Happy birthday to mememememe!

I am sometimes surprised how happy my birthdays are turning out to be - specially in the last 31 years.
But on a serious note, except for two episodes this year, regardless of stress factors, I have been very happy.
So, annual stock taking of blessings ensue:
friends, a job I enjoy, family slightly skewed but otherwise solid, Adeela, being unanimously voted "something else" by stoners inc., some looks on some days ( oh, a woman's got to have her moments) and a general sense of being absurdly alive.
Now all I have left to do is to catch up with my age.

i am on leave for a week starting next tuesday. that takes care of immediate problems.

the new wall i am bouncing my head against is the widely-shared inability to come out of the past, to hope for future by looking at what's been done and to stop painting every reality several shades darker.

when will people learn to dream?

and as part of a team that trying to act out its own brand of activism, it's especially frustrating. more so, when the only effective solution seems to be to catch hold of people by the scruff of their necks and order them to hope, to dream, to be angry, to be active and failing all of that, to think.

knee-jerk reactions, smart counterpoints, fudging facts and all that shit is tiring. as adults, they do owe themselves the mental exercise. it seems like a dying art. winning an argument is not the same thing as engaging with the topic being debated.

After a relatively calm stretch at work, things have fallen apart and how! The one indispensable member of my team resigned - for excellent reasons -- and i am going to be all but crippled. The Toad is creating mayhem, my tension headache hasn't left me in 3 days and as ever I have fallen back on my one and only coping mechanism -- anger.

Fucking tired and drained.

Just when I'd taken care of everything and everyone else.

I was so angry this morning that I scared myself. For a few hours nothing mattered and I had to exert almost a physical effort to bring myself out of that haze. One day I will be lost to it, I'm sure.

Adieu dreamscapes

My dreams are no longer dreams. They are but a reiteration of life. I dreamt of emailing/ calling the Toad to say I am taking day off. I dreamt of him summarily shelving my story and switching list two hours before release. I dreamt of a business contact who I couldn't quite place despite knowing his name. I dreamt of coming down with fever and staying online to deflect calls.

I woke up to a temperature and croaked to the boy that I can't talk so I am going to be online for a while. I am debating whether to send the Toad a mail so I can work from home. Now if only Shrikent does not show up for a meeting, I'll be ok.

bookmarks

i had my first bookmark when my cousin went to Florence and got me a marble-printed leather one -- many, many years ago. it was saved in a round fruit cake tin, along with shiny pebbles, old nails, bicycle bells, half erasers, key rings, blue locket and other prized treasures.
now i possess many and instead of hoarding, i have developed a queer OCD about bookmarks. i knew it, but never noticed how it has become, well, weird.
there are grades and types. i sort them according to two categories - personal, pretty ones that were gifted to me and the generic store ones. the latter are saved for pop lit - chetan bhagat to alistair mclean, i don't care which one i use. they are plain utilitarian.
the personal ones have an increasingly complex hierarchy. on top is the black one with cream brocade swatch that popeye gave me. for REAL books that i finish, staying up till 5 in the morning and bolting my door against the world through the day - i use this one. from warriors of rome to the book thief, half of a yellow sun to my mary renaults or dalrymples or nerudas or rushdies or ben okris and so on, i must have this one. the second place goes to the batik santiniketani one that the morning star gave me. it's meant for literature. so classics and some contemporary classics like say amitabh ghosh -- books that demand attention in equal measures for entertainment get this bookmark.
there is a third that another friend gave me -- a bamboo one with a tiny ceramic doll on top. this is my back up. i didn't quite realise that till the other day. i had a chunk of time to kill in another city and then in the airport. so i bought the purple hibiscus. then as i sipped my milkshake and turned to the first page, i slipped my hand in my backpack and fished this bamboo bookmark out to replace the store one. THEN i started reading.
of course, then there are author-specific ones, genre-specific ones and a separate set for bengali literature.
and i have begun to notice when they are switched around.
but the silver lining is that there are books that can't be bookmarked - it would be a sacrilege if you didn't finish in one go and even if you didn't, you'd automatically remember the very place you were in. fantasy, all of them. never mind the phrase silver lining.
sigh.
when you come visit me in padded cell, make sure you bring a new bookmark along with the new book, flowers, lip balm and chocolate.

Do you remember me?

A friend is part of an FB experiment about the first memory you have of people in your life. I was about to sprout my usual wisdom about people changing, the whole mothball process of holding on to memories and so on. Then it struck me, just as people changed, so did I.
I remembered my friend - in the car with everybody, unsure and facing flak - and me, half-scared and trying to avert confrontations. She is very sure of everything now. I am no longer scared to voice a difference of opinion. Mostly.
The kid in sixth grade that was pointed out as one not to ever befriend even if it meant having to sit with that Mathur boy. She taught me to look emotions in the eye. I no longer let other people pick my friends for me. And I haven't sat with a Mathur boy since.
The nagging kid with the cattiest deskmate who'd bully me into walking home with her. She was the world's favourite chatterbox. It became my mission in life to avoid her clutches or at least make her talk in a way I understood. The chatter has been replaced with conversation. But the bullying hasn't. I no longer try to make people think the way I do. And some days, I even do the 1-800-HAPPINESS act to perfection.
The coconutty-smelling, seemingly slimy Slim Jim that I specifically asked R not to bring over to my house, as he was a worm in the making and would not understand half of what we're about. Little did I know that house would see several mornings of him waking up after EVERONE else. Sometimes not waking too. Not only understanding, but unstinted support (though sometimes at gun point) is ours for asking. He doesn't smell of coconut any more (I hope) and I no longer think you stop making friends for life as an adult. I no longer hesitate to throw my dreams at friends.
The booming voice and severe hostility-inducing demeanour I was determined to tolerate for friendship's sake. The voice hasn't changed much, though the accent did at times as did my definition of people who count.
The rebel without a pause whose romantic chances with budding chemists provided as much thought for food as her bucking-the-trend ideas. She possibly does not go staking all on people any more (marriage and research does make people turn a bit odd :P). I no longer think it's possible to calculate love - you give it all and then some more. Of course, I peep in through virtual windows too to see how she is.
The funny boy with bushy eyebrows everyone loved to tease. Respectable married gent he has morphed into and then goes about growling at little scribelings who beg me not to make them speak on the phone with him. I don't go about judging people's eyebrows (I have seen enough of weirder ones in recent years) and I am no longer surprised at how people meander in and out and in through life.
And many, many, many more.

Expectations - Unmade promises that break your heart when not kept.
Associations - Unconnected dots flash a picture long forgotten.
Animosity - Slips in through cracks in conversation when you get a glimpse of the world hidden.
Abandonment - When feelings and people and terrains change.
Unrest - When all of these don't matter.

Keep walking. It's November.