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Very tired.

Had gone running near the pond last night. City lights melted into the dark waters. Reminded me of my head. Earlier this week, had thought of coloring my hair but decided against it.

I like to imagine my hair as the tapestry that would hold the memory of a place - a pond today, monsoon skies seen on a hill-top, white curls of a river you raft through...

Anyway, the other day I had gone to my friend's house and I collected a few of her college notes. Can't imagine someone throwing them away.

My mother's health is still delicate. I wish she got better very very quickly.

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Two books I am curious to read: https://youtu.be/FLrQHjY53ko

Really need to take some time out to figure out important plans.

I think we really always get what we want.

Today learned of something that really made me mad. But I stopped myself and asked, "Is this a kind thought?" It wasn't.

I think that's what I will do from now. Think kind thoughts only.

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I am feeling quite unsettled so I don't think I will write in paragraphs or sentences today. List is the preferred format for today:

1. Spoke with someone from a long time ago. I found myself blushing. Felt weird and very very good.

2. Had a massive migraine headache. Don't know what's going on there. I never used to get them and now I get them a lot. My friend recommended the Mahasir mudra, which really has helped me. I intend to make it part of my routine soon.

3. Mum's health is improving but still remains dodgy. I find myself in very dark moods for getting impatient with her, feeling so helpless with myself...Everyday I resolve to never lose my cool or have my heart harden. Every day I fail at some point. But hopefully, my fight is getting stronger and my return to the arena, more confident.

4. Just feel like buying lots of new clothes.

5. Cleared the fridge this morning. So much stuff was past the expiry date. Immediately, when I trashed the stuff, I felt good.

6. I intend to make some plans. Strong, concrete plans.

7. I think I will now grow my hair for a long while. Maybe I will only cut it next year.

8. At my friend's place the other day, we came across her M A notes. She really wanted to get rid of a lot of the zeroxes. I felt such a wave of nostalgia. I brought a few of them back with me.

9. I was feeling so constipated with ideas for a particular piece of work that I had to do. I wrote out the document while listening to an interview of Taylor Swift where she talks about adopting a cat from one of her music videos.

10. Need.to.rest.

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I don't understand why non-vegetarian people have to ask vegetarian people in a restaurant whether the latter is okay if they order meat. As a vegetarian, I am not asking your permission to abstain from meat, am I? I think courtesy must be extended both ways or else, preferably, neither. Get what you want. It stays on the table It does not get on the plate. Simple. Otherwise, I suppose, if you have never eaten meat, you may be squeamish about seeing meat or flesh and bones on the table. In which case, perhaps, not choosing a non-vegetarian restaurant may be optimal. No point in going to a place that serves meat but then people can't order it because you don't like it. Of course, if one is the kind of non-vegetarian that likes boneless stuff and only filets and all, it's really time to consider vegetarianism. If you can't handle bones, you aren't enjoying the meat anyway. (I did have caveperson tendencies when I ate meat.)

Yesterday I stayed the night at a friend's house. It was really good. We stayed up the night talking. We'd gone for dinner to this place called 'Asia Kitchen' in Oberoi Mall where I ate a plate of barbecued mushrooms bao and had a watermelon crush. The baos were nice and soft and the mushrooms were cooked really well - if a tad sweet. But they aren't as good as Fatty Bao. I love that place. I have eaten there twice and the baos are just so tasty! It's expensive. But then, so was Asia Kitchen.

Anyway, what I wanted to write here - and I intend that as I write this, I release it for good-is a story that I shared with my friend.

I am very scared of rape. Everyone is. But I am scared of that kind of violation not just from certain men but also certain women. I remember, when I was in Bangalore, I had gone to a lady's house. We were casual acquaintances and she had told me to come over to her place for dinner. We would discuss some potential work also. She had a gorgeous apartment - one that overlooked a lush, green garden. I admired the flat but I started feeling slightly nauseous. She gave me some water. I had that and then I got up to put the glass in the kitchen. Her hand brushed mine and she took  the glass from my hand. I felt a very weird kind of burn and I panicked really hard. I just felt like there was no escape and she suddenly started looking menacing.

She is a very nice lady and I can honestly say that she did nothing untoward but I don't know why I felt that way. Women have propositioned me in the past (not that this lady was. I am not sure if she is so inclined). I have declined politely and things have been good. But, sometimes, that fear just raises its head in very strange times and in strange ways.

Anyway, what I wanted to write about was a certain dream that I would have before my marriage. It had affected me so deeply that I had almost called off my marriage on account of it. The man I was marrying lived in Delhi. An I was, overall, very kicked about starting a life in Delhi. So my days were mostly spent researching weekend outings, museums, restaurants, and getaways, etc. - along with the other stuff of figuring out how to best build a sweet cosy life with someone you love. My nights, however, were a different story. I used to have this dream:

I am running on a lonely road. I'm wearing a dress and I'm running on one of the roads that lead to Ashoka hotel. I am being followed by a group of boys in a van. It's a Maruti van, I think. I don't remember what I am wearing. I rush into the hotel and run into the bathroom. It's empty. I get inside one of the loos and lock it. I hear the men outside. They are creating a ruckus and shouting. I am scared. Then there is silence. I wait for a good ten minutes. I have held my breath for maybe that long. I feel nauseous. I listen even more intently. I don't hear anything.

I open the door and one of the men in the group is still inside.

He rapes me.

I remember feeling the pain and fear. I remember, also, the colour of his eyes. They were sand brown. But that is not the scary part of the dream that stayed with me.

Somewhere in the course of the rape, I realize that I am not the girl.

I am the man.

That is when I would wake up from the dream with a fear that I have not known since.

I have written this out now. I feel sick. Will go now. Maybe come back later.

Bringing forth

When you were growing inside of me,
All the hibiscuses tuned gold,
The silver stream in our backyard,
Was where all our stories were told.

You ate what I was eating,
You thrilled in the songs I heard,
And with the liquid-music you lived in,
I felt you flutter like a water-bird.

One hot day, you came out,
All bold and red and crying,
And while you felt tight with life,
Our sweet little stream was drying.

Days passed on and I sketched for you
The happy silver stream
You loved it all so much but you
Didn't think it was more than a dream.

And then one day, as I painted
Some silver lines again,
The skies had turned plump and kind,
And then it started to rain.

When you no longer grew inside of me,
And we painted as two, as us,
You reached out on your own and
Painted me a gilded hibiscus.

A little more

Was working on a slightly complex storyboard. There is a moon out that looks like a half-eaten rasgulla. It was past midnight and the leaves shone. A cat was moving somewhere. I had a chilled Diet Coke. And I lit the joint that you'd given. It felt sweet and good...like I'd gone window-shopping for timelessness. I liked the one that felt like silk and was the colour of skin and grey like dark circles. I still have work to get back to and I still have to keep to the clock. But in that pause that I took to smoke up, I could afford the silky eternity. Thank you for the delusion. 

154 to 185 of 15,400 days

I was shocked when I actually had to read a book of fiction the other day. It was for pleasure. It was for no agenda other than to simply read it. And I could not do it. It felt like trying to walk after a really bad accident.

I have to read and write for a living. So I do a lot of it. Most days I work upwards of 10 hours. Much of that time is reading, researching, writing, and talking to people over the phone (conversations that are preceded with reading a number of emails and that are followed by sending out lots of emails as well.) So, of course, there is the matter of not having time to read for pleasure. But there was something else that I had not quite anticipated - a bleeding of joy around an activity that I had enjoyed a lot as a kid. In fact, I had enjoyed reading so much that a lot of my major life decisions - such as what to study, what job/s to take up, what to spend money on, what kind of structures to have to my days - all of them centred around the fact that I enjoyed reading.

Until one day I found that I couldn't. Not didn't love it as before. But couldn't love it as before.

After that moment, whenever I saw all those unread books around me, I felt really stifled. There were cartons and shelves with books that I had ordered, bought, sourced from quaint bookshops, serendipitously stumbled over, etc. 

And now, not only did they stifle and feel suffocating, they also felt as if they just did not belong to me. (This sentence practically wrote itself. I was thinking of something else but this just wrote itself out. So I won't delete it.)

Anyway, I was really swimming in work. Then one day, at a brainstorming session for one of my projects, we were all coming up with story ideas. I came up with one that was flimsy and hollow. And it was liked. That is when I felt a weird kind of fear -  one that I had felt three years ago when I started freelancing. That I could get applauded for mediocrity and that I could get used to it.

The thing is that I have read enough in my life and lived with sporadic periods of mindfulness to at least convey stuff interestingly. I am working with a particular circle of people. I could just coast along.

But since I don't want to coast any more, I decided to read. I picked up Paula Hawkin's 'The Girl in the Train'. It's a thriller and it's quite nice but I panicked at the amount of time I was taking to finish one page. But I read it through. I finished a page. Then the next one and the next one.

And then I wanted to know the whole story and I cried over Rachel's circumstance and although I had guessed the killer, I wanted to know how the story ended.

After that, I picked up 'A thousand splendid suns' by Khalid Hosseini.

Then I read Shaheen Bhatt's \I've never been (un)happier.'

I cannot explain the relief and joy I felt after discovering that I could still read for fun. Nothing in those are required for me to finish my storyboard or create a pitch deck. But I wake up in the morning and before I start my day (where I will be working in a subdued state of panic for running out of time), I read. After a tough call,  I read.

The benevolence of a story is just the best form of compassion there is. I think when a writer writes a book for a reader she may never know or may never even like (if they ever met) is reason enough to believe that we are made of goodness.

Anyway, I started recording my impressions of the books that I read here. Why am I doing that? Well, for a couple of reasons. Ideally, I would like to write about this but I want those thoughts and ideas to germinate in me for a while. Since I am doing a whole lot of other things to meet deadlines, I want to be stubborn about this one luxury (of writing when I feel like) to be stubborn about.

Also, a lot of my work now does involve writing for a lot of different kind of media. So I am trying to see how does recording something for YouTube differ from actually writing something in long-form? There are the obvious differences, of course, but also I notice that I may be choosing different things to talk about for YouTube. The process is new. I will probably write more about it later.

For now, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOwAM34h0nHcrfA1kPO-XpQ?view_as=subscriber