934 - On reading Camus

I am reading Albert Camus' 'The Outsider'. In the dead of the night, when the tasks are done, his simple prose just wakes up something inside of me. And that thing that wakes up, wakes up screaming quietly.

935 - Will always choose mushrooms, thyme after thyme

Tonight I made mushrooms my favorite way. Wash them, tear them with your fingers, and fry them in sesame or mustard oil until they are brown. Then add a good strong meat masala (not tandoori, though). Ideally, the haleem masala is perfect but I used a Badshah meat masala which waa nice. My flatmate had suggested I use thyme so I sprinkled some generously. After the mushrooms were coated really well, I turned up the heat and cooked the pieces. They turned a nice, delicious smoky brown.

Meanwhile I had cooked the rice all niceband soft, almost to baby-food consistency. So, I added the mushrooms and the masala to the rice and mixed it up.

It was really something!

936 - Daily ritual

It was a really long day at work. My buddy at work who I have tea/ coffee with is out of town so I worked straight through tea-time. In my world, it's tougher than working through lunch. I think it's because with the rains, there's just a slimmer window forgetting the last light of the day. So, if I miss that, I feel like I've missed something important, maybe an episode of my favorite series.

But it went off well and I reached home to a hot dinner of some really good pasta that my flatmate had made. That and Red Bull.After she went to bed, I stayed back and dusted the books on my shelf. It was so comforting. Last night I didn't feel pressured into wondering when I would have enough time to read all of them. It felt very wholesome and fuzzy.

I think it's a good bedtime ritual.

937 - One wonders

If you stood on top of the sky so that all that light blue was beneath your feet and you felt it rip a little somewhere. And through that rip, you saw the peak of a green and brown hill and the fragile crown of a waterfall. And if you widened the rip a little with your fingers or your toes and a bright pink hibiscus waved at you.

You, lost god, would you wave back? 

Don't you sometimes feel...

...like your Mondays were directed by Ram Gopal Verma?

938

Being is an anagram for being.

In that anagram, there's a lot of sense.

939 - Begin again

Today, I saw the movie 'Begin Again' starring Keira Knightly and Mark Ruffalo. I liked it. It is trite and stereotypical in places - the romance of NYC, the British-rose demeanour of Keira Knightly, Ruffalo looking scruffy yet again, and the shallowness of the music industry. But the songs are really nice. One imagines listening to it with the lights off, a candle flickering, and waiting for the dawn to break.

 

940 - About the sky and the clouds

Last few days, I have stopped yoga and going up a hill for a walk. My friend and I trudge slowly up, notice sometimes the origin of a waterfall that is still a thin stream. Sometimes we stop awhile to spot a snail snack on a mushroom. Then we reach the top of the hill and sit on  rock. The sky is open. I is always open, yes, but when you are sitting under an open sky, it looks open in a way that makes you quiet. It feels childish to say this but when I first climbed that hill and sat there, I thought to myself that the sky is so up. It's higher, much higher than the tallest tree, the tallest building, the tallest peak of the tallest mountain. Yes. The sky is high. I wonder if this is why a state of inebriation is referred to as being 'high', even though it might bring you to the depths of sorrow. If you are drunk, then you are high even if you feel 'low'.

Anyway, my friend and I chitchat a little but mostly look around. The clouds move slowly, inch in one direction, so unfettered but so steady and so, so soft. You can't hear a cloud. You don't listen to it scrape or shuffle across the sky. It just passes on.

What kind of a world is it that looks down on 'drifter'?  

941 - super day

Today was a really sweet day t work. I worked on something felt smoothened out. Like everything else I have worked on so far, this assignment too was a tasty one. And like the other ones, this too came with that paradox of rushing through it when ideally one wanted to take one's time with it, craft it, jewel it up, polish it, and let it dazzle. However, it got done and not just 'done'. It seemed to have taken on the wholesomeness of a home-cooked meal. After a long time, I was satisfied with what I had written. It was simple. Usually, I'm burning up with excitement with so many many ways to treat a particular piece of content. Things sometime go well. Sometimes, they go all over the place. But today, it just fit well together.

Anyway, that's what I think of it. It gets edited tomorrow. But today, my writing satisfied me.

942 - unlikely book buy

I bought Ramit Sethi's 'I will teach you to be rich'. I still look at it on my kindle app and wonder, "Hmm...how uncharacteristic but perhaps necessary."

Time to make some money. 

943 - Walk home in the rain

Wet streets, cold rain, and street lamps painting the road the colour of melted butter. Felt so good. 

944 - Humpty Sharma ki Dulhaniya

If that movie is Karan Johar's ode to DDLJ and a tribute to Shah Rukh Khan, then clearly there has been a fall-out with the Chopras and the Khan. I do not get the big deal about Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt looks 15. Which is probably why those lovemaking scenes make one uncomfortable. And what was that scene with Angad drinking milk?

It is very saddening to be this bored.

945 - Sunday in Mumbai

This Sunday was in Mumbai. I took the familiar bus from Vashi to Bandra. There was a trouble in the bus and the conductor and the driver callously let us out in the rain. I joined forces - or voices, at the very least - with a man in a red tee-shirt who told them that this was wrong. Usually, such an argument would have made me uncomfortable. But that morning, it felt good to feel that surge of edge back. 

Mumbai was beautiful and Bandra was stunning. I shopped at Hill Road and walked along Bandstand. The sea churned. The skies were ripped to let out the rain. Huge waves crashed against the promenade. It was magnificent beyond belief. So magnifent that people, slack-jawed, witnessed the waves (yes 'witness'. 'See' is too small to what you do when you confront something like that.) instead of staring at Mannat. They witnessed the waves instead of leching at some girl in a wet tee. They witnessed the downpour and the expansiveness of the sea and I think they felt what I felt - what I always feel in Bombay - a thudding, subtle, resounding, quiet, yet roaring 'Yes'.

It is a city of yesness.

946 - Mumbai-Pune ride

Took the bus to Bombay yesterday afternoon. The Mumbai-Pune highway is gorgeous. It's like you've gone to a restaurant that serves up excellent views of mountains and monsoon clouds and you eat dish after dish of the most succulent treats. Tufts and patches of green that will hurt your eyes. Strong, sturdy mountains that rise up like frozen muddy waves. Clouds grazing and wrapping over the peaks. Slender, silvery waterfalls that braid the mountain faces. It's qa beautiful world!

On a KP visit

Tough day that had begun well. There was a climb up a lovely hill in Baner. There was a nice, rainy evening and day off from work. It finished off with a trip to Koregaon Park. As homey and pretty as Baner is, it's at KP that something inside gets unknotted and relaxed. Maybe it's all those memories of having lived in a simpler time or having been a simpler person. That little area that had hinted that I could find that sweet spot in Pune. To enjoy anything in Baner somehow feels like serenading a current flame with a song that was written for a past love. Just as true. Just as false.

947

A friend and I walked up a hill this morning. It was lush and green. The sky was inky blue and the climb was easy. We sat a little bit near the temple and then climbed down to begin a good day. However, I reached home and retched for a couple of hours. There was fever and a sudden surreal experience of I don't know what happened. I kept looking at a bunch of keys and wondering what they were and what they could be used for.

Took the day off work to sleep off this weird fear that maybe I just might be losing my mind now. Going to Bombay tomorrow.

948

I looked out the window in the pantry. There was no milk in the coffee machine and there was no rain around. The day had just begun and it had already started seeming deficient. It wore on. I finished some work and made a couple of work-calls. I spoke to a client based out of Mumbai. I asked her whether it was raining in Mumbai. She said 'Yes'. She also softly mentioned that even though the city might get flooded, it needed the rain. They'd put up with it.

Rains - even in their outset, bring out a willingness to sweetly surrender to a greater common good.

Somehow the fact that it was raining in Mumbai and not in Pune - it made me feel a little forsaken. I took a break and went back to the coffee machine. The weather was excellent but no rain. I took my coffee and squeezed my eyes shut to pray, really, really, really pray that it please rain today. Please. I remember praying that hard one afternoon in school during a Geography class. I had looked out the window and with every ounce of strength that I had, I had wished for clouds to gather and rain to pour down. It had.

Anyway, the pantry was getting crowded. I left and there was still no rain. A colleague and I decided to go to the terrace for an early lunch and there was the silvery, magical mist in the air. Rain. Gossamer. Shimmery. Angel-whisper rain. Later in the evening, it rained a little harder.

In Hindi, there's a phrase that, translated, means that if you could have wished for anything, you'd have got it. (The context for this is usually when you've wished for something mundane and that has come your way.) The notion is that right about that time, there's some channel that's open between you and whatever vortex that has all kinds of fulfilled wishes that will get sucked in your direction. Today, though, even if I had a full array of whatever I could get after wishing for it, I'd choose this.

I'd choose rain.

Note: Also, perhaps very opportune that my thousandth post is about a day when it rained and my prayers were answered.