i dreamt of a cloudy day.
i was standing at the gate, waiting for someone to come home. i looked towards the sky and i could see a small plane. it was doing all kinds of tricks, corkscrews and doughnuts ( if a plane can do one) and figure eights and making heart-shapes, and then the sky turned dark and the plane started to swoop down and then go up again. at this point of time, the horizon was a bit puzzling, because the sky melted into the sea instead of otherwise. but even then the sea was a nice shade between slate and deep aquamarine. the plane would skim down on it and sprays would spalsh up in its wake. it was the most beautiful sight i'd seen. then i came back in. and the next day i read that a plane had crashed into the sea. i knew it was this plane. i had tis strange sense of compulsion. i HAD to go and see the pilot. i knew i just had to. i was the last person who saw how beautiful it had all been.
but before i could find out how to go to the hospital and see the pilot, i woke up. the sense of urgency remained with me throughout the day. must do something before it is all destroyed? no, that's being dramatic. but i can just see the plane and that skysea. it was beautiful.

i am not in the sunniest mood. i tried not to spill it over to anybody, so i switched my phone off, stayed at home, kept to myself. trying to make human contact in the evening, in form of a half hour session with near and dear ones, make me feel suicidal or homicidal or both.
i am swimming through a haze. all kinds, for it's insanely hot. that kind of white heat.
red rashes.
even as flowers wilt and die, allergies flare.
progenitor casually mentions "oh you tested allergic to 18 different things."
"oh yeah, you know giving me the list would have saved me a lot of trouble."
"yeah well, you managed fine."
yes, except i have stopped breathing on more than a couple of occasions, exhibit a great set of oozy rashes in any random part of my body year round, get itchy, scratchy, dizzy, wheezy and under great sneezing fits without any rhyme or reason around arbitrary things including cotton. cotton! whoever has allergy to cotton?
"do you want some coconut?"
"no"
"yeah, you used to get breathing difficulty from coconut. you sure you don't want some?"
and i fail to understand why everybody is so excited about the michael jackson tribute night and stare at me with great hurt mournful bovine eyes when i express my views on the matter.

what was formerly karmic accents is now adeela. adeela delivered it's first corporate order. our beautiful testimonies to a thirst for sheer survival by a group of women will be up for display and sale at oxford bookstores. two of them to start with.
i've been spending sleepless nights thinking about how we'll go forward. we will. the goals are pretty clear. except mapping out the route is not something that easy. but however impossible this may seem, right now, it seems like this i'll to see through.
much like another aspect of life that's leaving me clueless.
things are falling into place when they have no business to.
then again this is the way life works out. plans fail. but life works out. always.

i am very tired.
i spent a long time thinking about a piece of news yesterday. then there's been stuff that's been happening with friends and family. and i can't help realting it to a larger pattern.
i don't have it in me to be analytical about things right now. it's just a knee-jerk emotional reaction that comes forth. being a woman is getting the rough side of the deal. being a woman in india - even more so.
i am ashamed to put it down here, i am ashamed to think this way, but i need to remember this. at a phase of my life, when i am independent, successful by meagre measures, wanted and appreciated, seemingly secure, in an era that pays lip service to the idea of strength, i can't celebrate life enough.
all around me i see tiredness, deprivation, exploitation. emotional abuse, physical violence, a manic attempt to keep the plaster form peeling. comes with the territory.
when will they learn? yes, them.
it saddens me infinitely to think that almost all men in my life really don't get it. some women too.
i have always felt a part of me going stone cold for a while when people talking about leaving this country for good. for a better life. over the last few weeks i couldn't help thinking that there is some merit to that plan of action.
defeatist, escapist, unreal, betraying my own line of thought - yes to all. but being a woman here is frightening at times. and those times are getting to be more frequent.

I don't feel like typing. Three things I needed to jot down, but I can't do that. Everything has taken second, third and fourth place to the thought that sometimes I am too wrapped up in my own world to care who ends up getting bruised. It was gently pointed out. And I am scared that there might be more than a grain of truth in it. In the particular context it was told, if that holds any truth, I have done something seriously damaging and I don't know how to set it right.

And now I would probably end up making my own list like that stupid TV series.

Yes, I am evading the real issue by making a crappy joke about it. I don't know how else to react. My idea of being an adult today was to do three loads of laundry and decline invitation to hash and bhang holi party.

Karmic Accents was dismantled yesterday. We are going to shed some people and move on with new name, and newer approaches. On one hand it feels like the effort is culminating into something more professional and viable, on the other it is infinitely saddening to have given it to unreasonable demands that led to wasting a lot of energy. Let's see what the future holds.
But it is good to have friends who don't need you explain visions, they just know and expect you to know that too. Thanks to two in particular I am nursing a huge hngover, feel like my eyes are going to get glued shut in three seconds and generally feel that world, despite six hundred monsters hammering the insides of my skull, is a good place to live in.

life on the lazy lane

i spent a long, lazy morning that turned into an early afternoon, lolling on my bed with my best friend, with calvin and hobbes and peanuts. the sun was streaming in ever so nicely. a bright yellow kind of day. we went to eat biriyani afterward in their shiny new car, met smiling cops and got accommodating parking attendants who collectively left us reeling with all that positive vibe. that was right before we hit the dirt with the pathetic excuse for a book fair that we've got going. but everything in life can't be perfect. and of course m tried a bit of his karaoke along with i shot the sheriff on chingrihata. i had a good day.

it's important to remember this.

exactly ten days back something we'd discussed years ago came back in my head very unbidden and unconsciously. we had been discussing deaths and ends and i think i told somebody about two things that i'd like to see accomplished before i can call it quits without feeling guilty. then ten days back i suddenly remembered those were done. i was disturbed. today i felt differently about it.

i also had a very emotionally charged discussion with someone i hold very close to my heart. except, try as i might, i could not do her the courtesy of reciprocating, i had to bottle up. i had asked her before if not talking would ever come between us. she said it would not. i tried today, i couldn't. but i tried. sometimes it's enough to just be, sometimes it's not. and i dread those days when it no longer would be. enough.

but this is turning out more maudlin than i thought it would be. not a fitting piece for a yellow day, a yellow month. i got to see a lot of people this month, got to see the sibling married, will get to see the ear-waggler married (toad permitting) three weeks down the line, got nice new brown kitten heel shoes, new clothes, new necklaces - three of them, new books, and excuse to buy more. and i'm planning on doing something i shouldn't be doing, but i won't tell you what. it's delighfully wicked. actually make that two.

life feels like doing a jigsaw puzzle in a room with a strong draft of wind that keeps sweeping the pieces away. just as i turn to one end of it and move away, i find the other pieces jumbled up. life getting in the way of life.
i have been getting the feeling of being absent from my own life for some time. everything good, surrounded my people i love without condition, secure in being unconditionally loved back. yet, being around them, being in the midst of them, i feel away. it takes a great effort to unwind and be there and then i find i've forgotten to tell them how much i love them. i would describe it as feeling like an outsider to your own life, except that's too ridiculous.
i guess just another manifestation of all the chaos.
i have been trying too hard to be normal, just like everyone else. beats me how they manage to get there.

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.