sight problem.

And then his palm flattened out,up and against the board. A square sheet of paper was moved carefully upward, while small fingers poked a bent staple pin into the top of the sheet.
His drawing was red and yellow and criss crossed into triangles.
He smiled, seeing it placed just where he wanted, pinned up on the board.

The play ended,
and I clapped
absently,
suddenly blinking
furiously,
and feeling like the luckiest, and most privileged person around me for miles.

I walked away at a snails pace,
dreaming of staple pins and paper.
and feeling secure.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Last night it was Oct 16th and Aug 1st

Can you
can you
Can you
Can you see the burning light?

Did they
Did they
Did they snatch your dreamless hours
and turn them into wakeless nights?

Have I

fallen

in
to
the
spiraling
twisting
strangling

voiceless empty void of the voyeaur

Did not wake up to nothing last night
Did not snap my knuckles
Did not cry for you, or you, or those two
Did not see darkness no light only white
white
white
the sun rose

and I hated he who stole my nightmares and gave me this
this
this dreamless sleep
this engulfing,stabbing
whitehotblade
that went through one shoulder
and swallowed the rest.

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.

bing bong and coconut oyl

calcutta was the city for bonefisheii and me.weeks of planning(not the organised sort,darlings,castles in the air hold up the best) and more importantly a hell of a lot of cajoling(please?PLEASE?@*$@%`# then..) and we were off.
clambered into that dutty,dutty little carriage and tried not to make friends with the lovely,earnest strangers on the upper berths.ate squashed mangoes and said "we'll never forget this".
typing this more than two weeks later i agree.so did the roaches and that little ant which crawled into my pants and nibbled on some skin.not quite the closure i wanted.fishielady takes lots of photos and we swing our feet out of the train,talkin about life and those many gossippy thingies and those even more pressing issues such as when the hell we were going to get there.karnataka,andhra(boy that was huge) orissa(the script i deem as rawther cool) and lets not forget,drenched in layers of sweat.for gods sake the water bottles were melting!not really,but the water seemed pretty steamy anyways.
calcutta!across the howrah on the ferry.out again by taxi.then the metro.tram.oldfashioned matchbox buses.auto once(yaaaah bengaluru beat that)
bignosedboy hosted us through all the modes of transport,including our feet.aaaach.acres across the freaking maidan.101 temperature.sunstroke?ill never know.it made for a highly dramatic night though.we shall not get into the ways,one must have a privacy policy you know.*sly smile*.
oh and guess how our fishy friend was dropped off?in style no less.bong-land has never seen(undue credit,here)the sight of three scruffy youths squashed into a cycle rickshaw.the things people will do for a buck....and the things one will endure for a ride in the heat.needless to say,i sacrificed a little more than my dignity that day.
revisiting ones childhood-water park??oh well,it made bignose happy.polkameow tries not to drown in wavepool.theres a LIMIT to standing on your toes,after a while god stands back to laugh at the 5 foot something struggling to beat the odds.
and froots!galore!!talsa?say what?these things taste like coconut but look like flat lichis.then furry purple seeds which taste like velcro,deemed 'dilchious'.slurp.then gooseberry flesh-like,capsicum-shaped ones which remind one of....nothing.
if i was mrs moore(old lady,deluded,nice philosophizing though despite being trapped in a cave and hearing echos..)id say:
"from everything comes nothing,and nothing everything."
love and peace.