christmas heartbreaks. deja vou? perhaps. tired.
it seems like the right to remain clueless comes with a shelflife. and the best by date is coming perilously close.
light a candle for me and send a stinking rich marwari lover my way ye gods.
but on the sunny side, i got a towel and a kitkat for christmas.

i miss more than one thing, more than one place, more than one person and more that one life. my capacity to miss sometimes amazes me. i miss you. i miss me too.

my mother and uncle asked me to stop smoking for the sake of my children. i asked them, quite logically if i may say so, "what children?" they were cross. sometimes i wonder if i am the only sane person living in this entire world. probably yes.
sometimes i really feel like taking them apart to see what makes them tick. but i'd do that only if i could put them back together. even though they are very clueless.

i have become alarmingly good at lying. not even white lies. great big hulking jet black hairy ones too. and it feels so good. particularly when i convince myself to believe one or two of them.
even my normally clueless progenitor couldn't help remarking on that when he was subjected to hearing my side of a phone conversation this morning on the way to work. his work. i was cadging a lift so i could go and watch a movie. and on the way concocted 5 different lies for different categories of people. it gave me such a high.
and what's even more scary is that it's so much more of a delight when it's a lie without a reason. when it's 'just a lie'.
god save my soul, or whatever has been left shriveling inside.
but for the time being, i want to give truth a miss. it's nicer.

23 pairs of shoes last counted - but can wear only 1. and it's hideous too.
but that's not the real issue.
in the last few months 7 people quit from work. i am quite tired going through repeated cycles of separation anxiety. one subsides only to let the next one begin in an even more vicious note. it was especially bad today, because P left yesterday. she was a friend.
and i am even more pissed because she was my smoking buddy. and it's not really that big a sceret that women need their smoking buddies even more than the restroom buddies. they are needed too, but the smoking buddy is a different thing altogether.
particularly in our delightful little shady alley where you get spare motor parts, roti tadka, overripe fruit, great chinese food, butter-and-pepper-and-sugar toast, chhamiya dance after 6 and raw rum in a kerosene can after 11, the smoking buddy is your fellow trooper protecting democracy.
they help you stake out your claim on the particular little corner just right of the parked amby, point out which particular brother of the panwallah is stingy about lighter fuel, what exactly to scribble on the flat brown paper bit torn out of a carton on which somebody has written KNOT SMOKING, how to lock eyes and smile engagingly at the irate mothers walking past with the kids and the special strategy you need to whip out for marwari matrons. they also let you have that 5 minutes of zoning out, lend a willing ear and almost always sage advice (except when it comes to fashion), a cup of coffee or tea and a bite of whatever it is and pre-order your two o clock smoke for you before giving an irate call. they also lend credence to the truism that the inside stories are actually the ones you get outside the office.
anyhoo, the new recruit is frighteningly proper, has a health food fetish and gaped open mouthed at the rogues'gallery when she came in to pick up her letter. the hideous-one-we're-hearing-rumours-about does all that and more and the third-one-whom-everyone-can remember-but-can't-quite-place is supposed to be mental. november is going to be interesting.

why the break? because i can.
and other stuff too, but this makes me sound cooler.
this apart, if you wish on a fallen eyelash and then rediscover it in a few seconds and wish on it a second time, does it work? blowing hard may get you some wonderful results otherwise - but when it comes to acts of faith does it work?
which begs the question, if the blowing hard involves monogamous, exclusive partners then can that kind of blowing be termed as an act of faith too? whatever.
this is the reason why this space needs to be pristine and blank.

sunny afternoon, pink evening sky, stars on a velvety dark night after a long time. yet, i have a rainy day inside me.

the progenitor counted three reasons to feel macho. top of the list - near death experience, tied for second place - the skull cup of bandages to cover up his split head which makes him feel like a gangsta thug and the shaved chest which makes him feel like a "classier" salman khan.
so far he's cribbed about the diet, the tv remote, the poor little resident medical thingy's lack of fashion sense, the tea - make that thrice, chinese food (unconnected, but that doesn't stop him) and life in general.
if my mother doesn't go to work tomorrow, he might just get into a situation that's even more life-threatening. so far i've been lying about visiting hours being shorter than they actually are. but she got the full blast today and passions ran high. blazing eyes, gnashing teeth, monosyllables and the whole works. well there were polysyllables too, but necessarily contained to the sibilant variety.
god, or anybody else, help.

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alone. scared.
very.

every day i live in fear of someone asking me the simple question "what perfume are you wearing?" i either duck my head and pretend not to have heard the question at all or i look blankly and pretend i have forgotten it's name. this blasted thing is going to see me dragged to the hr bitch one of these days and heavens help me, there's worse fate yet if the khaki and the navy and the charcoal dorks think i'm coming on to them collectively.
my new perfume's called:
that breathtaking moment when the heart stands still.

i've been having very morbidly fascinating dreams lately. the latest seems to be series - a story unfolding in my dreamscape.
i woke up very sad the other day and when i tried to figure out why, i remembered that dead people had to wanted to talk to me desperately. their desperation was still almost palpable. i knew they were dead. i knew they wanted to talk to me. but they couldn't. i couldn't understand what they were saying. but they seemed to be very sad. and i was sad for them.
probably because i couldn't stop thinking about it, i dreamt of a conversation with these same dead people again. except, i couldn't remember what it was about and had a feeling that even in my dream i knew i'd not be able to recall it, once i get out of the dream.
but i want to.
it is strange to be waiting for an unknown moment, for a largely unknown state of mind, for unknown, unalive people, for a conversation to happen about an unknown topic. but at the moment, it seems eerily urgent.

i have thrown up seventeen times. S said "she's feeling slightly nauseous".

oxy has put herself in a position where she has to choose between being a good friend and being a good person and both choices yield damage. major damage. what is scary that it is a pretty black and white situation with just one logical option. yet, oxyacetelyne thought there is a choice to be made here.
this one slip is going to be a heartbreaking mistake.
no matter how i look at it, i can't help feeling like a base person.

for all of three and a half days this week, i got to live in my yellow submarine. coming back to surface is something i didn't like, i hadn't quite anticipated the extent of which. but i did come away a little richer, knowing my friends - old and new - better, knowing how strong they are. i also came back with reinforcements for my long-held belief in what goes towards building my own yellow submarine.
mine differs from yours, yours differs from the next person's, but it is very necessary that you have your own submarine and refuse to let it go. even when it hurts to fight for it. even when it hurts people you are fighting for. it is very strange, but the only people who you can hurt are the people you care for. the chaff doesn't matter. you don't need to convince the chaff, you don't need to win them over, you don't need to agonise over being heard and understood. the heartache is meant only for people whose hearts you care for. but you still have to do it, don't you?
for, a life without an yellow submarine is surely not worth living.

colours of the day : pink, yellow and grey, sunny, green, KFC red, white, grey, steel grey, black.
i watched the clouds closing in, the rains coming to a distant hill, sending the storm our way and then lashing rains coming out of nowhere. the first raindrops of the season on an upturned face, feeling the wetness on the tips of your fingers, piercing rain that soaks through your skin like mini-shafts of happiness - could you have enough of it?

the tiger came again last night. not the dusty, tan sort of tiger, but a bright lemon yellow and jet black one, much like the ones that used to be on the cover of camel water colours. it had come into the house and i tried to shoo it away with some gardening tool and when it backed into the staircase, we shut the door and called the police. the irritating policeman (with a moustache) refused to believe that a tiger could come into a house in the city and i was extremely frustrated. for i could also sense how unbelievable it was, but it had happened.
then i don't remember much, but i was in my (another) white and dark blue and darkwood house with a big kitchen and glass windows and a garden. i knew if i went out through the door i'd get to the backyard which overlooks the sea. but i had to give them water first. it was very sunny oustide.
i woke up feeling terribly tired today.

it's not funny. i am dying. how can this cause so much mirth amongst so many different people? if i die, i'll come back and haunt everyone with a vengeance, i swear. today i produced multicoloured snot, copius enough to equal in snot-litres the yearly per capita water usage of some of those strife-ridden angsty ghetto-teenager type african nation.
and my mind indeed is dead. my body craves vegetable soup. like vegetables. not two-legged, four-legged, multi-legged, multi-boned creatures. vegetables. despite my attempts at reasoning, my recalcitrant body tried to drown itself in hot slimy liquid with green, orange, yellow and limp botanical exhibits, half of which i couldn't identify. there was some mushroom, some baby corn and something that looked pale green and ribbed and crunchy to eat in it too.
but before i log off and die (with fanfare, i don't think i'm the quiet, classy exit sort today) tell me what is the difference between mind and soul?

i have fever, backache, blocked nose, sore throat, a/an yearning to be a prima donna and order about everyone in a feeble voice and see their faces light up to see they can provide me with the slightest comfort like fluffy pillows and jimmy nail numbers and something drippy and cheesy.
instead i was made to do a story ideas session with the toad who's conveniently taking time off and going to nether ends of the world with everyone and everything including the tadpole's stuffed toy.
i was also made to drink warm milk and handed out a pill that i know has an expiry date marked 2006 and told not to be paranoid.
i have a good mind to throw a tantrum. if only my throat didn't hurt so.
i am a poor baby. i am a poor little baby. oh i am soooo sick (like ill, not that kind of sick) and suffering so much. i want fawning attention, cloying sympathy, a new rubic's cube and mtv to show that sania badnam number once more.

i am tired of stonewalling people. so now i am stonewalling my blog.