it feels like that unexpected hint of perfume that has lingered for too long. your breath catches, you feel it. underlying all those other things - the smell of warm bodies and cooled off coffee, fresh ink in the printer and a glue stick, leather and new book, sweaty smells of the day drawing to an end - and you smell that perfume you put on so long ago. then that is all you can smell.
the blues feel like that. all pervading, unyielding, unwilling to let go.

got even more birthday prezzies - tshirt, votive and the book thief.

it looks like my birthday celebrations are going to be a two-week long thing. i had the fourth birthday cake today. life rocks.
except for one thing.
shutting out. this time i was on the other side of the door and didn't know what to do. i decided not to knock. i can't remember a single time when there hasn't been anybody knocking on mine, when i try to go away. i don't know if i did the right thing. probably not.
did i ever thank you for being there? probably not.
i am sorry.

i got even more presents today. wrapped in orange paper with bright fuchsia ribbons.
popeye mailed us some very silly pictures. we WILL grow up some day. it is simply not possible to grow old without growing up and that is our only hope.
i read through some old blogs that R had posted.
i suddenly want an evening with my best friend(s). just one would do. for the time being.

yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. not even the old bible vindictive jehovah could rain on my parade today.

i or rather we are looking at being financially viable after these many months. well not in the strictest sense, but this time, we are getting back more money than losing it.
for the first time in my life, i haven't given up. it never occurred to me to give up, unlike all those other things, places, people that i gave up on.
we are looking at taking the first tentative steps. and i think i am going to do a separate blog for this one. lessee.
for now? walking on sunshine.
:)

it's been the worst day. i was so angry with everything, at work and outside of it. i had my reasons but i could have dealt with things more maturely. ended up internalising the wrong things. and probably for the first time, my anger with stuff outside my work spilled over to my day. it's usually always the other way round.
it made unnecessary delays, frustrations and left me feeling absolutely washed out.
am i really a very angry person?

i went into a fascinating neighbourhood today. this was somehwere beyond surya sen street - where the entire area is filled with shops that deal with paper - embbossed, handmade, printed, plain, coloured, wrapping paper, art paper - everything. and then there was this middle aged man with spectacles carving something into a small piece of wood. he was making a seal, the kind you stamp something with.

i turn 30 in two weeks. since it's beyond me to be a fully functional adult, the 30 as a benchmark thing is looking like a long-awaited chance to claim one or two trappings of being a grown up.
i have zeroed in on three things:
i will make some money exclusively for me. money has its uses.
i will do a job that will help me gain some experience related to the work i ultimately want to do. unfortunately, a non-profit job and making money are not exactly compatible.
i will not take crap from people. i am finally going to be old enough to live without faff.

How can you want to run away from the same people you sometimes want to run to?
What is with women that every single thing they do for themselves, no matter how small, is capable of inducing the greatest guilt trip? I have yet to come across a man who feels the same way. It is strange but just claiming a little space, that something that makes you happy without making anyone else unhappy in the process still can make you feel like the greatest bitch on earth? Why does it never happen to men? Why?
They have other advantages too, like peeing standing up, being entirely ok with the idea of losing hair from the head and farming it elsewhere in the body, having a perfectly civil, if not warm relationship with their mothers and the ability to go topless even when they obviously need a corset to hold their guts in and a sturdy wide strapped bra to hold their needlessly expanding mammary glands.
But this ability to live guiltless is really unfair.

it's beginning to get pretty. i get to see wispy little mistlets that could also be smoke, the air seems a little bit nicer, there's shakin' stevens singing give me your heart tonight and life is such a beautiful toy to have.

my niece random dialled numbers from my phone. resulting in three most awkwardest conversations in the entire week.
and for reasons unrelated, i feel a wee bit bluish.

i lost my emerald ring and found it again.

brown paper packages tied up with strings

lotus perfume, drumling, purple glass lantern, silver star shaped candles, candle shaped like chnapa phul, purple tshirt and green beads. more to come. present. presents.

lunch

ac section in sabir, where i bullied middle-aged lonely guest to move into a booth, by calling him uncle loudly thrice in a row, so we could join tables together.
chicken biriyani, non-greasy, light and fluffy with the potato done just right. mutton rezala, with even the shukno lonka glistening like it's crafted out of red tourmaline. a torn bit of the softest tandoori roti with the outer skin baked to a crisp and all moist and flavorful inside. kashmiri kabab - not bad - wrapped in egg. firni and a spoon of shahi tukra. good old thumsup. and daber jol on chandni mor.
of course people solicitiously asked about my diet plan when they got to hear about it and not so solicitiously called me 10 ton hati. but that can't be helped.

note to self

there are people who live by plans and there are people who live by dreams. if plans fall apart, you change plans. but you can't change dreams. if you choose to live by dreams, you can't afford to get intimidated. deal with it bitch.

i am zen. no, i was zen, after days of rapidly swinging phases of anxiety, stress, nerves, anger, despair and the whole works, i told myself that it matters so much that it doesn't matter any more. and i attained zen.
thus equipped i went for a pedicure to soothe the residual nerves - very neat with girlie colours and fruit massage and the works. i was walking back admiring my coral pink toes, when i bumped into the most acerbic old man. before i could apologise he yelled "paayer dike takiye hnatchho keno? paaye ki phul phutechhe?"
i couldn't say anything apart from looking at him open-mouthed and then mumbled a bit. i WAS in fact thinking right then that my toes looked like golap phul.
they do. the polish is just the right sort with a bit of something giving it a texture which makes my toe nails look like bits of petals gelaming with something like dew and the texture could easily be taken for the flecks you see in the fat roses.

i am reading the wind-up bird chronicles. at one place, murakami describes a feeling - anger seeped with sorrow.

happy dussehra

or shubho bijoya as we say. I've wondered long about the connotation of shubho - it's more than happy, less than holy, but indicates a sense of grace, wellbeing, what else?
anyway the semiotics aside, this morning i have something very precious to be thankful for.
the southern wonder called and in course of conversation let it be known that he has spare cash which can be used as reserve fund for payments. i am shite at being emotional. so i snapped it aside and asked him to concentrate on his job at hand.
friends.
they make such an easy job of chasing dreams.
one day, i hope, i'll have it in me to live up to them. apart from that, i have nothing much to ask for at the moment. life seems very full.

my new haircut is cool. i am very proud of it. when random pesky kid tugged my hair in the pandal, i, however did not bust a vein. i looked at it and made sure it was old enough to understand. and then on the pretext of giving it a toffee told it that i'll break its twiggy little arm if it did that again to me or to anybody else. and i said i'd be watching. it had an extremely satisfying expression (to me) on its face for as long as i could see it.
then i came home and couldn't go out for dinner and cooked myself the worst chicken roast in history.

not doing anything can be such a high. and speaking of highs, thanks to the wee drummer, i slept large parts of last evening, night and this morning, in a pink, i beg your pardon, ponk haze, punctuated only by the worry that something was trying to come out of the top drawer on the study table. i woke up this morning to a large pile of hard bound books, piled meticulously (and alphabetically organised) on the right side of the table, directly on top of where the drawers are.

i need to grow up. pronto.

i am praying for the first time in life for some thing(s) to happen. except i don't know if you are allowed to ask for multiple things in one go.
but if things go right, a twelve-year-old dream that S and i shared will come true.
sometimes i am really amazed to (re)discover how special my friends are.
and this is just the beginning.
yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!

i can't really write any more about it, but i am extremely happy and so there.

why can't someone else be insomniac along with me? it'd be so nice to have an insomniac's club.

i spent the day controlling my temper very hard. no raised voices, no violence - nothing. and yet, everyone at work spent the day being extremely intimidated till i couldn't take it anymore and started sending some of them home early. i did absolutely nothing. i didn't even glare at them or anything. :(

Mycotoxin found his true love. Then he found some more. Mwuhahahahahahahhahaahhaahahahahahahahhahahaahahahah

i spent all my money on clothes i'll seldom wear because they were in pretty colours. and i did not have money left for new sandals. i continue to wear didi's old sandals and everyday she threatens to take them back. the last one i got, brown suede pencil heel makes me feel suicidal the moment i look at them, but they really look good otherwise.
things that look good and things that feel good are often mutually exclusive - much like men - and i still don't know how to pick the right ones. but then again if being wrong feels so good, at least for a while, who cares?
but seriously, i have no money. what will i do? the star has promised to feed me lunch for the rest of september, like she did almost every single day we've worked together.
but there's more stuff in life that requires money than lunch. and i have exactly sixty three rupees left. i don't understand how this happens. every single time, without fail.
i need to call up that feng shui woman.

my day started insanely early. with a generous dose of the Toad in it. by noon, i was ready to curl up in the trash can or/and die. and i have balanced so many different things and people that most things got half done. as a result, even past 11 at night i am still kind of working on something. and the worst part of it is it that i had nothing to do with most of the fuck ups. it's just one of those days that the cosmos decides to screw me real bad and shows no sign of letting up.
i need out.
i need large carton with fat bubble wrap.
or even a pipe, with or without blue plastic screening off one end.
i need to crawl in somewhere and just stop. like that.
and if you need tangible evidence of how bad the day was i'll give you that too. receipt from madras kitchen - thali meal veg - and i even liked it. it was that kind of a day.
i hate all the sodding buggers who have a five day week at work. all of them.

i fought with someone. mostly one-sided, though i thought i had excellent reasons for being pissed off. and i was kinda shaken and didn't know what to expect. what i got certainly wasn't comforting, so i decided to stay pissed off. except i hate it. i can't nurse a grudge.
this is most awkward because i know i have reason on my side and yet i want this to get sorted so things can be all sunny again.
life, fix this.

my work gets a little more bizarre each day. one of the new trainees bit me.

dead butterflies

a silver golden background. exquisitely crafted butterflies on them.
then you take a closer look. they are alive. they won't be for much longer anyway. you watch life ebb out. you make life ebb out. you call it art.
damien hirst's art.
they are not from endangered species, they said.
but they still make me cry. no matter what you think, they do.
why is it getting so difficult to get what's going on? this is not the way things are supposed to be.

for the first time in my life i stopped midway through buying shoes and and and... did not buy them. but then i got blue bubble tee that i am yet to make up my mind on.

this sunday i was afraid.
sunday evening i went for a jazz performance - a bunch of people - friends, friend's friends - the kind you get. all posh and cocktail-sipping "in: crowd.
the music was very good as long as they didn't try fusion. close your eyes and you could feel the breath of a hot dark summer night, with faint stars in the distance, a little leafy-smelling fire somewhere and the primal energy of the night just outside your reach. it was good jazz. and then of course it became sort of nightmarish with attempted fusion of rabindrasangeet with jazz and it took me a while to figure out that it was real and i wasn't drunk beyond redemption. it felt like being trapped in a badly made bengali art film.
that was the beginning. the group seemed to have nothing to say against the fusion, in fact considerable time was spent lauding the effort and then thankfully (at the moment) we went for dinner.
we had a round table given to us and just the way long dinners go, the people became more relaxed and started being themsleves. which wasn't altogether a good idea.
there was obese man puffed up with self-importance who thinks only people with the "right pedigree" can be successful and the riffraff can't be tolerated nor worked with; semi-normal girl on his right who thinks the sun shines out of said man and sets best in new mexico; to her right was the spoilt rich entity with the loudest voice and manners who had disrupted the performance every five minutes, who has serious issues with life, self-perception, family and other people and has no qualms sharing them with the world and its brother; across her was her cousin - old, bald, uninteresting but could be a nice man for all i know but had horrible shoes and great degree of social awkwardness; on his right was R - distressingly nomal in all moments. on my left sat the potential communal rioter and elitist friend of mine and on my right decent Oxbridge guy who practices law.
the token normal presence from people-i-don't-know-world, the guy had impeccable manners, a good conversation to him, a sense of humour, generally the mature, understated sort of a person who still manages to have a presence.
all good, except for one thing - his habit of taking his car out at night and running over stray dogs. in serious, logical, well-thought out manner.
i have never been this scared. or so i thought till the Cow asked on her way home if she should call the guy over for dinner next week and when R started spluttering, she said casually "it's ok i guess. so many people kill chicken and lambs and eat them. this is ok."

thought of the day: i am incapable of being an adult. particularly so in adult relationships. whatever form they may be in.
i cannot deal with decision- making, commitment, responsibility and of course sanity.
and THAT makes me happy, according to 99% of people i know.
except it does not and i'd really like to grow up now. if only i knew how to.
and if, actually not if, when, i hurt people, i don't mean to. sometimes, i just don't know how not to.


and unrelated to all of this, i'm very confused about some other things as well.

i didn't realise it's been this long. i'm too sleepy to do anything else and too tired to go to sleep yet.
life is not much the same. but that's all i feel like typing at the moment.

we have to keep a life journal for our spanish class. i had two pages to show this week. all the entries were about work.
the ones not directly about it spoke of things i do AT work when i'm not working.
but then again, nothing much to speak outside of it:
had another cigarette fight. which just robbed me of my pious intentions of quitting.
the sibling coming home tonight, after two years.
trying very hard not to play cradle-snatching games.
i might go to south africa. just when the race riots are in full bloom.
it's not even ten. i can't think of having to face the long day ahead.
and i feel guilty about cribbing. even on my own blog.

like looking for viagra, prozac and LSD all over the city wasn't enough. in fact, one of the med shop people looked at me and sternly said " we are not THAT kind of a shop". i told them i am not THAT kind of person, but wasn't believed. anyway, the whole enterprise got me almost on the verge of putting in my papers and THEN when i am working at finishing the whole sordid business, really close to midnight i get to explain for public benefit again the shape, size and colour of viagra. and then a carful of middle-aged people of both genders look at me, bursting from the seams with fake innocence and ask me how i know all these things and isn't it wonderful to be young.
as somebody helpfully pointed out we'd say fuck work if we already didn't have a sordidly close relationship with it.
and no, i am not THAT kind of person and i needed it for my work which, again, is not THAT kind of work.

and speaking of relationships, i need to have a dialogue with the powers that be or the power that bes.
God, WTF? i mean, WTF? you being God should know better. seriously.

anyway, that's enough of venom spewing. but there's one more bit i need to put here.
i made a compromise today. and found out how easy it is. i'd always thought that i should be honest enough with people i love. they deserve at least that much. i wasn't honest, and i told myself that i am being dishonest about the way i feel because it could save a friendship and therefore is the responsible thing to do. and that it doesn't count because i'm not hurting anybody and not done any wrong, just faking a feeling.
i am disgusted with myself.

it's been a bit long since i got the time to sit down and sift through life. not that anything major happened.
silence helped. a lot. but it doesn't necessarily make me feel better. it stops other people from feeling worse though. but that's just one minor aspect.
learnt one thing - falling out of friendship hurts as much as falling out of love.
trying to grapple with one thing - why and how you can manage to love somebody even when you don't like them
gained one thing - a new friendship which feels great at the moment.
and then on a happier note - took a short break. went to b'lore. The Friend lives there with brand new husband and the Southern Wonder dropped in. very pleasant yellow submarine kind of weekend. it almost felt sinfully good to be with people who rid you of the responsibility to think around them.
and moment of epiphanies as they arrive in the most awkward junctures - the thought crossed my mind how ridiculously happy i am for no reason and started grinning right in the middle of Important Meeting with Very Senior Person, who understandably enough wasn't as happy as i was.
sometimes i seriously amaze myself.

silence sorts many things out. many.

and my nose is still running, my ears are clogged, my bedside table is piled a foot high with antibiotics, i have to get up at six tomorrow morning and i don't want any part of tomorrow to happen. life? i'm not lovin' it right now.

i am tired. i don't care.
this is ridiculous.
i mean, will i go through the next few decades of my life feeling miserable every sunday evening, barring maybe a few?
i need a job with a three-day weekend. or independent wealth.

estoy enferma. poor baby. sniff sniff.

we've been wrestling with the problem of making didi take her appropriate medicines. it's been going on for quite some time now. she has different sets of medicines for day and night and she can't read the labels. she is illiterate...a result of having spat on her pathshala teacher at the tender yet revolutionary age of 5. and nobody's at home most of the time to sort out her daytime medication.
i got her two boxes today - she chose, ironically enough, pencil boxes. one black for night and the other one a sunflower yellow for day. she thinks this could work.
made me think. what happens to most of the rest?
will the healthcare industry ever be able to work around that one? when people don't have the language to express their ailment, the language to seek relief, the skill to access help at hand, then how can it be reached to them?
100% literacy is a distant dream, even if the scales are tilting, functional literacy as officially declared translates to the ability to scribble the semblance of a signature. what is to be done in the meantime?

You are The Star

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.

The Star is one of the great cards of faith, dreams realised

The Star is a card that looks to the future. It does not predict any immediate or powerful change, but it does predict hope and healing. This card suggests clarity of vision, spiritual insight. And, most importantly, that unexpected help will be coming, with water to quench your thirst, with a guiding light to the future. They might say you're a dreamer, but you're not the only one.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

i saw a sidey ad for Feel Good isabgul on my way to work. feel good factor now means a whole new thing to me.

privatization of currency

i used coins to pay for the subway fare and then paper money for lunch ( awesome - kirim palak and rumali roti, i want to marry you) and then i used some acebucks to buy a virtual skateboard and fluffmoney to buy virtual petfood and then i had to make my dragon chompa koli go out and hunt for some gold, so i could get it some potion as well. it is then that the thought struck me. i am sure moist von lipwig was nudging me along too.
this is going to be the future.
private currency.
there may or may not be stocks, there may or may not be international currency exchange rates, but there will be the MNC money. and everyone knows that the giant corporations spread their tentacles to own everything under the sun. so you'll have, say, a GE money which will be good for buying not only light bulbs and stuff but who knows medicines and a pack of atta as well. and then if you happen to live in a far flung place where the stores are such that MNC1 does not own the stakes, you'll need some MNC2 currency to get by. and depending on the currency you own, your chances of survival will fluctuate. if MNC1 is making profit, you're rich. if not, you're just a sad loser with a bunch of useless assets.
maybe it will be such that you'll have to drink tea because all you have is tata bucks and you finished all the cola money. you'll have to travel in an LPG powered vehicle because you can't own the big oil giant currency.
you'll live in one of the mycotoxin-mentioned MNCnagar and will be entitled to only that a certain kind of food, entertainment, essentials, or even umbrellas.
i can't stop thinking about it. the possibility seems so huge and so inevitable. why haven't they thought of it?
the mind. it boggles.

life - on a sunday evening with 7 new movies ready and waiting, two new books and a calvin and hobbes, piping hot dinner and new pillows, not to mention flannel pajamas - is blissful.

sob story 101

i am seriously depressed and for the weirdest fucking reason.
it's been weeks of putting together crappy mushy insane and boring v-day stuff together to fill up pages.
my mother, by way of introduction to a family friend described us as "elderly single ladies".
all the intelligent, smart fun women i know are getting crap . i am getting crap.
while i couldn't care less about v-day, i am putting together a singletons' dinner for 14th and 3 separate conversations with people and scrolling through my phone and mail address book reveals that i don't know any single men living in this city that i can even bring to the dinner, let's not even think dating.
i am having desperate mood swings alternating between feelings of i am immortal and i'll die alone and what will happen to my corpse.
drinking doesn't help.
ditto tripping.
tried making new friends and their tragedies seem bigger than mine.
this girl i met at someplace today says she thinks her corpse will not get time to decompose, the cat will eat her face before that.
if i die ( i can't bring myself to write when i die) my corpse will be undiscovered for months, until passersby notice the stench (my neighbours will be too old and they'll be dead by then) and the cops will come and break the door and find splotchy bits and the lizards will have eaten my eyes, the roaches and the ants most other parts and since this is india, no alsatians will be involved hopefully, but there might just be a stray cat or two.
no one will know i'm dead. no one will miss me when i'm dead.
but then again, if i'm surrounded by ten people when i die, i'll still be dead. and once dead it doesn't matter.
i actually called people and started making binding promises like if we're still single by whenever we'll move in to a commune (can't do the safety net marriage, puhleez) and got 3 people to commit. 2 women and 1 person whom for lack of my descriptive skills we'll refer to as person.
this is ridiculous. but i still feel depressed.

thirsty kya?

i am reading chitrita banerji's eating india. not spectacularly good, but a comforting book. however, all this food made me thirsty. i think one day i will drink up india and make a documentary on country liquor. i will follow it up with smoking india. but for now, i will record for my own benefit a simple lemon liqueur recipe. not quite limoncello, but quite a solid deal.
all you need is a bottle of fuel and about 6 lemons, ripe yellow ones. fuel is the best because i've been told it's the flatest one without any flavour or smell that could interfere. oh, you need sugar too.
so you need to put half a bottle of the fuel in a glass container. scrape the rind off five lemons and put the lemons in this container. after about half a day, strain the liquid into the glass bottle where you'll keep the thing. then make sugar syrup - heat a cup of sugar and a cup of water together till the liquid darkens. cool it and add to the bottle. now squeeze the remaining lemon and strain it's juice into the bottle. seal it up and park in your fridge for two weeks. serve ice cold in shot glasses with shrimps.
like anyone could really afford or even want to eat caviar. doh.

baby lizard.

finding voice

nothing earthshaking. but it took me all life to realise that being articulate, being in control of language - even one's mother tongue - is something that your socioeconomic position determines. you have to be able to buy language.
the autowallah was talking to his friend about arbitrary cases filed by the local cop. he took mentality and humanity to be synonymns. all this happening in bengali. "loktar moddhe kono manoshikota nei." he thought it derives from manush. and i was struck not by his usage, but by how easily we take our privileges granted. rather belatedly, i revisited the concept of finding voice, giving voice. i could understand finally why it is so important.

you are alive and safe. now. it could easily have been otherwise. it was going to be otherwise in the last few months.
i didn't know what to think of when i heard. then i realised i don't have to. but it still didn't matter. i thought about you and felt sad. not because of you. i don't have the capacity to be so humane at the moment, though i acknowledge that you need someone to feel sad for you and understand. but i won't do that. i don't even want to find out if i can do that.
i could only feel sad for myself. it's been a few years. i thought i had it all down, at last. but i was wrong. i was back in that space where i'd been three years ago in no time at all. i whispered another possibility goodbye.
i thought exorcising myself of you would do the trick. but i forgot the fear, the grief, the fatigue. you don't exist anymore. but the rest of it does. and it's still crowding people out.
i can't figure out if i've sinned or wronged enough or it's simply time to call for a review of my karmic scorecard.

one of these weekends i travelled on a train. just a couple of hours. but it totally messed me up
in just about the time it took me to finish reading the gossip columns and down a cha, the scene outside had gone all green and brown. it was just something else. i could see to the horizon and it was almost shocking. like my eye would take it in and do a double-take like it's not supposed to see that far. alive, shimmering greens dotted with yellow, a nice dusty winter brown lined with farrows, a piece of sky on the ground with the clouds slowly getting under the water hyacinths, and darker woods in the shades looking just the way the night does during summer when you suddenly wake up and look outside trying to remember what you were thinking before you fell asleep. it was so big, so alive. and it just felt like this is what reality is and the boxy cities are just blips that take themselves so seriously that they start existing and spreading on sheer will power.
and while i was tripping on this, i saw an engine. THE engine. red and shiny and had a pointed nose. sleek, powerful lines and a menacing air about it. i totally fell in love and i want to be an engine driver again. i just can't fathom how i could let that dream go as i grew up. my choices as a three-year old still hold good. before i die i want to be an engine driver. like that bulgarian or prussian king. he'd drive the orient express and then when people got scared of diplomatic deep shit if an accident ever happened, he was banned. he simply decreed that when the train would be inside the borders of his country he'd be the only one allowed to drive. i want that. not the country, but definitely an engine.