Chiffonesque

It's around 8:30 pm and the day is pretty much done. I am closing out a 3 month engagement with a client and today I returned the laptop that I never used. I had asked for a replacement because mine had stopped working and no service or repair shops were open due to the lockdown. My keyboard was conked off actually. But just before I got the office laptop, I got mine repaired from a partially open store in Vashi plaza. The repair guy took me in through the backdoor, shutters were lowered, and I felt I was engaging in something illicit. He told me we had to work quickly because the cops could come anytime soon. I conjured up an appropriate background score and tried to imagine that I needed my comp for matters of grave importance and not because I couldn't finish a content outline for a client who seemed to have lost all interest and disappeared. My laptop was repaired and no cop came. I saw one take a stool outside and eat samosa after lowering his mask. But he seemed more keen...

I spent the last couple of days in Bandra where I had gone to just clean up the place because no-one is staying there at the moment. 2020 is not the year that we will possibly be renting it out. I wonder if I want to ever rent it out now. I want to make it a sparse, sanctuary type of place where anyone can just come, close their eyes for a spell, breathe in and out, look out the window and merge with treetops. I can't explain this about the Bandra home. Before the lockdown, we were trying to give it out on rent and I was talking to a lot of brokers. They were all asking me about details like how many bedrooms, Bandra East or West, does it come with a fridge, etc. All valid and worthy questions. But it just put me off property dealing for a while. I have never really been very rooted as an adult. As a child I stayed all my life in one place because my mom wanted us to be in Bombay. Once Papa had written to me that our family could move to Aqaba, where he was. Or we could live in Lon...

I have a really bad headache and I really would like to just sail through the rest of the week in peace.  I don't feel like I am in a good space now so I will write about a few things that will soothe me. There's a desert. Ochre and gold sand. A shaman is sitting on a small rock that is set up against a large boulder. The boulder gleams like an ivory-white candle. The shaman rolls up a thick, dried leaf - the leaf is almost black and stiff. But it does not chip or flake off. It gets rolled up into a flute and then the shaman plays the flute. It's a sweet lilting melody. As he plays, droplets start emerging from the environment - tears of poets and their uses who lived on that land - and all these droplets start forming a bird. Warm paratha - a nice, thick, rich layered one with sweet boondi. Thick, strong coffee with jaggery powder and creamy coconut milk. Dress in a white crushed velvet, form-fitting and long and sweeting. Satin shees in blush. A pond with hundreds of whit...

I think it's all in the title. I will not write much more tonight because I want to watch snippets of this show, "Say yes to the dress." Superb it is! It's such a feel-good show on YouTube. A woman and her entourage go shopping for their bridal dresses to a specific boutique. The show has a couple of US and UK versions and each version of the show has its own quirks. It's really formulaic but I love it all the same. A beautiful, white wedding dress with a gossamer veil...Makes me happy! 

Since the last week or so, I have started writing a diary. I always had, as a kid. Then I had the blog. Then the posts on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is quite a time-suck. And unlike Facebook or YouTube, you really think that you are doing some kind of productive career advancement when you are reading some empty tripe n LinkedIn and then responding with empty tripe of your own. Now, to give an outlet to such empty tripe, I started keeping a diary. In the place I am consulting with now, a session was arranged with a counselor. She talked about the various ways in which journaling can help and she also spoke about the various types of diaries - there is the free-flow, stream of consciousness kind of writing, there is also the agenda issue-based writing where you write specifically to sort out a problem, and then there is a record you maintain after you do meditation or something like that - that is for regular therapy. And then she also introduced something called the 'Not-to-do' list. T...

My mum had breast cancer and she passed on a year ago. She was cured of cancer but there were other health complications. We speak a lot about diversity and inclusion. From my experience, attending to a loved one who is dying a little bit in front of your eyes every day and how the various members of the family cope with this is a HUGE lesson in this topic. My brother and father were arranging for funds for the treatment. I have very little faith in Big Pharma so I was arranging for sound healing and in a rather desperate moment, even sourced marijuana. It helped my mom sleep through at least one night in peace. As time passed, my brother panicked more, trying to get anything or anyone to prolong her life. My father would sit with her every day (they had been together for 50 odd years.)  I started praying hard but the more I saw her, I prayed that if she felt better right, then she move on. My brother had no patience for my 'Tibetan book of living and dyibg' kind of talk. I was...

You know how you sense a solid block inside your heart and you wake up in the morning heavy and sluggish. You feel as if you are wading through treacle. And then something happens. In my case, I stubbed my toe as I tried looking for a laptop repair shop close by. My foot hurt. And it was raining and I didn't have my umbrella. My wet mask was making it difficult to breathe and I had to get home. It was all too much. So I just started crying. It was so weird and funny. I literally felt the heft in my chest dissolve and mix away with the rain.  Feeling fresh but wet, I stopped at a store that was about to close (due to the lockdown timings). I got bright green capsicums (so cheery they were that you could use them as Christmas decorations.) I also got cocoa powder. Then I limped back home because I couldn't find an auto. But I was singing in the rain. :-) (Typing this in my friend's cute and peaceful kitchen. We just had hot choc.)

I had ordered for an obsidian last month. It got delivered today and it is so beautiful. It's smooth and cool to the touch and a luscious, glossy black. But the black somehow doesn't make it seem dark and heavy. It's black the way the Chinese or Japanese symbols depict water. It's a lake. It's quiet and liquid. What's really nice, though, is its genesis. It's a volcanic glass that is formed when the lava spurts out and cools really quickly before any kind of substantive crystallization can form. I have not seen Game of Thrones because I find that kind of thing tedious. But apparently there is a reference to a weapon made of obsidian there.  For some reason, I think it will be a really nice thing to use in beauty treatment. I don't know if it is or it's not...but it feels really good and soothing to the touch. I think I have figured out, in some measure, what it takes to work out one's karma. It's like trying to get over the limitation of your...

Today was not very optimal. My computer stopped working. I contacted the company I am freelancing for and asked them for a replacement laptop. Have been feeling very irritated. Didn't meditate or work out. Last night was feeling nervous so ate a big bag of chips in the dark. Feeling a solid wall of anger and helplessness. Today I came across something on Amazon Prime - a show called 'I, Pedophile: Understanding the Mental Disorder' and I almost threw up. A big part of me feels that this...THIS is why we are such a depraved society. That we will want a child abuser's point of view on things now. Another part of me thinks back to a story of a young boy in Norway who used to be aroused by pictures of children. He wanted to stop and get treated before he harmed someone. He couldn't find a support group. I don't know what happened to him. Didn't want to. Until now. 

This is the first post in 2020 and it could very easily be the first post in a whole new world. There is a pandemic (called Corona) around and I have shifted back from Bangalore, except that my stuff is still there. It is pouring outside and I wish one could record the sound of the rain onto the blog post. I wonder if people read blogs anymore. I wonder if people read anymore. I think as a discipline, whenever I blog, I should use my laptop instead of my phone. A phone seems to make everything dispensable. That may not be such a bad thing because everything really is. It s raining and I am blogging after a really long time. Despite the sound of falling rain, it is quietish at eleven-thirty in the morning. It is not so much a comeback then as a return. So, in the most modest of ways...hello.