749,748,747

You know what I'd like to do? Just travel everywhere, share meals with people, maybe walk with them, and ask them and record their insights on how do they cope? Really. How do they do it?

I was in Bombay over the weekend and the weather was scrumptious! Rainy, moist, fresh, clean and the Powai lake lay before us like tear-filled grey eyes. Then something happened at night and I was sad again. How or why does it happen? This sharp swing of moods?

But now, on looking back, even though the night was sad the day had been spent well. I think it was Marquez who'd said, "No one can take away the dances you've already had."

750

How does it always happen like this? There's a deadline and you have to finish something by lunch time the next day. And the ideas for a completely different story pop up? Other pieces start vying for your attention.

Stories and Writer.

Dogs and the Bone.

752, 751

Hello world,

How have you been? Today I put together an outfit that I love. It's a pair of palazzos in really faded, comfortable, soft cotton in faded brown print and a fitted white formal shirt that fits really well. Maybe I love this outfit a lot today because three or four months ago, this shirt didn't fit me but today it does.

The loni dosa guy who was away for a bit is here now. Felt good to see him.

Liked my session at the gym.

Went to the temple and it was so nice and peaceful. The shiv-ling was decorated with a chaadar (blanket) made with mogra buds, roses, and orchids. Beauty is a very powerful way to worship.

Now, I'm sipping a chilled can of Diet Coke and life is good.

754, 753:First Impressions: Whiplash

A tough teacher who is lean, bald and dressed in black. A soft cheeked student who is naive and 19. Between acerbic insults and 'motherf###', 'faggot', 'you girls', 'fu## you', 'FU### YOU', some bleeding, drumming gets done. The theatre erupted in applause after the final scene. I thought it was a tad too cliched.

757, 756, 755: A love letter

Dear you who does not exist because you exist so much,

You exist all around me, not like god or air but maybe like the day. The day that I wake up to, in this tiny crag of time. You exist like the day, which is to say that you exist in a manner that is both steady and capricious. I will take you for granted because I have so much of you (so much 'you', in fact). I will also not take you for granted because when I wake up in the morning, I will not expect to find you there. But I'll see you all the same - in a lavender tree with lavender blooms and plum-soaked dawn. You let loose the night after brightness is done and go to sleep like a sweet child. When I look back at you, I think of you the way I think of the child...what a monster you were. And I smile.

I write to you today because I did not write to you on Valentine's Day. Forgive the inaccuracies of tenses. To have you now feels like to have had you forever. The present with you unspools into the days gone by and the days to come. You have always been. Not always with me though and it feels so funny to have you with me now. To do the mundane things with - like buying napkins, like filling water, like moving slippers from beneath the sofa. To do all that with you is to just colour every single blank space with crayons. This way the colours will shine and be waxy and childlike. This way we will be innocent despite our ages and our learnings.

You are here now and I can't remember how you came. It seems like you arose from a part of me that was tender and soft. Like some kind of homeland. You came from a part of me that hadn't yet blazed with ferocity or broken under the strain of sad, hard days. You came from a part of me that was noble and clear, green like the rock that doesn't sparkle or gleam but that lays noble, wistful, wise. You came from a part of me that was like jade. With you, I have felt that things can start over, that things can be new, that wishes are as real as moss and sweat.

It is so funny to have found you, my dear little jade, in an age when being 'jaded' is not a good thing at all.

759, 758: Fiction: What’s that thing you see?

“Sheetal! Sheetal! Come here for a second!”

“What now?!”, Sheetal yelled from the bedroom. “Your socks aren’t going to untangle themselves.”

“Just come here. Please!”, Rohit yelled again.

Sheetal came to where Rohit stood – in the cute, tiny strip of balcony in their spanking new flat in Gurgaon. A withering plant in the corner caught her eye. “Hey! Didn’t I water this rosemary bush yesterday? Why’s it so…”

“What’s that?”, Rohit interrupted. He pointed through his plume of smoke at the opposite building. 

“In that flat over there – what do you think that is?”

Beyond Rohit’s finger, lay the vast beautiful Gurgaon sky. A bank of grey clouds moved against an evening canvas that spread conjugations of pink. Sheetal peered.

“That’s…a rack of some sort. A cupboard, a…I don’t know…some shelves.”

“It’s pointing their main door.”, Rohit pointed out. “Racks of shelves won’t be placed there.”

“Yeah…and, I think the top is a little bit circular..” Sheetal peered harder, pressing closer against the railing.

“Doesn’t it look like a woman? With a ghoonghat?”

It had started drizzling and through that wet shimmer when light blends and all of Gurgaon looks dulcet, that thing on the opposite side did look like a woman.

“Hmm…maybe so…okay, I’ve got to finish the laundry.”

“You know, it…she…hasn’t moved.”

“What?”

“I noticed that in the afternoon when we were having tea. And again when we fought. I’ve beens smoking here since then…if it’s a woman, she hasn’t moved since the last three hours.

“Maybe she doesn’t want to encourage a lech, hubby.”, Sheetal laughed and punched him in the arm. Rohit stared ahead and didn’t smile.

“Hey! Look!”, Sheetal pointed at the garden. It’s Mata ki Chowki. They’re using all those white pots in there. Maybe those guys have a puja in their house too. See? Look hard. They’re just a stack of pots. Okay…I’m going now.”

Rohit stood, stared, and stubbed his cigarette. It was dark now. It was hard to make out what that thing was. The rain was steady now. He switched off the balcony lights and turned to go in.

“Sheetal! Sheetla!”

“What!”

“That stack of pots? It just waved at me.”

760 - Through an open window

Outside my window
Lies the suspense of an ocean
The mystery of a lake
The trivia of a pond;
Outside my window
Drops of water have percolated
Through nibbles of seasons
At the behest of the beyond;
Outside my window
Evaporate silkroutes of streams
Exhaling blue into a non-stop sky;
Outside my window
Love stories in liquid
Swirl and churn
At times, all forceful, at times, all shy.

761

Last night I cooked something that was sinful, salty, spicy and absolutely delightful. I'd set out to make a simple Maggi. Midnight is not when I cook up anything fancy anyway. So I boiled the water, broke in the noodle stacks, added the Maggi masala and by mistake, added some manchurian masala from a separate packet of Ching's noodles too. It was so brown and spicy and delicious but a little strong. So I cooked some plain white rice on the side. Plating was a large scoop of the rice and then layered with a ladelful of the spicy noodles. It was so very good!

764, 763, 762

In the last few days, I was confronted with a strong sense of being judgmental. I know that there is a way in which this judgmental temparament can morph into a sweet, gentle kindness but I'm not able to figure out how.

Also, bought some more books from this book sale by the kg event happening at some COEP hostel near Modern Cafe. I'm not sure how many people know about Modern Cafe but it's apparently 40 years old and all that.

I returned by bus. It was fun and cheap, compared to an auto but still a bit steep I think for local bus standards. 

766, 765

The other evening, I was walking back from the temple with a friend. We take a road that curves around a hill and is dotted with little cafes on the side. When the stars deck the sky, these cafes put out their purple and yellow lights and look like boxy cupcakes with twinkly sprinkles. That evening, we saw a little puppy frolicking in the bushes. He was the colour of coffee. We had seen him the day before when he was trying to lap up some water with another little puppy. This time, we thought he was playing by himself. On a closer look, we saw the other puppy. The other one was laying on the ground and this one - the frolicking one - seemed to be eating something. He was eating and licking the other puppy's legs.

I am not an animal lover at all. My heart has opened up somewhat in Pune because there is a lot of communion with animals here. But I don't really get upset when animals suffer or anything. I'm vegetarian and even that is not for the benefit of animals. So seeing one puppy eat the other didn't really bother me that much. My friend was aghast though. She was really troubled and was contemplating separating the chomping puppy from the dead one. I thought that wouldn't be right. It's a puppy. He's got to survive. If he doesn't get food and that dead puppy is going to feed him for some time, in my head, it was okay. Survival mustn't be intruded upon, I think. Even if the cause for that intrusion is love. That puppy's got to live.

That night I watched Birdman - which I loved. There's a card that's leaning against the mirror in Michael Keaton's green room. It reads, "A thing is a thing. It is not what is said of the thing."

It's good to not label just about everything once in a while.

767

Gosh! Some days so overwhelmed that the only way I get through is to remind myself - it is all temporary. Breahe in. This is temporary. Breathe out. This is temporary.

770, 769, 768

I am sleepy. I have been since the last three or four days. Some things have changed in the last week of January. Where does sleep grow? Some nights I am so dazed, I imagine an orchard that's coated with a lavendar haze and it's filled with tiny silvery sleep flowers. Every time a sleep flower blooms, a little bit of a yawn comes out. I think there's a story there. But too tired now to think that through.  

771

While walking down the steps from the office to the ground floor, I saw a cobweb in the corner of a window sill. There it was  - a laced universe spun out of something, glinting in warm sunlight. It was very beautiful. Beyond beautiful. Could make you forget to breathe for a second. It was something that a creature called home. It was something another creature would sweep off in just a second. But there it was, being held in the light. So many lovely things are seen when the sun comes out.

772 - Why the drama?

I think here's why.

Without the drama, there is the void. Not peace. But initially, until peace gets infused with its multifurled sweetness, there is the void. And where there is the void, there is fear. To avoid the fear, there is drama. To distract. To avoid. To make mythic what is blatantly true. Why the drama? Because without it, there will be truth. And that truth will be nothing. 

777, 776, 775, 774, 773

A quick round-up of what all has been happening:

After making a pronouncement that I will only read fiction and not non-fiction, a colleague at work recommended Sheryl Richardon's 'Lean In'. I downloaded the book and started on it. It seems very compelling. Compelling enough to put aside Norwegian Wood by Murakami. So I have eaten my words.

I love the Pocket app. You can save a webpage onto that and then access it anywhere, even when there is no Internet connection.

I also love Pinterest. There is some really beautiful stuff out there. My favorites are the quirky messages that are put up in funky fonts.

A friend and her family had come over the weekend. Although I worked a little bit over the weekend, it was really fun being with her twin little girls. Watching children play is so soothing. A little like watching fish in an aquarium.

Situation with cook is getting a little bothersome. Today she chopped up pears along with the sticker.

Went to Euriska at KP with my friend and her family. It's a really swish place and they say that they serve Greek food but they don't. Much of the stuff has the Italian tomato sauce on it. My pals were disappointed with their Gyros and Stuffed Bell peppers. I liked my four mushroom soup and souvlaki.

All in all, much good has been going on.