Chiffonesque

...or rather one thought. I had just pounded the pavement for a brief while. Today I couldn't run as smoothly as the last few days. The rain had let up for a few hours and the entire neighborhood was out soaking in...well, not the sunshine...but less than the kohl-blackness of a rainy evening. After my rounds, I was headed home when I saw a man leaning against a gate. He was wearing really loose jeans and a black t-shirt. His muddy, yellow windcheater was wrapped around his waist. He was smoking a cigarette and sipping a little cutting chai intermittently. Between a slow drag and a languid sip, he looked around with so much peace. His eyes seemed to trace the path of a cloud or the trail of a leaf in a puddle. He was so blissed out. Everything about him seemed unhurried. Almost like every breath he took in first waited politely until the previous breath had been let out. That entire scene was mesmerizing. I suddenly realized something in a slightly different context. Cons...

I got back from an invigorating walk in the rain. I love walking out in the rain and getting wet. Usually, I don't bother with an umbrella because I find it an unnecessary encumbrance. Today, though, it was pouring away mightily. So I took one. It's almost a reflex - to twirl the umbrella and smile goofily as fat, cold drops of goodness fall on you. The walk was lovely. I was refreshed and ready to tackle a pile of tough work. Then I saw a few emails. These were from people who apparently have been reading my blog for a while. Today, they decided to write in and let me know what they thought of it. A lot of what they said was also in keeping with what a stray friend had to say a while ago. Their main grouse was that the blog was too personal. In the past, I have written about the breakdown of my marriage which many found appalling. I have also written about phases of ennui and bitterness and my longstanding issue with temper. All this is washing the dirty linen in publi...

A week ago I had a dream. It was a little scary so I tried to put it out of my head. But a bad dream usually leaves behind a residue that is difficult to wash off. A bad dream follows you with a slight, rancid scent wherever you go. It's slightly sickening and horrible. My dream was this: I see myself in a large building with huge corridors. They are long, long, long ones - in fact, so long that you can't see the ends of them. I'm dressed the way I dressed in college. I'm wearing a long shirt, up to my knees (I think it has purple and white checks) and a knee-length skirt (something grey and in a coarse material). I have the same, loser-type body language I had in college - slouched shoulders, long face. My hair is tied in a pony-tail. All in all I am quite non-descript. I don't remember what I am doing there, although it is reminiscent of a rehabilitation facility I had visited in Chennai. It's dim and dull there. There's a bluish dusk-light that floods t...

A  few days ago, I met a friend at Bandra. Despite traveling off-peak hours, we battled huge and heavy traffic and were late for our meeting by forty minutes. Several things made up for the delay. My friend, MG's fiesty raconteur skills, delish veg Zinger burgers at KFC (there is something sublime about any combination that is spicy and batter-fried), and a trip to town. For some weird reason I had to get into a general compartment instead of the ladies one. It was packed and I must say that I was not prepared for the civility I encountered there. The men tried to make way for me as much as they could. A gruff uncle told me to stand tucked away near the windows so that I could get a seat quicker. I told him I'd stand anyway. It was only fair since there were so many people waiting for an empty seat before me. There was no yelling or scratching. (The ladies could definitely learn something from these guys.) And there were these small moments that make my heart s...

By writing 'Life of Pi', I think Yann Martel has set a benchmark so high that it frightens me. And I'm just a reader. In fact, I am even wary of picking up Beatrice and Virgil, Martel's second book. What if it isn't as good? What if I am not astounded and rendered speechless with every paragraph? What if I don't want to commit every page to memory? What if I don't end the book with this queasy, stunned sense of beauty that I ended Life of Pi with? What if Beatrice and Virgil, unlike Life of Pi, doesn't 'happen to me' as tremendously? What then? Reviews of Beatrice and Virgil are less enthusiastic than his first work. NY Times calls it a rushed description of 'postmodernism' (or something like that). It's described as being too clever, having narratives within narratives, lots of references to Nazi history (the plot does revolve around the Holocaust), etc. So while Life of Pi would touch and move just about everyone, we aren't qu...