Full bodied, pink alonesome

Snore dead pig, snore in looping tired wheezes, little light pink umbrellas open as air thrusts in, the suction makes a 'crow' of the umbrellas and out it goes, ripping tiny layers of dusty cellular post cards flying about in the air. Gone in the air like a sack thrown out of an air-plane, lost like an exhausted army of sperms, either inhaled or falling at the edge, gradually perishing, withering in slow dotty vertical trails as if squished against an imaginary hard glass wall, exuding out of accident, not red, but sticky turbid white scrolls of penile histories.
Punching in the body clock, by the end of this old year, miles of tons of heavy dithering words have been dished out. I set my heavy face to the heaving hillside and set my sad eyelids to the far ordinary clouds, my tongue laps up the green ripples, out of focus beneath the broom lashes. Long as a young girl I often kept repeating, "something good must come of it" But, now holding you from the handles of your narrow hips, trying to make you sync in, make square leg motions and awkward jumps...(Tortoise: Glass museum plays)I simply can make no promises.
Three little figs or two big berries, one ugly long toe nail or hexagonal rubies on the tongue. All can be touched and felt, seen and heard. In the soft underbelly of your soaking, bloating, pouting spilling, gradually I am drawn in. (Cul de sac: I remember nothing more). All I ask is to be indulged, to forget to write to be able to think of how to speak to make sense of things that make a difference to you can string me in and jerk it is to realize I am switched on the table nudging here and there is what is written. Is written. In wheezes of the pink pig again, the same snores mean a little different after our journey.

My colorful self

I am not really going to elaborate on the dirty word queer. In cultural studies, queer was often problematized as a word that excludes in articulation, yet mainstream 'queer' culture has often resorted to the word considering its rebellious overtones.
Well, apart from that there aren't many gay proclamations for me to make. I went to the Delhi pride this year, quite fun. The usual colors and masks and song and dance. But, I have been wondering for sometime, how does queer/sexuality studies scenario in India make peace with the huge divide: the body of knowledge on sexuality and its queering with Indian dynamics is mostly disconnected with queer movement in India, the practice part: NGOs helping sex workers of different orientations, transgender rights, problem of the elite, educated, urban gay. Still grappling with the politics of the personal/public and such questions of the bedroom on the street.

Of Pushkar and towns

These are pictures of the Pushkar fair that happens in Rajasthan every year. You can find more pictures on my facebook album. In the month of travels, the next destination was Pushkar. This was almost a photography trip, eight people armed with seven SLR cameras only to reach and find another thousand odd camera loaded curious tourists around. However, this is not only about Pushkar. The inklings of the experiences I am about to narrate started in Gokarna and Hampi, a couple of months ago. Little kids running about offering to pose for photographs, women swaying their colorful skirts nod, heads slanted, perfect play of light and shadow, camels decorated so elaborate and their owners curling their mustaches. You almost want to rush and talk to them, how is it to live in a desert? How do you cook and what do you eat? Sigh, if you could only speak their tongue. Or, maybe not, what would you like Sir, Madam? Deutsche ou Francais? Hablo espanol, even better I am fluent with Hebrew, will that do? Tired of our local food, would you like some falafel or Malawach or Fatut? How about some peach flavored iced tea under the mud thatched roof?
To the unsuspecting Indian tourist, this might just look like a film set. Backdrop of giant wheels, bubbles in the air, turkish pants in the shops and one exotic photo for only five rupees pliss pliss
This is not to scowl or mock the exotic tourist extravaganza on which these places survive. Rather it is for those who like me realize late how the rural to semi rural spaces that used to define the essence of India are holding on to those huge colorful placards of charming Indian-ness while adapting to urban consumption underneath. The language of consumption is so skewed and firmly performed, managing to serve daal baati churma and Scotch in the same wink clearly shows things have changed so much.
Again, this is not to make a point or argue for some colonial dips that keep circus artists and camel riders in Pushkar and such towns alive. It's queer, almost unsettling, how the longing, aloof sand dunes that I was so eager to sleep on are a mere construct, towns of cardboard and nicely placed dolls. I move along, munching on Bruschetta, sipping on lemon tea, my embroidered jhola drags along.

The Taj hugging story

For those who wonder where I have been, I was off to Agra to meet the dead queen :P
Quite literally this month has been the most apt definition of adventure, not necessarily pleasant though. With a weekly record of losing almost everything valuable, including a phone (and hence no communication for days now on) I have done it all. This trip was with the Mumbai friend who had also (like many of us) not seen the Taj Mahal! Back when I was a little girl, my mother showed me pictures of her first trip after marriage ( I won't say the word!) and there she was, standing as tall as the Taj Mahal and touching its tip with her fingers! The photo caught my fascination and ever since I had been wanting to make "the" trip to Taj Mahal. We also visited the ruins of Fatehpur Sikri. A small advertorial note: choose youth hostel if you know not where to stay!
But, all the minute travelogue details apart, I have been asking myself, why write a travel entry? You would surely find a million others on famous places as such and once they are old, the information obsolete. Also, I have realized that increasingly, my travels are not about the place, they are about places within. Astonishingly how, while reprimanding a wicked bus conductor or bargaining with a guide, frowning at the fellow tourist or laughing as you eat aloo tikki in Taj ganj, every street, every wall, each man's two eyes and every woman's pocket holds just one little thing out to you: mirrors. They keep reflecting facets of you that come out, or are born in not-so-ordinary circumstances.
Coming back to this trip, as we walked patiently entering gate by gate to see the white marble monument of love and grandeur, people's voices kept ringing in my ears. Many told me how I'd be disappointed,how places don't live up to their hype. For me, it wasn't true. It was so gorgeous that we circled it for almost two hours before we even touched a brick of the main building. Almost postcard-ish in memory.
Such was the romance of the dead silent place it continues to ooze in bits and pieces, I can hardly visualize it entirety. While leaving, as I hugged it, I donated two beats of my throbbing life to the slumbering queen inside.

Monolith of an impasse, this.

Like the owl of the camel barn, two big glassy eyes can convey the meditated ranges of boredom and silence can be the final axe.
I wept and I wept and I wept endlessly. Hiccuping I wept. Life’s choicest memorabilia was nothing but bulbs of cold pus, dotted in bitter memories. I do this often, feel lacerated, dismembered into smaller people, almost like elves jumping right out of the rib cage, one of which cannot stop weeping at what has been done and lost. I felt so little and there was nothing to do really. Just keep emptying pints of bitterness, hurling pots to flood the floor. It hardly feels any better.
It’s not only bitter, it’s burdensome. To write is burdensome, and to keep feeling that there are two worlds, one that you can and the other you cannot describe in any code, image, syllable, and that you've scrambled to the highest corner of the former while your round head hits an impasse at the corner of the glass ceiling where three dimensions of mundane livelihood meet, now that is an impasse.
Also how the only thing in life worth learning, mastering, reveling and melting in easily is observation. Of me who thought words were my weapon, think again is necessary when you meet an army of other word-blasting debacles, slicing like carrots and flying like tiny plastic discs.
Someone must find what the lotus inspired, quick.

Divided we live, united we bicker

Once upon a time in the whirlwind of love, cemented in the heart of the very evil frowning society, then a few years into blue tint photos by the sea, a couple of months with the newly born daughter and a few arid years past, someone took the trouble to drag it in our bitter chance dialogs over fried eggs and orange juice. You spelled it, I signed, we sealed the pending hunch, it wasn't meant to be. For the daughter who now knows, who can spell it as well as us, it is called s-e-p-a-r-a-t-i-o-n. Divorces have an epistemology. Let me locate it for you.
They exist in films, imagination, they form a characteristic salient feature of the bad houses with dim lights that balance the diabetic good of our neighborhood, they are placed in drunken adulthood, abusive childhood, impulsive youth and a couple of 'changed-man/woman' experiences later, they finish with a big dramatic bang. Do you see? They define bad houses, bad parents, bad kids, bad homework, fear of intimacy, stigma, burden, baggage and a debris of flooding photos and clothes out of the attic. Do you see, you two? You brought them conclusively to the finer side of delightful household disagreements. You pin pointed the finely carved hollows of all our tree-houses. Such confusion, such dreadful thoughts come to me, if mine will end up like you. After all, I was one of the kids in the blue sea photos.
Why mustn't you be quiet and live like others do, half your life is already gone, the half promises to be a cycle of retrospective mourning followed by epiphanies of the metamorphosed life, discourses on change, on making colder harder selves, and a few vengeful afternoons later, the wrinkles will wash all this confidence away. For lovers to commit and publicize, for married and betrothed people to eulogize, for panegyric romeo tales, and for us unwilling to enter into the holy familial bonds, you must stay. Fight within the room and sleep over it, be doomed over that one hasty wink and stolen kisses. Make believe.

Sariska and the travel birthday:Fish, tigers and age

I sat again, fretting at the edge of the epic twentieth birthday, it will JUST be another birthday of 178 facebook wishes and 20 twitter mentions, 10 calls and millions of handshakes and hugs. It is me, my birthday! How could it possibly not be big, fun etc? And, enter Chandan Gomes and his prized silver Santro car. *drum rolls*
Sariska, the tiger reserve in Rajasthan happened, a drive, yes. Exhausting, yes. But, exciting-typical-Noopur birthday? Yes!
The night started with baked cheese cake and other chocolate cake and ended in... McDonalds! I realize over years, McDonalds has stood for me, many things. It stands for the face of consumerism, the shiny place of eternal advertisement poster happiness that I never participated in my childhood in. It stands for all the Barbies I never had, all the remote cars I watched from afar and all the Super Marios I played only at a chance relative house visit. My romanticizing of McDonalds must irk you, make you laugh too maybe.
The morning too began with the same. We did not spot tigers, I doubt there are any, but we pretended to be very interested in clicking pictures of Peacocks and monkeys, all other tourist followed us, making the most of their trip :) Come le dejeuener, hunger growled like a tiger from the depths of our stomachs and we landed at this haven of food, not only food for body,but food for thought! The picture do the job, though I'd allow myself some space to describe "The Quest" cafe in the middle of Sariska town/village, its walls etched in "Free Tibet" slogans and wind chimes, surreal!
The walls dripped of poems, painted with fish, wouldn't you think this is some dreamy destiny moment, for me to encounter wall full of fish and sweet word nothings and Buddha mentions on the wall! This is what birthdays should be, a moment of crazy crazy delight. I couldn't get over it the entire day, of course. Hence, the fish eye pictures too! :)
Thanks much to all the cats, fishes, Pablo Nerudas, friends, frenemies and unknowing, unsuspecting display picture admirers, birthdays like these ease the anxiety of turning 20 (or 47, as many would agree). To celebrate the larger travel of life, by the metaphor of the car travel, it was a literary moment of joy!

Picture, lens curtsey: Chandan Gomes

Bah-bye Taiwan- Day III and return

Anecdote one:
Perched at the edge of the Shi'lin market road, as she munched harmlessly onto some veggies, a taxi driver harkened in the background, collecting all his English words with great effort, an unmatched prowess to convey: "Eu... Eu...ahr a rabbit!" Huh, what! And,then came the aha moment, well yeah, I was munching on a carrot. He wasn't the only one, almost every third passerby was slightly amused at a carrot muncher, so was the shop keeper who broke into genuine hundred percent laughter. Of course, even you would, if 95 shops in your market sold every variety of meat possible, and the other 5 had fruits (rose apples that leak and burst in your mouth!). This was the story of every lunch and dinner in Taiwan, the vegetarian grumbling and fussing drones in the air, "NOT meat, not chicken, not beef, not pork, not fish, not salmon, not eggs...ve-jee-tay-rean". This baffled most people there, there remains little to eat, though you can always resort to rice cakes, tofu and bean pastes!

Anecdote two: KFC is home
So, after a satisfying shopping spree for 2.5 hours, hunger screamed from the deepest corners of my stomach. This is how I thought of food in Taiwan: Hunger-food-daal-rice-not-vegetables-fruits-mcdonalds-all non veg-despair-hunger-apples-sigh. But, I thought to take my chances, to go to KFC to eat vegetarian, yes, something a normal Indian vegetarian would never do. Of course I found nothing, but I desperately bought a beverage. As I sipped on it, the familiar taste, of at least something tasting the same made me feel so good! For people who scream hoarse at these capitalist food chains, there are certain experiences that only KFC and McDonalds reproduce anywhere you go. Thank God for that.

Story of the city, workshop and scrubbed clean solitude:
The workshop to begin with, was good, very vague but, a lot of food for thought. The people I met, never had imagined meeting someone from Kyrgyztan or Moldova, but I did and loved it! The city, yes, how American! All clean, large 'freeways', less people, the modern buildings, typical urban imagination, tall and shiny. Maybe its just a scared little girl's first time in the foreign lands, but it was so different than where I live. Not only do cows and dogs stay out of the picture, but also the personal space seemed larger. The freeways to me, seemed hopelessly alone, or maybe I am just very uncomfortable with halogen lamps and buzzing cars. These are the fleeting impressions of Taipei, though something remarkable to leave you all with: the way the people thank and welcome anybody at all. Shie shie, for all the warmth.
Bah-bye (head tilted at 45 and hand shows peace sign) :)

Taiwan-Taipei: Part II (The Digital Natives talk back)

Day 2 in Taipei:
Set the alarm for 6 (IST) and wake up to 9:36 a.m. Taiwanese time, rush hour. Made it in the nick of time, talking back starts. Flash talks, presentations, keynote speeches, activity, lots of drilling, questioning, talking it through to the extent that this digital native begins to doubt her own focus/aims/agenda etc. Confusion is healthy (at least on the first day). The evening follows with an equally packed entertaining city tour. The Shi'da night market! Trust me, this has to be one of the most intercultural (hah, I had to use that as a foreign delegate :P )experiences I've had: vegetarian Greek food in Taipei on the Chinese Valentine's day! Yes, it was the valentine's day (or a similar legend) here and the menu had pink hearts (I sound like a journalist now, this daily blogging destroys my obscurity techniques).
So, the highlights of the day, things you might want to do if you too get a free unexpected trip to Taiwan:
Stinky Tofu!!! As the name suggests, this food stinks horribly, almost (mildly disgusting) but you should eat it, worth an experience. True, it grows on you, like beer. (I am not the faint hearted, mind you!)
Jasmine tea: Iced tea with jasmine flavor, I tried the orange and Jasmine before that, tea is something I've learnt to appreciate here.
Of course I owe the pleasure of a head dive into Taiwanese peculiarities to Nishant and Zona (shie shie!).
Now, that all the worldly details are done with, the parallel universe of the mind and the eyes are discovering the place bit by bit, open spaces, fewer people, vacuum nothings happening around and giving some temporal space to gulp the surroundings in. Sleep evades me, rightly this city doesn't make me want to curl up and snore. There are few pictures with this post, of the food, street, people at conference.
(ps. the waiters are really cute and earphones really funky :P)
Goodnight world, too soon for India, too late for Taiwan!

Taiwan-Taipei: Part I (The travel)

There, made it. Crossed the seas and got the stamps. Ran around and seen all the gigantic airports. This is of course quite unlike the well cherished 'first overseas trip' dream I ever harbored which included the entire family crying and waving goodbye, garlands and some fancy overcoats (drama is essential). Before I start on how this trip is turning out so far, you all unknown thousand faces must know, I will try my best to update everyday, for four days at least, sort of live blogging, with pictures.
Now, philosophically, beyond the realm of yummy duty free swiss chocolates and a purse full of money, waiting for you to spend it, there lies a larger sigh. There is always some respiration in between a lot of action. This particular deep breath was a nostalgic realization that people are shaped by their pasts. Everything that we do is usually motivated by our past experiences and while occupied at the surface level with this exercise,we are also simultaneously creating the present of the past (like Schlondorff's 'Ten minutes...") And that is why, the oh-so-existential self seeks oils and spice in the midst of lush south Indian cuisine, and the moment it migrates to the ever desired dreamy north India, it runs to the nearest 'Sarvanna Bhavan'. There, while eating the last morsel of butter masala roast dosai, I realize the past is changing too, the present's filling it.

Now, for the Formosa isle, or Tai-won! It rarely occurs that I board a flight/train early. I ran again, almost missed it. Here I am posting some pictures of the "much" coveted Hong Kong airport that I could hardly see, given the rush and some Taipei street photos. The food, yes, boiled vegetables and rice, some awesome canned orange and jasmine tea and a few chopstick battle hours later, the digital native is breathing online :P Tomorrow should be fun, the workshop starts and so does the city tour! Will post, as the promise is made. Only to remember that they break real fast :)

The ambitions of the station side maid

As I start on these ways every morning, wading through scattered left-overs of the party at house number 70, the night leaves letters on the road, adding to the hang over of the 'baithak' at Sharma Sahib's. The screeches of inebriated men and women, high on power and pomp, mirth and recklessness, drip down the rain spattered hoardings of these mum shops and stores. It is difficult to make a living out of so little and yet feel any dignity for self. When always the dreams are powered by petrol but the house still runs on fire wood, its a shame to boast to the mirror. But then, I have been plagued by dreams of grand dark milky ways and slant angled free ways and most importantly, dreams of perfect people, almost myth like. The one that sways lily like yet unrooted gentle yet strong with potent cloud swallowing prowess and yet like how, such ordinary black lush curls. So on... Till then it is play, the mind that lives through body waits a spell of rain to clear the old ones who could never live an epic, a making of a big self inside their heads. The heady pompous cocaine drug of life keeps flowing as I watch each day, an exhibit of hundreds of lives parade in the trains that slither past. I feel the throbbing heart of my country in my soles as they tread tracks.

(ps. these are random excerpts for now but I hope to bind them up in a play or something, once character sketch is done)

Cloudy obsession

I have discovered that clouds are the most beautiful things to look at. Also, while I look at them, I very conveniently walk past all of you. :) I also hear rains wash the places and bring new ages. So, the red filtered clouds.




Another:

Krishna and the snake

I drew this picture when I chanced upon the poem by Narsinh Mehta that captures the confrontation of Krishna and the snake in the water.

Momentary betrayal

What does a mass of eels copulating and growing into a grayer, bigger ball, levitating, floating in the middle of a hollow skull feel? All violating images of you with magnified eyes through bottle glass and fleeing tired eyes that just rest on me. I bite my lips off there.

From the bureau of my very very infected dreamy buns,like an almost ecstatic moan of my very very rabied heart, I love the idea of violating you, an act in untying and denying, as you inch wider and the gaps grow, into the far reaching abyss of your speaking flower, the shrieking invitation from the moist 'u' pockets between your thumping rubber stamp toes.

After feeling so foolish, I sometimes wish there was a bag called universe/space/whatever and while I speak things that I know just before speaking should not be spoken, I could say them inside that bag. They are said, yet not. That would save me a lot of betraying emotions and further shame.

Once you leave, this is how I recuperate.

Experience and time

Experience is temporal. So is growth. To grow, is to bathe in time, ceremoniously. Let stream, drop, mugs and froth, all pour gradually, slide down and once gone, you know what growing means. Similar is experience, to throw yourself into something that you already know is not going to be extremely enjoyable or pleasant, for instance, to cheat on someone, or to wake up in all consciousness to keep an appointment; all are experiences that one must, while in their temporal space, endure. Look around while you inhabit them because that makes you a mere experience-r, not the inflicted/victim/perpetrator. Why do people find it so difficult to tone down their emotional responses to situations? I can almost 'ask' myself not to feel excited or disappointed. Performance, the more subtly you accept, the better it feels. Of course, for death, love, poetry and other such huge gusts of demanding impulses, one may give away a moment or so, but otherwise, in retrospect, to feel the untainted emotion in an experience is boring. Simply tedious and boring. Can't possibly go back to fall in unconditional, exciting love. So much energy and so many gestures.
And, then while swinging such in an empty park on a not-so-important sunny day with no one around, one may not feel the need and the consequent lack of anything at all.

In buckets, a dozen by the port

The fish that stays suspended in water,
Opened in the middle like your coral powder box,
The fish onomatopoeic, resounds like the slap on your rounded buttock,
The fish ever emerging and dipping in, disappearing, like the splattering saliva
from the peaks of your excitement;
The fish when I rub it to the cheek,
Like your bony hands greased by caressing machines day long,
Is the so edible love letter that I write and eat away and bite and eat away,
Make another,
End up buying a fine one and in the honor of your ordinary, naive, not sufficiently emotive self,
My fantasies of you and the fish make the romance worthwhile.

The good God' man

Dear offliner, the dramatic offliner to the grey disappeared imaginary soul mate on the other end, white lining the irony of my unfinished sensitive message:
Something tragic is about to happen, or maybe it won't. The way my mother described, he might just die. There is this good God's man, who is lying in the government hospital's common ward with a wired liver and failing organs, spitting blood all the time. It sounds extremely melodramatic until I reveal that he is mother's related brother of distant times. But, the rest is perfectly sad, the wired liver, blood vomits, no money and poor connections. Mother's incessant monologue wouldn't have moved me if she hadn't mentioned his desperate bitterness against life. How bitter the good God's man felt towards something that no one could replace for him. No one could live his life for him, it wasn't a full time occupation or a long, tedious cricket match. You simply get no substitute here. He was ready to call quits, that is all he wishes for, in the energy he could summon to speak. Every joke he makes lying on the bed, falls flat on his nose, as if his only entertainment was also the same life's cruel ironies that seem to fatigue him now.
What is tragic is to see the mess you've made of yourself. And, the worst of it is when you can't stop feeling sorry for what you've made and you have to live with it. Live in that bed, motionless, recounting every time someone cheated you, every time you started something new and it failed, flopped, all the internal failures that you lived a thousand times more than you could afford to show. To think you'd live your last few moments so bitter, melts me in agony.
I could live for you, die in stead, or mend every misery, but how am I to make all that bitterness and failure go especially when all you've been is a good God's man?

Just ageing

Thus spake banter girl.

On growth and reading:

As I lay reading Saul Bellow's 'The victim' in the cradling train's upper berth, my legs stretched far wide, out of the little cushion plank and my hands spilled out from the other edges. I realized I had long overgrown the most pertinent measure of Indian common size. At this exact moment of discomforting over growth I also realized the truth of vegetarian living: Grass eaters eat mushrooms only out of sheer miserable abstinence and replacement for lamb feet and cow tails and goat balls. I could be wrong but mushrooms, really? Gross little brown buttons.

On loving and leaving:

When we keep ending love notes in 'love', we realize the effort it takes to keep the almost natural yet terrifying 'I' in the beginning and 'You' in the end from spilling in. You have to restrain, keep it real. Keep it sober.
And, that I'd keep loving many men but just two before one of them dies and they make an exemplary loner of me.

Conclusions make good paragraphs:

Isn't life in all twenty six dimensions in all the parallel universes, including the one inside, only defined apt by one, paradox?

Our secret little anachronistic problem

I am emotional, very. And, quite not trendy at being so. In French, 'vague' /(vaah-g)/ means wave, it suits the sentiment of waves better. There are times when I excessively day-dream, drifting from one thought to another and switching back and forth. In these moments, the agenda is set, think about death of near and dear ones, move on to fantasiing about the lost forgotten fancies, switch to evoking more sensitive thoughts about people dying in freak accidents everyday, flip to ice melting, global warming, then suddenly I picture myself in a film (mostly a political one, more often than not in 'Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi') and start wondering how it would be to give speeches on stages, then cut to making love underneath a long library table on a hot summer afternoon. Finally, the Facebook page fills my thoughts, of comings of people, of travels, of photos, updates, I start comparing my life to those of the others in the same times as mine. The synchronic Saussurean study of comparative success of people like me in different situations just to be reminded that comparisons are odious. This reminds me I didn't finish the Matsuo Buson book, which reminds me that every time I read minimalist poetry, it beats me how concisely images strike to people. This can of course, only lead to reminding me that I may never paint like Degas or Monet, though their strokes look so simple and technically achievable. That calls for an empathizing with the other million or less who grieve for want of talent like me. Then, I start thinking about the girl who so strongly overcame her father's death and lo, I know not whether to run tree to tree with a flag or crawl in grime as symbolic of talent dearth. Very old-fashioned, slightly far-fetched.

Green killing by hope

Rainforest circling. She was looking up at the sky, covered in dark viscous green foliage. Let me take sometime to make you see what I do. Such dark green with shadows of black, green not in venomous but green as in the paintbrush of those clouds that are fat grey, waiting to roar, moving with the elephant's poise and so thickly packed to squeeze in oceans. Such was the foliage, ambushing every look upward to the sky, not knowing for one if what lies beyond is blue, orange, yellow or the night itself has lunged into the most intense moment of its waveful orgasms out of sleep, into waking. Such was the silence, not empty but heavy. And such was the word for the mood, heavy. Everything was so heavy from above the green shade, a little beneath in the smaller canopied air, further down inside her and beneath the ground into me.

There must have been wilder moments of such silence in the history of time, though here history was hardly a concern, nothing more than stacking moments falling like dominoes, passing as quickly as the tapping of the bronze vessel as courtesans swirl spun in colorful cobwebs, weaving another as they travel four corners of a room with black and white, criss and cross tiles. What is different is, this room echoes. The air is not heavy. Do you sense how all that we built in the span of a few words above vaporizes in this room, here? It is the echoes.

I've been thinking about dancing, except that every walk on the street is like one. Heaviness anchors all that I feel, beneath the ground, as I said, with million eyes already prepared with chronicles of praises,on this rainforest of a Jupiter place, the gravity leaves me only one place, beneath the ground. While some of me stands above and some of me dances, telecast in some other rooms.

Allo, one photo please!

These are the most frequently occurring utterances that I heard as I traversed along the western coastline from Hampi, much inland to Gokarna and then Goa. Deck up in some mismatched bright clothes and carry a big fancy camera, keep pointing it to people and you will know how both of them interact: some serious lens talk with those beautiful village made photogenic visages ready to pose as exotically, bringing out each emotion in every young wrinkle, depth and curve. Quite amusing, how people in public spaces get affected by camera lenses. The idea of being watched through a lens, as I hypothesized and kept speculating throughout the trip across varied reactions from people including the upfront refusal to be clicked and the sly sliding into the imagined frame, all of this generated some curiosity as to what these people be thinking of getting their photo clicked by someone who is not even going to give it to them, what happens of this picture, do people think it is safe or does it glorify them?
So, I take some space to narrate some anecdotal camera encounters (camera almost transforms into some magical parrot character!) and the above pasted pictures are also of those curious clever street models who very willingly got etched into visual history by me :) As we strutted in Hampi, so touristically well pruned and marked, boards spit recommendations of the 'Lonely Planet' and in a conservative town of ruins, streets spill out uber bohemian libertine dresses, you meet little Indian angels all clad in modest third world attire. The moment they see your camera, their eyes light up, the tidied expressions act much as the rouge, they know how to pose, they know where to stand, such composition friendly muses positioned all over!
While clicking old to young, white to black, tiny and big, the traditional Lambada tribe people and others, we met a shop owner in Gokarna who sells temple stuff. And as I clicked his picture, he fished out a tiny verbal memoir of his previous encounters with the camera, a 'URL' where you could see his photo and he also suggested how to best take his picture! On the other hand, old 'ajji' clad in Lambada costume promptly recited: "Allo, fifty rupees photo!"
As speculated, it is perhaps the tourism driven daily happenings of the place that translate clicking pictures into the acts of being published in some medium, also an appreciation of the 'exotic' value imbibed by the people of the place. Also, there are some who shy away, the panoptic gaze, feeling of being surveilled, of being shot to some undetermined limelight and put in front of thousands of unknown eyes somewhere else, the lack of control over the act.
To sum up, the past few days of lens talking have been delightful in the least, to plop yourself in the middle of the busy market, watch as some stop, some pose, some smile, the others squirm suspiciously, walk out of the frame, some plead and the rest start hollering in excitement, as if all those are waiting for one attempt at being celebrated and all you need is, "Allo, one photo please!"

Little maladies of the ever molten heart

But, there is always an ounce of pragmatism in all affective dealings of the heart. There is always an element of personal reveries and side business in the distributed matters of the bargain.
There was once a black cat, lanky, little fur. Someone went round and round and wound her in red wool, tugged somewhere, pulled at other ends, fit the cat in awkward corners in an open room and then tied an end to the wall on a side. No matter how much the cat jumps and throbs and pounces and purrs, in the end she is flung back with equal action and reaction to the wall. The poor wall is constant though, silent and calm, as pale as never, perhaps hurting a little somewhere with all the throwing but resilient in pain and composed in multiple layers of paint. The cat could only feel one.
Foolishness is sine qua non to all rationale of love and so is the act of balancing. Just that here the ingredient is extreme patience, understanding, packing bags, graceful goodbyes and an utter state of chaos that plagues and stings the mind like a deep stuck splinter in some skin fissures. It keeps going black and blue amidst phases of resolve, of standing up, of forgetting, of joy, of thorough anger. Pure anger and pure madness. If I were you, I'd never throw it all away with the softest and lamest reason of distances. First you distance from you, then you distance from mind,then you keep in distance a solid pretty image of our beautiful frozen time together.
Edit: I felt like there were bricks in my stomach, each preserved as futile as the other rags, old papers etc. But, those should also lift magically and melt into clay and time that apparently heals it all should cork your movements. So is not true. Every evening I skim through almost a spectrum of emotions ranging from immense detachment to extreme disgusting creepy clinging. Only some of them at certain times I can show you. But, as I distance, I am confident that old self is wakening. I just can't get over one conundrum of broad daylight, why all that needed to be dumped into the sewers.

Tagging blind with a man

Throwing the head back in laughter or the folding the laughter back in the head, he dispels all the doubt as I breathe into sudden normalcy. But, to think of it, I had been hoping for exactly the opposite somewhere deep down, no deepest, at the same pit of the vertical well of spiraling madness that hangs just a rung, suspended from my stomach. I was lifting and depositing huge boulders of literal, dried, thickened cement there and going in an eight formation only to collapse in the last shadowy cold portions of the caves that sprout from each spiral section of the stairwell. The well is just one of the morbid fleeting emotions you evoke when you bind me up in circular posters and plaits of black cloth, hook me by the arm and take me on a stroll in some black cube. It blinds me, little fleeting betrayals of emotions, all terrified, all jutted and ashamed, melting, drowning and sinking in my own lugged, gassed flipping doors, one by one, open and close, close then open, then regret then relapse, resolutions, I knew the better of me then, or wait! It is now that I have what I should. I am blind, not seeing but hearing the constant mumble, the low rumble, that like of leaves, of the only language I have not known, of bolted bronze locks, thud! The sound of the world tightly knotted in your fists while you strut me around the arm, of the only little place that I cannot squiggle into. All remedies in vain. I am begging on the knees and searching each inch of the relic for overlooked openings. Such terror of the polished beauty, sure of its worth. Makes you feel all sand like, being poured again and again, slithering effortlessly down to the same ground, squirming in limited ability.

First of the heartfelt fuzzy farewells

To,
Missus Literature clad in elaborate sequined shawls and beautiful saris, standing like the Marianne with a more urgent cause on the brink of a literary revolution. The churner of all the plodded fat greasy brains in my half fantasy and half nightmare of a real classroom. To study, to learn, to write, to talk, pose and proclaim poetry, misquoted paragraphs of long dead revolts, all this comes carefully arranged in an embroidered exotic cloth bag to us Jezebels of the civilisation of coded clothes and numbered people. To foster such beasts, little devouring, completely shunning responsibility, dragging you in all mirth to the same marshes of pale drying grass and thorny mud dips, where the pride is of reclaiming the dirty, the thrown, the rejected, the drunk and smashed heap of pigs with a guitar, crooning to silly dead mean of the long past revolts. How your eyes gleam at revolt? How pitifully naively you indulge in the big fat project of futile trips to the past, kitschy mimicking of hope fuelled trips to glory? Coming in, like a mad little swirling wave, the seriousness of a physicist and the aspiration of a young girl who furiously paints by the sea. Such ridiculous statements, you. Such painful flogging, like a swarm of moths we do. Tongue that stutters while drifting into reveries like you, mind that sticks so faithfully clerklike to the residual prudish modest writing. That which sifted and escaped in three years of rigorous iron-cut literary studies, needed the hoarse barking of a lily you.
In what you and I share and bleed for in our secret conversations, and for all the smirks that others who stuff our blank dazes with, we gladly saved what we both love dearly. Suspicion of my fate has it that someday I might be pounding head similarly on some other grey walls, that could be my only giftworthy promise to you.

Simple till the start of ending

Long long time since I haven't written. So, I see that people stick on only for the cheap thrilling stories of the upturned life of teen-ish girls, I must commit to writing again. Though there's not much of a 'bang' idea to rant this time.
What do you do when you push yourself, consciously into something that you've always envied in others? Does it ever happen to you? You keep staring at a face and the nose seems suddenly so big, like a misplaced cartilage on a mummy's face and the jaw is no longer so sharp and strong. And, when you could only stare and groan in fantasy, plunge in horror tales of unfortunate non-happenings, the beast was so marvelous, little almonds for slits and fingers like glued pieces of symmetric bone. Then, well you boned it and you can't stop moaning about it. Later, its just quick pulses of feverish pretense in the name of love fever. No fervor, no odes, in it and you have it and you know it that you don't want it but you never probably did and were not meant to fall for it. But, while you have it now you must keep it since all do it and you won't get it if you don't act it. If you kept wondering, falling asleep with an open mouth, if something was wrong before you figured it all, nothing was. Perhaps the only problem was an overdose of philanthropic company with a misle of horny deficient toads (of whom you thought you were one). You tripped for the ugliest story and launched yourself in complete earnest desire for sane little happy givings and gettings and might in the between of the gap of the fingers, smell the ginger or fish for a ring and find a Dalloway in the bag, get uneasy where the Woolf dreams went away. But, why need them at all when perfect bliss encounters you very ordinarily. There's no mistletoe, no blood tear sweat either. It's very simple and uttered in plain English. To return, rather to force return from such astoundingly simple encounters is painful.