Chiffonesque

  The reading dry spell broke with this novel, 'The Wallcreeper'. It is unfair to review a book that I have read in fits and starts over the year. But then, this section is not really a review. It's a first, quick reaction to what I thought of the book.  The word that comes to mind when I think of this novel is 'desultory' but in a strangely charming way.  The book begins with a couple Stephen and Tiff out on a drive. A bird, a wallcreeper, crashes into the car, Stephen swerves, and Tiff suffers a miscarriage. But Stephen is a bird fiend so they take in the injured wallcreeper, name him Rudi, and go on about their lives. A major portion of their own lives seems to be living through a frayed marriage and rather hollowed out individual experiences. Just how dysfunctional this marriage is, s evidenced by the fact that Stephen chaperones Tiff on her date with some migrant in Berne. (The novel begins there.) At some point later, Stephen sleeps with Constance, Tiff's ...

 I have lived many, many years now. At some point, the turn of the year, the turn of the century, the shift of time, the onset of apocalypse, the coming of Eden...all of these seem to have lost their novelty. They still remain causes of celebration. Maybe some oblique segments of introspection, a hurried scribble in a diary, an urgent blog post...but that's all.  Actually I want to know where my mother is. It seems funny that she, who had such a solid presence - her clothes are here, her cookbooks, her jewelry, her house, her husband, her son...but I want to know how she hasn't been even a little bit curious to want to check up on anything. Until she passed away, I used to think that I knew the answers to everything, including and especially death. We all had a soul and we reincarnated until we exhausted our karmas and then we had great coffee and omelette and merged with the sky. But now I don't think that's the case. In fact, I think that nothing has any meaning. All ...

...that this post is being written with nervous energy. Anyway, I think I will write on a more sedate matter - a painful truth that I have had to reconcile with, in 2020. I have read really, really little. Most of my reading has been for work and even in that, a lot of my reading has involved emails. This is not a happy state to be.  So I am trying to finish reading Nell Zink's 'The Wallcreeper' which I have been trying to read for many months now. But after a long time, I am making some progress. Painfully slow but as a bumper sticker with a doozy turtle had put it, "Forward is forward." I recently made a list of all the unopened, unread, almost-new books that are stacked around me and I intend to get through those. I do not want to be the kind of writer who writes more than she reads. Because reading is listening. And that is anyway a dying art nowadays.  Also, there is likely to be a shift in residence next year sometime. Maybe between cities. And that brings w...

 A friend had gifted me this pretty, red dress a few years ago. I usually wore it on Christmas. This year, I didn't get the chance to. But a couple of days after Christmas, decided to wear it to meet a friend and run some errands (which is what a lot of my wardrobe is now going to get used for.) But I love this dress. I love red and I love Christmas and I love the sparkly happy sunshine that lit up the world this morning. So I picked this out to wear. N, the help who is all too familiar with the rituals of so much stuff in my wardrobe, asked me why I was wearing this when I hadn't worn it for Christmas. I said I was going out today. I stressed on the 'out' in a manner that suggested I wasn't getting bananas and mirchi powder. (Usually when I say I am going 'out', she gives me a list of all the household stuff I need to buy.) She looked at me and asked, "You are going for Salman Khan's birthday party!" (Apparently these are my only two looks: ki...

 I don't really know what to write. Just putting out a blog because I don't want to go too long before writing something. It was Christmas yesterday and it passed by sweetly enough. No crises or calamities. It was a little sad though. Won't deny it. But it is what it is. Today there's a bit of hassle in the house. Hopefully, things will blow over. Let's see. Not feeling too well. But not too shabby. I made up this word - the one in the title of the post. It's a nice word, I think. If it were the name of a clothing brand, it would be affordable punk clothing, I think. If it were a restaurant, maybe something that served different kinds of caramel custards or sushi with potatoes. But I think it could be the name of a type of weather. The type of weather we would get in the new world - a sandstorm with churning icicles and frozen blue ice-petals.  Anyway, feeling under the weather. Won't work today I think. Will take it easy.

 So, it has not been the best of days today. Most of my time has been spent coordinating on stuff that doesn't matter with people who don't really care about what is going to happen. And then there are the small flights of crap that happen at home. I think I am done for the year. Not going to work on anything anymore this year. I feel there is a heavy fatigue in the air and we are all wading through thick smog.  Yep. I think I am done. 

 A charming patch of garden near the helipad in Electronic City. A friendly co-working space. Crisp, cold, December in Bangalore. After a full day's work, I would change shoes, wear heels, get Uber and go to Koramangala for dinner. Or someplace else for a movie. That was the 'work-life' balance. The patch of garden outside this co-working space had a beautiful, large, white Buddha. The place would put up pale yellow lights around the Buddha every evening. It looked festive. It felt reassuring. There are several things I remember about that place. Staying there until really late and having a cup of coffee on the bench way past midnight. Just me on a cold bench and a Buddha lit up by twinkling lights. Or reaching really early in the morning, getting Maggi for breakfast and reading a page of a book before work. A game of table tennis with strangers. A walk back home in the early evening through traffic. A date in a local pub called Grasshopper where they did a splendid mocktai...

This evening I went to my friends house for coffee. Usually I rick it to her place but it was time for my walk and the weather's pretty good. So I decided to, well, walk. I generally have to cross a busy crossroad to get to her house. Rather it was a busy crossroad before COVID. But it seems as if most people have either forgotten how to drive or are confused about what to do in case of a red light. So the crossroad is not busy now. It's practically lawless.  Anyway, I was waiting for a few rickshaws to stop hurtling forward when across the road, I saw this very, very, VERY handsome man. The first thing that struck me was that he was tall... 6-2 or so and his hair was very comfortably tousled - like he'd had a good run. He was standing straight but easy. He had the presence of a cheetah walking about slowly in his neck of the woods. Stealth, power, pace...but for the time being, a stroll will do.  He was wearing a T-shirt in what seemed to be really soft material. It was in...

 Sleep hasn't been so good lately. Strange dreams. Sometimes I feel that different parts of the body have different dreams. Which is why even if I remember a dream and it's not so bad, parts of my body feel otherwise. Heart feels heavy. There's a knot in the stomach. Pins and needles on the extremities. Something is changing somewhere. I get the feeling that this world that we are living in, this has been stuck in a cave whose entrance has been blocked by a large rock. And now that rock is loosening. We are hearing things we are not familiar with. We are seeing colors we don't identify. There's no light outside from whatever we have seen. There's only a darkness that feels loud because it's so quiet. It's silent in a way that silence means business. Inside the cave, maybe a few types of bugs and beetles, algae and fungus have sensed this. They have been trying to sneak out regularly. But they haven't been able to leave.  But they will leave soon. And...

I juggle the moons To a cosmic tune On days that stars go gray The seas rise and fall As do the dunes Desert crabs go astray The moons are strong And steady and wise They know they will be caught Their trust is complete Yet stupid as well They've forgotten how they'd been dropped They're icy smooth Their pale blue skins And damp and moist as dew They're feeble yet strong Hydrated opposites Ancient and spanking new They try to talk at times Garbled and sputtering Like babies with cute lisps But they make most sense In cold silence When they are all eclipsed Then the desert crabs  Brave the storms and sands And nights with icy hale The moons  then begin to remember And the juggler starts to fail

 I am having bad dreams. I was in the middle of one when J called. I dream that my cupboard is open and all these memories keep walking out. Like Shutterstock images. It could be that. I have been glutting on Shutterstock images due to work for a while now. And sometimes when it's really late or I am in a slight funk, I look at an image and it disturbs me. It looks like a regular guy in a conference room. Or a generic girl getting her coffee. But those eyes look hollow. That smile hides something. The suit creases in a place that suggests there may be a third hand hidden somewhere. There's one image that I keep seeing in my dream. A man in a grey suit is for)ging forwards towards a desert. His left hand is outstretched behind and is pulling someone forward. That's not the scary part. I see that man - he is still 2D - move ahead on a flat postcard after coming out of the cupboard. I see two friends look at that. One says, "Aww" very affectionately. As if this man i...

 The title is a pun...Maldives is a place where people with resources go to unwind. (Unless you are a local there.) And people with more conservative resources go to the mall and, well...dive into the happy, bright, sparkly stores. So Mall dives. (I didn't say it was a good  pun.) This evening, brother and I went to a neighboring mall. The happiest sight there was that Cinepolis had opened up. It really was joyous. We didn't take in a film because I had to get back to a call and brother had his own plans. But he did treat me to a warm, flaky cinnamon bun and black coffee at Cinnabon, which felt right. So Cinepolis and Cinnabon spell deep, warm comfort and hope for a new and better world. I have very little interest in athleisure or anything sporty so I wasn't too keen to accompany the sibling to Sketchers. Other than for sentimental reasons. My first purchase in New York was a pair of purple Sketchers from Manhattan. Nearly a hundred and twenty dollars after taxes but very ...

 Today, Dad brought home spring rolls from a small, local place. I ate two large packets. Well, I left a few pieces for him but I think I will get more tomorrow. Spring rolls and soup. I haven't had soup in ages. I don't quite like soup too much unless it is a hearty thick broth. There was a place called Mandarin's Kitchen in Colaba, just below Dhanraj Mahal where I worked. This spot served the very best Jade soup. It was a large bowl of flavourful, thick soup with lots of chopped greens and shrimps, prawns, and fish - such a joyous trifecta. (This was the sea-food version.) It smelled divine and each spoonful came with chunks of meats so one was quite full after a bowl. I used to have two bowls, though. And bring one bowl home.  I think I will have a wonton or a clear soup tomorrow or maybe mushroom or tomato. I love mushroom soup... a good creamy mushroom soup salted and peppered perfectly with the smoothness of melting butter. Just before COVID, my friend and I had gone ...

 A friend of mine is looking to marry. She wants someone from 'a good family'... Respectable, decent, sufficiently well-off I suppose...not so hard up that it indicates that they would do anything to make cash. Not so rich that they can afford to bend rules and getting away with it. The right bracket of middle-class where it is comfortable to have a conscience. There are lots of men who are also looking for girls from good families. So this should be fine.  She did meet one such person. I was introduced to him. I thought he dressed really sharp and seemed nice. Then again, who's not good, right? But I did ask her to talk to him more because I felt that he wasn't comfortable with something. Granted I had only 30 minutes of a Zoom call but I don't know. I sensed something. Anyway, these people hung out outside the city one weekend. And she called it off because he seemed 'dysfunctional'. I asked her why. Apparently the guy didn't think that his family was ...

 Today felt a little easier. I had to finish and deliver a couple of things. One was a little bit more detail-oriented than I care for - so it seemed like a little bit of drudgery. But it does leave the mind free to think of things that are more creative. So while I did some basic checking and rechecking on one thing, I thought of my next assignment which was juicy. It involved doing some research work on usability and accessibility which is a fascinating thing. I think it's nice that there is a discipline out there that is looking to include and involve people who would not otherwise have access to content or study material. I remember that in my school, if you couldn't see or hear the teacher, it was your lookout to go find another spot to sit or figure out which of the front-benchers would relay the information. The teacher herself would never consider speaking up or doing anything to improve the situation for the students. Class was in session. You were allowed to sit and l...