Chiffonesque

I woke up feeling a little heart-broken. But I watered all my plants and spoke to them a little bit and yet again, marveled at how they bloomed. Even when the going is tough, it helps if you can just do the minimum - provide water, talk a little bit, get out in the open, and use sunshine. Must keep this mind. In broad strokes, this means some exercise every single day.

I am taking a deep breath now. Somewhere is a tight knot in my stomach that has chosen to resurface after it was unspooled after a lot of tender talk. But something is dogged about holding on to slights. Anyway, relationships are hard. You may think that you could have all the answers. You may think the territory starts making sense, the boundaries have been explained and understood - that's when the trouble starts. When the basics are brought up and shown to be floundering, when traces of unforgiveness start getting redder and more alarming...it doesn't matter what the relationship is or how old...what matters is that parts of it will not go as per plan and to be okay with it. What do you trust then? When your own heart and judgment has shut shop? I guess you exhale and breathe your turn.

There has come a point in my life now where the ideas burn. They burn incessantly and brightly like sharp, pickled fireflies lodged in a deep, long throat. And I have met some nice people. They are sweet and tender and helpful. The plants grow and the Indian rose bush has now given four full, precious ripe flowers where we had only tiny, preening buds forever. It feels like vapour though. It feels like I can see through all this and I find, sometimes, a light. But sometimes nothing. Sometimes a fear that is clear and beautiful and fluid - that this too will go. And when that goes, what will remain will be hard. And when that goes, I will not be taken along. But I saw Bridge of Spies the other day and loved it. Because in the movie, there's a character that tells a story of a man who was very unremarkable. The man was a very ordinary chap who did nothing and then one day, his virtue shone when some soldiers came in and started beating up the family. The soldiers beat him too. T

I'd like to publish a Kindle book, I think. A friend of mine has done that and it seems like a good idea. There are some long forms of writing I'd like to do but the blog seems too casual a place to do it. Maybe writing a book and getting it published through Kindle will give me some kind of discipline. Or serious creds. Wonder what I should write about. I'd like to write about my work. Also add some fiction. I'd like to write about joy. Yes, why is it not the done thing to write about the joy about work? Why must we all be raging against the machine? Anyway, that's the plan.

I am in such a tizzy today. I have been in a tizzy for the last few months, especially the last few days, but today feels especially hard. If one is going through a sad period and something nice comes up, it is remarkable the amount of suspicion and self-doubt that arises. First of all, I wonder if self-doubt is part of the discovery and experience of depression. Like one doubts whether one is depressed, one wonders whether it is nothing more than an indulgence, one judges oneself for being weak and a cry-baby or drama queen, one feels guilty for nursing a sense of entitlement - of wanting the reality to be something other than what it is right now. If there is sliver of well-being, there is fear of losing it, there is distrust of getting it...and all this is in  addition to being sad. I remember a conversation I'd had with a school friend a long time ago. I had gotten in touch with her after ages. We spoke really late at night after her husband and three kids were asleep. Tal

I more you. What does this mean?

The ear-ache was mighty bad yesterday but a friend took me to watch Talwar. That film is imperative. I love how they have explained the title of the movie. Also, this case is so reminiscent of the themes in Camus' The Outsider . From point of view of characterization, something I have started observing because I would like to write a script someday, I loved Tabu's profile. I liked how her character gave credibility to Irfan Khan's nature. He was a man who'd stayed with his wife despite her affairs - he even expected them. In the middle of a tough investigation, he can recall his wife's migraine medicine. Over the phone, he observes that she's watching the film he had alluded to earlier. One remembers all these details when Irfan Khan is accused of not knowing about human interactions because he couldn't stay married. Without her, Irfan Khan would be a bright mind wearing a spectacle. The writing of her character is what amazed me considerably.

Something really surreal and beautiful happened last night. It felt like swimming underwater - free and tenuous and you keep your eyes closed because it hurts to keep them open but then if you can put up with the discomfort a little bit, the sights you see! The worlds you visit!  It seems like a ganache of sensations now but here's what I remember of it - a very dark lane with city lights sparkling like crusted sugar on jujubes. A talk about a creative assignment. A sharing. Some home-made food. A lot of warmth and kindness and comforting. And a drifting off to sleep and waking up in the island of a tomorrow. Whatever yesterday was reminded me of a time when I'd swum to the bottom of the ocean floor for the first time. I remember how peculiar and natural it all was. I remember fighting back tears.

My body seems to be replicating my heat - in the amount it seems to be accepting and accommodating in it, and the amount of heaviness it is taking on. The hips and stomach seem to swell like continents and my calves and arms are getting soft. I have also noticed that I am hunching over and eating so fast to stop breathing altogether until the last morsel is consumed. I am not unduly worried about it though. There seems to be a big change in the offing and I feel this is just my body's way of cushioning itself for the blow. People have started being, how shall I put it, snarky about the weight gain...but it's okay. Puts me in a foul mood but I think it would be interesting to just be curious about what's going on. I think, in a sense, the body is just playing a wait-and-watch game to see what all is coming inside it and just how much pressure is being put on it to assimilate it. Right now it seems to be in a phase of taking inventory.

Oh. By all means, Let's improve our vocabulary to articulate crap.