Uncalled For

The romance
Of the romance
Of a lunch box relationship
Is enough to evoke
A mid life crisis,
A middle aged yearning,
A sunset ache
In a twenty-something heart.

The Middle

Everyday is like
walking in the middle of the road,
in the middle of the night,
in the middle of the best days
of the greatest romance.

Paan, Placebos and Puraane Janam: Djinns and Jalebis I

A pageant of jalebis, with dahi and otherwise,

A clutch of eager paans,

A garrison of rasmalai and gulab jamun,

A party of mangoes,

Kulfi on a mission,

Armed, intense kebabs,

Mughlai parathas beset with madness,

Ghar ke khane ke vividh swaad, all aromatic with kindness.

In the city where faith is immovable (literally) and djinns roam in the night time (literally?) I found myself unwinding to the belief that there may be things beyond science. Well, that belief certainly makes life more interesting. Barely recovering from the wide-eyed-ness of meeting the rain of the plains, I soared into the city on the wings of fantasy.

Sleeping cycle riskshaws wait in glittering lines outside a cemetery. People have passed by it for at least a century now and to them there is really no restless lure of romance to draw their eyes to scan for a story or a djinn in repose against a headstone. But in the quiet rings of trees and in the sleepy aisles between the rows of inhabitants, they are there.  The djinns have written the fortunes of this city in magic.

(I left this post halfway and still have a lot to say. It's the only reason why I sinned and fudged the date and time. What was written then needed to be put up. What is to come will take a different, more reflective tone.) 

Paan, Placebos and Puraane Janam: Just Setting the Tone

The evening is heavy with the promise of rain. As the most melodious azaan of my stay here intermingles with the dhinchakness of nineties' Bollywood, I take a pause to allow Allahabad to seep into me. The city welcomed me with torrents of the most sincere rain I have ever witnessed. Here rain is really and truly consequential. My little city talks big about two little capillaries of 'rivers' that give us an east and a west side story. True, they are the only ones we have but my perspective has been adjusted. And it is very gladly that I say this.

The sky had turned to a strange rusty purple: ferruginated by the glow of the very yellow lights of civilisation. The rain was coming down in torrents. It splashed against the unrelenting window panes of the gravely air conditioned coach but made much more of a fuss when it hissed through the open doors of the train. The rain on the metal roof, the hurried rhythm of the train in the dead of the night and the ghostly streaks of lightning that was cleaving the sky open complemented the force of nature that was surging away far beneath my feet.

The Yamuna. This was my first encounter and I was left speechless.
This was the river that competed in span and depth with the Ganga at Prayag and the river that emerged from the meeting should have been called 'Jamna' but instead was known to the world by a more iconic name, mythologically speaking of course.

Over the next few days, in rain and shine, I met and marvelled at the sinuous river. With a muddy surge, she stretched across the state. This was truly the season to see her. On one rainy day, I even imagined that I could see the distinction between the sleepy blue of the Ganaga of the plains and the rugged brown of the Yamuna. In retrospect, I think it was my irrational need to be able to see it.

It has been an experience to be in a place where the river is sincerely a part of shaping the everyday.

Once the sky cleared (and it did with quite a vengeance) it occurred to me how much the hills around Poona affected my perception of the sky. Never before has the dome of the sky been a as much of a dome as it is now, here. It's impossible to miss the gradient of the blue: shyly yellow at the horizon until it arches into the most forget-me-not-est (yes, double superlative) of blues right overhead. There's not a hill in sight. The horizon is the horizon; the edge is the very edge. There are no two ways about that.
The city has added to that sensation. Here, in Allahabad, the skyline is really a line defined by the sky. The tall, really tall buildings are the church spires in most places. There are the conspicuous malls and residential blocks but they are really and truly conspicuous. The Victorian bungalow is, to me, the symbol of the suburbs. I still have to make my way into the heart of the city but even there, I am told, that there is nothing higher than the two-storied house (on an average).

On my first evening out, I (almost) met the most incredible looking mango trees I have ever laid eyes on and certainly the oldest ones I have seen (and been so starkly aware of their age). What was most interesting was how they stood in solemn huddles. They had been in conference for generations now and were nowhere closer to reaching a conclusion than when they began as wee seedlings.

(I have come to believe that a tree is never truly young. Right from the instant that the first shoot that shoots forth, they are wise and learned and almost ancient)

The expanse of the plains is shocking to me.
The trees take over the landscape and there is endless space behind them that lends them a certain control over their surroundings. On the outskirts of Allahabad, red brick begins to show itself and against a rain-washed sky and surrounded by a million greens, it is more than just pleasing. Signboards start appearing that coax goose flesh from deep within my history loving heart: Varanasi, that way; Ayodhya, that way; Jhansi, that way.
Thrills, such thrills.
Everything reeks of idyll (from within the cool comforts of a car) and the people seem familiar-- of course, Bollywood did that.

There is much to say: this is but the beginning.

Mazze karo!

-graph

It does not take two

To dance it through;

To write in dance 

I have a chance.

To see it through

I don't need a 'you'.

{Choreograph}

To make the light

Do not as it might

But as I bid it 'do'

It need not bend around you. 

{Photograph}

The subject is 'I'

And I've begun to try

To make me complete,

With meaning, replete.

{Monograph}

Colour Coded Comfort

My Trouble is a polyglot in the tongues of intolerance.

First I need to unlearn the word 'hate'. I say I hate far too many things during the course of any normal day.
Following as neatly as a corollary to a theorem, I need to stop reiterating how much I cannot tolerate myself. My self deprecating tendencies have found enough fuel over the years.

Oh so what if they have met any rebuttal from outside elements. It is still the opinion of an outsider that I'd have to consider if I wanted to feel like I'm worth something. It's the reason why no amount of telling me will be able to convince me that I am anything other than what I believe I am. Time to make something out of my tendency to only take myself seriously.

My happiness need not be justified to anyone. If I spend the time I want to spend...as much as I want to...doing what makes me happy then that happiness need not be disguised under as any nervous peace offering as I walk through the doors of my home.

I need to remember that a mistake is not hurled against my self but it is simply an admission of being human.

It is time to rework the idea that people would feel more comfortable around me if I showed them that I liked the same things that they like; it is not for me to make anyone else comfortable by making my self scarce.

The best thing is that I feel it coming. In gentle waves, yes. Waves that come and go? Yes. But the fact that I find so much comfort in this state gives me hope for the future. I will love myself and that is the best thing I could ever offer myself.

Phosphorescent Feelings

It was my skin understanding colour.

In the purple black-light everything was luminous: the things that would be and all the things that should. Minds were luminous. In the dark fantasy of colours to light up the night, we were all unleashing meaningless doodles on each other.
Methinks the majority hadn't a thought about intensity. Oh no.
But then there were those for whom it mattered not what graffiti was poured forth as much as how the urge to use the paint took over.

The trickles of phosphorescence were everywhere. Everyone was a little less mortal and a little more celestial; like some strange deity of a frigid land of night.

I had wings too.
Glowing wings.

And with each smudge of paint that I smeared on myself my eager skin was trying to learn the lure of feeling sights. 

Shiver

A lot of times, I'm not concerned with what a place looks like.

What does the air feel like? Does the chill hit your sense of smell with a crisp fragrance of fresh grass and a distant scent of the sea? Does it smell of the mossy woods?

What would my skin have to remember of the first sensation of a place?

It thrills me to think that the air could rush at me like sheets of paper. The idea that the warmth of the sun might feel different in a different hemisphere, in a different time zone. The shabby notion that all the world is the same-- places are just places-- is beyond me.

The road has become a habit.
Sense, a novelty. 

Let a New Breeze Blow

It sends a shudder through me to think that I am becoming steeped in the cynicism of the world. Time to open my eyes again.

They started to develop cataracts of monotony at around the same time that I thought I was getting to being mature. Where's my sense of wonderment?

I'm now glad of my work with children in the sphere that allowed them to spin free of an orbit and dance around the universe of possibility and pleasure.  I need to remember the look in their eyes when they learned something new. And most things were new. Where's the novelty in my life? When I can 'figure' and 'guess' every word that everyone's going to speak, when nothing surprises me, I become bland.

An oracle must have had an incredibly jaded point of view.

A Crane to Remember Levity By

Everything's so sticky. The inside of my mind is sludged all over with leaden toffee. Nauseating in its drab and monochromatic undulations. And it's not the sensuous call of a Doors song in the summer. It's not the crush and smother and smoulder of Gloria in the incandescent noonday sun. Its more like what I would imagine it to be if I were thrown in a pool of mozzarella and asked to swim. 

But then the sludge of this redundant tune-- slowed down to a thickly oozing tempo-- was suddenly illuminated, splashed into movement and coloured with the gold and pink.

Bizarre Lights and Cello Tones

...like the ribs of light that escape from the smoke that hangs around a flyover.

The notes had a will of their own. They took off from the length of the cello. They hung in the air, arched and taut. They were the epiphany that draws itself out from between the breaths in a perfect first kiss. Each note was the pause in breath and the quiver of nerves before a race, just under the skin of a performance.

Untitled #2

I make it sound like it has only happened a couple of times. Once or twice, really. But that is not the truth.

I have out of body experiences all the time! Haha! You caught me there. Alright, not all the time. Just sometimes.

My being and my body ride separately to work. Well, ride separately almost everywhere we go.
One is riding and singing.
                           Singing all sorts of songs.
                                       All sorts of hideous songs. (Sometimes) 
And talking loudly to self.
        Talking loudly to self in hideously accented French.
        Talking loudly to self in any combination of too-thick-to-be-true accents and applauding myself generously for my linguistic versatility.

And cussing at the receding backs of the bad motorists.

It is at times like this that I feel like someone lifts me out of my skin and leaves me to contemplate the rider from within the stuffy confines of the helmet. With the visor down, there's very little scope for the two of us to breathe together and usually, the prissy observer wins and the loudmouth is silenced.

Alors, the need for coffee and introduction of Self to Self is getting very dire.

Untitled

It hasn't even been a few minutes since I looked into the mirror and didn't recognise myself.

I haven't cut my hair in months. I haven't got a tattoo on my face. I haven't picked out a nose from a catalogue nor have I been picking out allergens of choice to make my lips puffy.

I haven't changed my vital statistics. I have not been binging nor have I been dieting myself into a mould.

I just didn't recognise myself.

The mirror is still staring at me. With each contemplation of the strands of my hair and the conglomeration of features that make up my face, I could not find the thread of connection that made the image in the mirror (I need not say 'reflection' for obvious reasons) me.

I realised there was no reason for Me to belong to this body.

The eyes could have been any other colour and I would still be looking out of them.
So why is it that Me has dispossessed this body that seems to be carrying it around? The only reason I surmise that Me is still seated within the tall, loosely attired body is that there is no one looking over my shoulder and I still find the questions coming.
The image in the mirror and the poser of the questions have to be linked somehow.

I need to take them out to coffee and introduce them.

Fingerlengths of Love

A moment arrived after all that furious note taking where I looked at the lengths of my fingers and found love. 

Summer's been around long enough to leave its tanned message on their slender lengths. 

The smudges of ink that led my eyes to the tips of each digit made me want to write some thrilling magnum opus that would take a small, exclusive literary world by storm. I wanted them to make a masterpiece of worded chiarosucro that would twist thinking men and women into tangles of smouldering feeling that smelts emotion and light into an impossible skyrocket.

I wanted to have them dressed in rags of paint. I wanted to peel off the remnants of oil paint and have my long, lithe fingers leave a smudge on my forehead. 

It seemed only apt that they be stained with the ink from feverishly composing a tempestuous concerto; flying between the ebony and ivory and soon to be priceless sheaves of paper in the passion of creating a masterpiece. I wanted them twisting in the impertinence of creating something rebellious, a renegade in the midst of mediocre chaos. 

I felt a needle and thread would give form to a sublime tapestry, a camera would yield movement caught as it is exorcised from a body in the throes of motion. 

My fingers were asking to be loved. 

Waiting like coy temptresses for me to toy with a lock of my hair on stage or to still an arm of someone caught up in the fire of playing a part. 

They stretched waiting for me to call on them. 

They examined each others' lengths and confirmed that I loved them.

In french fried fingerlengths I found love.  

Beginning to get Acquainted

I think I might need whole new blog to accommodate this sort of a mixed-breed post.

People spent hours in school moaning on about the wretchedness of the Wren and Martin. I think that the age of the concept had seeped through the pages and was oozing out at 21st century students because it had no more place within the omniscient tome. So we rubbished it for three years straight.
And then some more in venomous retrospect for another five years.

For some, it was a toxin.
Fetid, rotting English was releasing lethal amounts of Grammar into their regulation diet of academic reading. And it was only because it was demanded that the academic reading happened at all.

For some, it was poison.
Crafted out of malicious intent to harm, Grammar was like mercury on a mirror. All they wanted to do was know what other world there was through the looking glass (of English) and they wound up ensnared in a reverse world of rules and conformity (assuming that they were free spirits, wont to incidental anarchy by just being).

For (so)me, it was a venom.
And I'm ever so prone to acidity too... It all makes sense now.
Like a necromancer who hasn't quite learned how the spirits want to be treated, I would go around blithely affronting English with my naïvete about voices and predicates.

And then I figured it all out.

My life had to be transformed before I could truly fathom the many leagues of wisdom contained in the beaten, weary text. Like some 20th century Cassandra, the Wren and Martin shone with a different splendour after just two days of being bathed in etymology.

Mr. P.C Wren and Mr. H. Martin must surely be chuckling, the plumes of smoke of their celebratory cigars swirling into grand marquees of 'I told you so's.

Mr. Wren and Mr. Martin, I take my hat off to you (though I think I would need to reach over and borrow yours for a spell) for putting in those thoroughly ignored pages of Greek and Latin roots right beside the verily over-analysed lists of Figures of Speech. And it is true: we all think that the wisdom of the past finds form in the shape of pearly spectres that we must shut our eyes, clecnch our fists and wish away with great moxie.

But we always return to the vision and find it has changed from the ghoulish to something rather more familiar: an acquaintance whom we must choose to make a friend. 

Mind Crane, Mine Crane.

Every time I believe I've found my spot

Every time happiness feels like home

Some pretty feelings begin to rot

And I feel so lost and so alone.

I find someone you belong to

So much more than you ever will to me

For realms of my mind you can never come home to

And parts of me you never want to see.

And let not this blue despondency

Be taken as a sign

That I will doubt your honesty

Or feel that you're not mine.

No, I just feel I'm not good enough,

In your home, I don't belong.

And while I look like I'm made of some real mean stuff

I really don't mean to be mad too long.

But all at once it crashes down 

And I feel haunted by the sign

That while I can be quite a clown

For my mind, you're never mine.