Saudade

Three weeks ago, my father left.
I tell people, I let them grieve. Yet, I come across a piece of news, a strain of music, a new book, or just a moment when I pause in the morning - and think I must tell him this. Then I tell myself. He's dead.
Saudade, or is it? You've got to learn not to yearn.
And you've got to learn blue is a fantasy. Blue doesn't exist. This is complete absence of colour.

One more year. And it has been tough. The highs have been plenty too, but as ever, the best part has been learning once more how to take friendships for granted, how to fall back and feel safe.
The toughest parts this year has been saying goodbyes. Didn't know I was this good at letting go, or this bad either.
For now, I will mark the end of the year by saying goodbye to this blog. A new city, a new job and some old friendships await. Maybe one or two that are changing shades -- pretty ones, too. Let's see.
Happy birthday to me. :)

restless. too much of this eat pray love bug going around. the frikkin' festive season sucks the life blood out of me.
and life feels like i'm painting a multi-coloured picture for blind people.

some days we think of a god. a very old god, blind and deaf, his grasp on his faculties slipping. he can't hear the pleas for mercy, he can't see how people prostate themselves, selling their souls to the altar of religion.
some days god thinks of us. he worries about what he can't see, can't hear. he scrabbles around a and picks up a handful of grace to throw it at a direction he thinks is right.
some days we feel parts of it descending on us.
some days we trample right over it.
some days there is a god.
some days there is nothing.

it is a rainy afternoon, as i sit typing, listening to noises, to voices, familiar and reassuring, thinking how grateful i should be that i inhabit this world.
this world, where affection is uncomplicated. where people give and receive without seeking meaning, where there's grace and laughter, where anger recedes, bitterness can be set aside, where people matter.
and then there's another - where everything is measured. neat yardsticks, did you read the label? did you not read the label? has this been said? has this been unsaid? where silences are hostile, an extended arm is vicious. a scrap of colour in an otherwise drab room unexpected, unwelcome. you take a step, you intrude. you retreat. you intrude even more.
but then i have this world too. where colours abound. some imagined, some shared.

it's a dark stairwell. you hear muffled voices, a slim bar of light through one of the doors. you sit, try not to be scared. you're not too scared, somebody will let you in. but what if the dog climbs upstairs before they do let you in? every shuffle on the stairs begin to assume a bigger magnitude, you try to think if sitting on the banisters will help, but what if it gets your legs? then they let you in. they give you a lizard made with dough to play with. you sit in a corner. grateful. secure.

you get nightmares. you wake up. careful. you can see them sleeping on either side. but the nightmares can't see them. they keep chasing. you get out and go searching. then you wake up, safe and dry.

you don't know the way home. but the person who does takes you home. you clown around for strangers in a store, in a street corner, sitting next to parked cars, knowing there's someone who will take you back.

a house becomes your home, people become family - you learn how it is. how it should be. but you need to be told. they tell you, in their own way, they do. it's like a lens. you relate through them. you don't know any other way.

one person holds the keys to a lot of rooms - safety, warmth, acceptance, strength. an adult shouldn't need security blankets, right? an adult shouldn't be so needy. an adult should calculate emotions. adults need a logical life. where pieces fit in.

didi passed away last week. i don't know how to deal with it. i am not dealing with it. for now, i am running around knocking doors, begging people to take me in for a night, so i can sleep one more night without wondering if i can find my way back. the nightmares still come. but now i know better than to talk about it. what if they never let me back?

not that the blog has been done away with. i haven't been able to gather my thoughts for some time, is all.

my dad's 80th birthday party was celebrated four months belateldly - on his insistence - only with his close friends who incidentally could have filled up a smallish village or at least a hamlet. they each had written a page or two on him and my mum made it into a book and gave it to him. there was much love, much laughter. it truly was a celebration.

later that day he told me i'd probably not be able to think of getting to that age, a lifetime and two thirds of another one away. i couldn't.

then R told me of the old man who begs on the station -- his family has turned him out. he begs on that station and doesn't go away since he gets to steal glimpses of his grandson. his life passes on uncelebrated. in a weird voyeuristic way, i could start thinking of that distant far away age and life. we fought our demons talking about our commune -- adult diapers by the bulk, shotguns and whiskey, dentures and hidden electric fences for people looking to water the walls. (maybe we should invite more of such by inscribing commit no nuisance and watch the sparks fly.)

but when i go away, i will not peek into what's left of my life. i'll walk till i can walk no more. but i won't look back. maybe this is why they left for vanaprastha. they sought a new way.

sometimes the entire point of growing up can be summed up by the act of/ ability to buy(ing) a zinger burger and a box of hot wings by yourself, with your own money, no explanations to anyone.

after years of smoking, stopping at will (but not often because i enjoy a good smoke more than many things) and taking it up just like that, i finally realised today i am addicted. it felt awful, made my mouth dry, tasted bitter, smelt the way it does and i just could not stop and knew i would be back for the second way earlier than ever.

i have rarely watched the telly in the last two years and now there is a new secret agent series on star world and i can't stop watching even though i am sleepy and watched half an episode of boston legal.

i can't get up and shut the system off either and i just don't know what the hell this post is about.

i don't like it when i spring nasty surprises on myself.

a little later: i did some pruning on my messenger now. knee-jerk reaction i guess.

these are happy times.

they started way back when the season brought in people, allowed emotions to be displayed, erased the tension (i was too little to understand what it was) and they stayed at home. people laughed. there were people. no sitting on the sidewalk, no falling asleep on the stairs, no doing time in the local milk booth, no fighting like little savages to ward off terror, no waiting patiently, no sitting alone in the dark wondering...

the sparkling people came and stayed and smiled and sang -- with us.

i discovered what a stellar thing people are. actual real people who look at you and smile and cry and sometimes give you candies and shiny things and pick you up and give you hugs. they smelt so good, they didn't even mind when the giggling wouldn't stop. it just seemed fair to make them laugh a bit. and i discovered what a stellar craft clowning is. laughing people can't be angry or sad and thereby saved me from being either.

been in love with christmas since. been in love with people since. been in love with laughter since. even when it erupted as i inadvertently mooned a full funeral party by deciding to forgo bloomers in favour of snoopy underpants which simply fell off. (a little boy's brief was hastily bought to repair the situation.)

one day i'll learn not to need all of this. i will cherish you without a need. till then, if you smile at me, i'll call you a friend. if you put your arm around me, i'll give you a piece of my heart. i'll walk with you, i'll give you my dreams and i'll keep clowning till your shades are banished forever.

merry christmas people. my people.

i nibbled a piece of the sun

working like silly buggers. and yet it still is ok. 3 new books this week -- including unseen academicals and desiree insert the accents). and that i swallowed a jugful of sunshine feeling. whatever it is, i am loving it.

adeela's next exhibition comes up. and we are very near adding a consultation role to the outfit - something that would take us a step closer to providing economic viability to the SHG efforts, closer than what anyone else is prepared to take them. big work - but until and unless you are prepared to dream huge and in technicolour, there's no point being alive.

and the weather's been so nice too.

ps. i effectively charmed a third of today's problem at work right out of existence (under explicit instruction). no trace of any negative emotion. it felt tiring though. anger would have taken less time and solved more of it. we need to stop the bad press about anger.

what's wrong with me? i am frightfully zen, doing twice the normal amount of work way ahead of deadline, feeling a non-susbstance-induced euphoric haze, excited about christmas to the extent that i youtubed bruce springsteen version of santa claus is coming to town.
and i keep smiling for no reason which makes people very nervous.
i also had a supremely good walnut cake.

there is no reason for this whatsoever.

or is it the way normal people usually feel always and i didn't know it?

i will learn to be a tree.
i need to learn to be a tree.

unrelated lines through my head:

it's getting colder these days. perfect times to dive headlong between the covers.

new book - one. new tshirt - one. new votive - one. new personality - zero.

why do i end up being the one person who has to be sought out and confided in and taken comfort from when i neither invite nor encourage such behaviour?

i am happy i used the alarm bell in the elevator.

i am worried about a friend who quit her job in anger.

i loved the stew i had for dinner. dinner's always near-perfect in winter.

two things i can never get enough of from people - time and demonstrations of affection.

i am worried about my parents. i dreamt dad was back in the hospital.

i feel like a failure when i can't teach someone to trust, to emote and to believe.

unhappy people make me feel suffocated --- not people who are temporarily not happy, but those that never learnt to let go.

it's unfair that my little niece won't have her birthday celebrated because her mum has too much work and the kid has no concept of dates. she never gets sent to school either because people can't get up so early.

i can't sleep in a room without doors.

i am tired.

i want gooey, semi liquid chocolate cake.

joining that alumni page on fb was a bad idea. i dreamt that there were 4 days left of puja vacations, i couldn't find my text books and second term exams were very near. on top of it, despite opting for humanities, i STILL had to sit for my physics and math tests.
while i was searching for my books, i also discovered that i have a baby sister - who has been laid lovingly by my brother in a cardboard carton on top of woollen clothes on our verendah.
my mother thinks it is my subconscious demanding for a baby and the whole maternal instinct thing kicking in and was very happy. sigh.

i also ate a piece of purple crayon, for no rational reason.

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.