Chiffonesque

even empty days go by

Much slipped away. Much surrendered.

On taking another test on the Internet, I discovered that my spiritual power is 'Joy'. ( http://bitecharge.com/play/power?sess=r3#r38660524907983564 ) What is this mind of yours, Mukta? What is it?

I am in a perfectly foul mood today. Drove a couple of friends to Darios at KP where I had a waffle with French Vanilla syrup. The sunlight was dappled on the white and purple linen, the air humid but pleasant. A large, beautiful peacock resplendent in indigo and purple and gold perched on a tree. Several people clicked it. The friends decided to walk around Koregaon Park but I had to get home to finish work. Work - that thing that I can't concentrate on anymore and that is giving me a knot in my stomach. Anyway, I came home and still felt foul. I called up my mother and had a fight. No. I called up my mother to have a fight. Bu she is a very worthy contender who fought back and told me to just quit the job and write the book and be done with the whining. I hung up. Called up someone else to have another fight but she was happily making purchases in Fab India. Not nice to disturb people in the middle of a shopping spree so I told her that I'd call her and argue with her lat...

Pageviews of the blog crossed one lakh. :-)

I'd gone to watch a film called Hola Venky last night. It was an open air screening on the terrace of the Season's hotel. (Pune really is the city for anything open air.) The film by Sandeep Mohan is about a software engineer who for some reason meditates on his groin. He lays down, puts a jasmine on his groin, forms a triangle around it with his fingers and meditates. On work, he travels to San Jose where a certain incident occurs. As a result of this, he has to confront a few things in his head, heart, and the bit that is worshipped upon. I intend to write about this movie in a fair bit of detail at some point. I quite liked it even though there were parts that puzzled or bored me somewhat. And there are references to coding as motifs that I couldn't quite get but I think overall, the film worked. Anyway, what I found more interesting was the story behind the movie. Sandeep's first film, Love Wrinkle-Free, had a run-in with the censors and wasn't released....

Brown rice keeps me hungry. This afternoon, had two large helpings of masala rice made with brown rice and a side dish of cabbage and soya chunks. Still very hungry. 

I will just put it down straight and simple, without qualifications and sidebar statements like this is my opinion and there are always exceptions and things like that. I think marriage makes you small and keeps you small. You stop thinking of helping people, contributing to society, taking care of your friends, tending to weaker people in your extended family unless they can directly contribute to some aspect of your marriage. If someone is dispensable, then marriage will be the reason and the scissor to snip it off. You invest so much money into buying land and then using that as an excuse to discriminate against people who well, might rent that land or property. You invest so much energy into rearing children that you become extremely risk-averse. Marriage and the resultant family seems designed to make you myopic in your outlook. Maybe that is its chief virtue. That the short-sightedness feeds into this myopia of my home, my wife, my husband, my kids, my lookout - this myopia th...

Can anything bind more strenuously, more naturally, and more enduringly like a love story? Untold but understood.

It is my father's birthday today. My father. I haven't written about him so much in the past. I think it's because...it's probably because...well, maybe not so much this or that but just... There possibly isn't any real answer to this. What are my earliest memories of my father? That he introduced me to the sea. I had held his hand at Juhu beach as a little girl when we were wading into the sea one night and I thought I could walk over to the moon over that sheath of light that shone on the waves. When he took me to the docks early in the morning to see ferries and wharfs. When we would picnic on the tiny beach in Aquaba and against an orange and pink sea, he would try and teach me math. When we went to Egypt by ship. When he, despite my resistance, made me read Moby Dick. When he got me the most precious storybook that, for better or for worse, I have scripted my love life on: The Little Mermaid. In college, I often wondered why my father would e...

While washing dishes, I noticed a peach hibiscus in full bloom. Every petal was fanned out to the edge of its openness.Yesterday, it was a tight bloom shutting out everything around it. All of us...our days are subsidized by a very generous infinity. 963 more days.

a new song changes the weather outside - so much so you hum - slowly, incessantly. when you step outside the car to cross the road, you don't. you smell the earth, you feel the breeze, you step back to feel the swoosh of a whizzing car, you linger with that new song you heard in the silence of the car. it hangs like a scent, light sweet smell in the hair, like lavender shampoo. then cool breeze again. gentle. the weather changes the song inside - so much so you hum - slowly, incessantly. song was 'tears go by' by rolling stones. its 964 days today. 'tears go by'.

Today my sink is filled with dishes from a meal shared with friends - some suddenly made, some slowly tiptoeing around my life for a while. At some time during dinner, I listened to stories of a man who ran with a bear for a few seconds in his life. Outside the moon shone and inside, our little group of uncertain, unlikely hunter-gatherers listened to tales in a circle around an imaginary fire. The primitive mood of storytelling was palpable.

Couldn't find my car keys this morning. When I rushed out for yoga class, I stepped into a world that seemed to be set up for a soundtrack of some sweeping, romantic film where, against the montage of childhood photos, the lovers reunite in their seventies. It was cool and windy. The trees were grazing against every possible terrace. Buildings looked a little browned in pretty vintage tints. If I wasn't running late, I would have just walked to the class instead of hopping into a six-seater auto later. There's a tiny dirt road opposite my building one can cross to get to the main road. There, in one of the courtyards of a house, I saw a happy Labrador playing with a child who was gurgling loudly and from what it looked like, was very unwilling to wear her nappy. She noticed me, as did the  dog, and both seemed to be really glad to see me. As if I were some long lost friend. Maybe I was. Maybe everyone who is out there a little aimless enjoying great weather with no...

In your eyes, a 'once upon a time. In your smile, the 'happily ever after'. In your goodbyes, a fairytale that almost was. ( On looking up and seeing a luscious swathe of grey and then it passes on with no rain.)

So unwell and nauseous today. Retched and eyes stung. Throat burned. To feel better, skipped lunch and ate some vanilla ice-cream. Two cups, in fact. By the time I had come back to office, the soft peaks of the tops of the ice-cream had squished a little. They soothed, nevertheless. What also soothed was the memory of something I had read months ago - a Zen phrase, I think - snow in a silver bowl . What also calms my trembling system is the thought of writing fiction soon.

I was seven years old when my mother drove me to the hospital to see my father one last time. The accident had been quite bad but my father had lived long enough to meet us. He held my hand and said, "Take care of your mother.  Grow up and be strong. " Mother had then taken me outside the room and left me waiting on the cold, steel bench. I waited until she went in to sit beside my father and cry. Her eyes were swollen, especially the right one where he had hit her that morning. He had missed hitting her straight on the eye, though.  After my father had walked out the door, I heard my mother cry and roll on the floor. She made these strange sounds, "Unff! Unff!" as she stuffed lots of pills in her mouth still rolling. When she saw me by the kitchen door, she spit out all those pills on the floor, making it dirty. Some of them even rolled under my fire engine. She rushed over and hugged me tight. I could feel her drool and tears soak through. All this made me feel a...

Elegance is drawn out when something inside goes quiet.

The sun is smiling today. It really is. I had just stepped out for a chilled ginger ale and the roads are wet with sunlight, if you know what I mean. Large papayas in orange, yellow and green are stacked on flimsy, wooden tables of juice stalls. Blossoms in orange and yellow swish about like colourful clouds tethered to trees. It's a very innocent, baby-like world I seem to have woken up to. I feel like reading 'Wind in the Willows' again. A nice, large hardcover with illustrations. Also, I'd like to read 'Where the Wild Things Are'. Again, a proper hard-cover with Maurice Sendak's excellent works of art. A nice day it is. 

I leave for Pune tomorrow. And I leave having yet another insight about why I feel this kind of guttural love for Bombay...why, indeed, when I am very happy in Pune, why...when I know I may not come back, and why...when it can dull and stifle me within seconds of being in it. Probably because no matter where all I roam, every step is somehow taking me home. I will meet my mother there, my father there, my early days in the turn of a road, my first lessons in the shimmer of the sea. I will meet, at long last, even though its brief, that part of my life which is mostly lost and hugely forgotten...that time, that mood, that space, that magic...that this is where it all began. This is where I began.

This evening was very, very gorgeous. The sky had thick, soft grey clouds spread across like mousse. On one side, outlines of hills smudged in seamless sketches into the horizon. Behind a shifting continent of grey, a sun was setting. The sky, just where the sun was, was a pale lilac and it spread to the east in very hushed tones of purple. A friend and I were on the top of the office terrace taking all this in. We felt the coolness in the air, the drizzle on our face. Suddenly a tiny black bird with a glossy crest and a bright red breast flew in, chirped a while, and flew away. It was good and peaceful. Sometimes you turn up at work and get rewarded in the strangest ways.