Memory Loss and Retro Watching

There is the thing and there is the folding. There is both here. In time I will explain. But how would someone who is losing memory write? What would be the affect, the stylistic choice and the preoccupation of an affected body and mind? There is a lot of hurry to hold onto things, a lot of repetition of words one is proud of, there is a lot of searching the mind for that thing, that song, the words, who said that thing, did we have the conversation? Then embarrassment because it is still early stages and it all comes back to you, it was that other person I said this to. It doesn't matter. I am calling it all stress. Apparently stress makes you forget and blank out. So this is the folding in this post, the larger concern behind wanting to pen otherwise sort of routine things. But the preoccupation with and awareness of memory loss makes one a kind of writer who quickly puts titles and makes blank sections for the self that is soon going to forget what the original aim was.
Moving on, as I was recently telling a colleague who thought I was angry or unhappy about some discussed research collaboration, I quickly clarified that it was literally because I was in a lot of bodily pain. And the diagnosis of fibromyalgia was on my mind when they asked me to mentor someone. That once someone had put a label on my chronic pain, it had become easier to visualize the geography of my pain, two circles behind the elbows, the desire to dig my thumbs into my scapular ridges - it all became a contained and mapped phenomenon. I was too busy thinking about it and being irritated and bloated with the medicine that the collaboration wasn't on my mind at all, even less the terms of it.
And as I've been saying to some of you who might read this, it is both well known and theorized how embodiment generates a certain sensibility and the sensible and often creates the path for a certain life philosophy or even politics. Disability studies and Queer studies have taken this formative ground of experience, non-normative experience and altered experiences as the beginning points for reimagining the world. There is also this paper on cochlear implants that has definitely stayed with me and then my colleague told me of someone's work on epileptic seizures and how it has created a differential understanding of space, spatiality, the dangerous potentiality of objects when and if one is about to have a seizure but also a keen and different ability to sense (sense-ability) if someone else might be about to have one. I am now reading Elaine Scarry's important book (The Body in Pain). An accidental loss of hearing or a prolonged loss of memory then become personality. Having PCOD turns into cysterhood and a new visibility that lets you identify others like you, the discomfort housed in innocuous ticks and gestures (why is she constantly adjusting her hair? Oh I know). I guess the newest addition to my sense-abilities is both, my pain but also the loss of my erstwhile near eidetic memory.
It was scary at first, I am not used to blanking out when I close my eyes to access my mind palace (for those who know me, know I do this). It was part of my superpower repertoire, alongside the abilities to hear when phones are charging and to be able to go into rooms and retrieve objects without switching the light on. Now I just forget things. It sucks. But it has made me better as a person I think. Having grown up as a convent school kid, being raised on punitive rewards - being on time and remembering things were in themselves the mark of good character. I think they are good things but like all other good things they have assumptions of neuro-typical and normative living. Hopefully I will be more generous henceforth with people who forget things. For now I frantically calendar to cope with my forgetting. But committing it to writing is also the folding, for when I might forget this too.

The other thoughts I want to commit to writing are my feelings about the latest and probably the last season of GLOW. For a few years now, there has been a solid return to the US 80s in pop culture. The first time I guess I noticed it was with the success of the movie Drive and its music and clothes. But now consuming retro or consuming a certain slice of the past is mainstream. We are yet to fully dress like that but it's as if living for the 80s nostalgia is very much a part of living in 2019 (at least to me). There is obviously Twin Peaks, Mad Men, Stranger Things, the various reboots of older shows but also more recently Pose, GLOW etc that made me think about something else. So while reading critical theory one is often cautioned against a 'presentist' mode of engagement, meaning that things must be historicized, they must not be read as if they are written in the present time or for us right now. [Aside: must-read on "how to read" texts: http://dumit.net/how-i-read/]

 Especially when texts like Lolita are criticized, people are reminded when pedophilia (or rather love for younger women) became problematic and outlawed. And so on it allows for a more generous or purposive reading of everything from Marx to Gandhi to whatever else. It also in some sense allows us to excavate radical potential - a Jean Rhys or an Ambedkar writing and saying things that once historicized appear so ahead of their times, it would take a historical mode to recognize that. Some of these underlying tensions have also informed why people including me, are frustrated with a certain feminist politics from older (aged) feminist women who called out #thelist (because it is a temporal move, against zeitgeist, it took us so long to temporally drag everyone here and here we have come far). Anyway, coming back to GLOW and Pose also, while watching Pose (also Paris is Burning), I was just constantly marveling at the audacity of queens to ask for treatment and rights, walk and wear things, just do things that felt very contemporary in 2019. Of course in Paris is Burning, there is this beautiful sequence where queens hold a downtown business fashion ball and ridiculously dress up as very serious business men in ill fitted suits and boring glasses. It was beautiful, to be able to reveal the absurdity of a cultural form in their own times (when these businessmen were truly taken seriously).
But it did not strike me until this recent season of GLOW where one of the lead characters who is dating a rancher is suddenly reminded that she is not his (business) partner but his girlfriend. And then she just pauses and her face changes expression for a while which gave me enough time to interrogate my desires for her ending. I started wondering if the directors would, like the recent spate of lazy social justice commentaries ("let's just make Bond a woman"), give this 80s woman a contrived ending and would she just say fuck you and walk out (like a 2019 woman) or would she fall back in her own time (which would also be sad and lost opportunity like in Mad Men). Not revealing what happens, I must say that I really enjoyed how they resolved her dilemma eventually. But importantly, I got so fascinated with the retro as a genre because it is indeed very tricky to animate the retro (use past time as canvas) to do anything - you could just tell an old story, induce nostalgia, rewrite stories, shift focus on minor characters. I am sure there is a lot of writing available on the retro as an aesthetic and as narrative form but I am still gathering my thoughts. I do think that GLOW found clever ways to use retro to speak to contemporary women's concerns perhaps by playing with time and empathy - times when one relegates actions to their time and times when actions were eternal, as if establishing ethic through action. This also reminds me of the time when I really got into sound studies and for anyone who might reach the end of this post, please do read this: https://soundstudiesblog.com/tag/falguni-pathak/
:D

Year Five/28

A lot of inadequacy and year end fatigue being processed here. Some heartbreak too. I was watching a Katrina Kaif interview after the awful movie 'Zero' and when asked, at a high point in her career, what her biggest fear was, she said it was the fear of not being in a relationship...of not having a family and being married and love (before it's too late). She feared it at sixteen and she feared it at thirty and then it happened, she fell out of the relationship that she thought was 'it'. Of course she was referring to the strange celebrity creature that continues to roam untamed, roving past, ensnaring every woman who might seem on top of her game, leaving her with tattoo imprints and feelings of not enough. Of course, I also very personally wove these stories into my own, asking what or who could be enough for (some) men. Their stories and mine seem to indicate this is a futile quest. But as someone prone to approach things analytically, treat it as a problem, even with some degree of detachment, I find myself swinging between efforts to fix men (sometimes women) and then withdrawing. The withdrawal times have gotten longer, the paean to selfhood has gotten stronger. Sometimes I even offer my own karmic justifications for my bad feelings (hearts broken must be accounted for with equal number of heartbreaks, it's only fair). There are also Warsan Shire, Beyonce, Solange, Beth Gibbons - each accompanying a stage of grief, disappointment, realization and then return to the productive contentment of being self-contained and re-centered. It will happen in time but, to go back to the Kaifkaesque (hehe) heteronormative anxiety of 'family before it's too late', I can safely say that 28 and the year 5 of PhD is probably my year of Inversion, the year when queerness has seemed like so much effort and the year when I have resolutely, statistically fallen off statistical heteronormative charts (your friends are getting married, some have babies, where will you work and when does the phd end, who will wait for you, why have you cut your hair). Queerness doesn't just mean not being straight, a queerness of being, a path of life praxis that you are either put on by what you read and who teaches you, or your own realization that you couldn't fall in line (in time), like many others do. The accompanying warning you don't get is that it is incredibly hard to stand still in uncharted territory. You have to build and rebuild, develop tentative rules and rewards for what is going to feel normal within queer.

Unfortunately I don't have much new to offer by way of this post, if you gave me space I'd start writing about love, self, men, women all the time. I am slightly proud that I have had this blog for ten years now. It's okay, the earlier stuff may make me cringe now but that's okay. If someone asked me for my movie of the year, it would be Una Mujer Fantastica. For a brief teeny bit after I cut my hair I felt something like dysphoria - who you love gender wise is closely associated and sounded off of who you think you are gender wise (fluid or binary). This movie rarely ever lapses into self-doubt, takes the performance of gender (whatever it takes to feel a stable gender identity for the moment, to be alive, productive and to survive) so much as a matter of fact, and then it starts showing the world that  a well adjusted transwoman has to navigate despite her own adjustedness, despite having her priorities and tendencies to give love, draw boundaries, right. It's been a year of gender play and a year of being incredibly close to fantastic, inspiring strong people, including these wonderful online groups where hundreds of queers come together to build survival on a daily basis. I couldn't tell you the details even if I wanted to. But as always, I want to celebrate these things, these acts and individuals of endurance in a hope that I can overcome my own feelings of inadequacy. 

On woman and authority

It's heartbreaking to know that there are at least three people/places/groups in the world who, if approached by me right now, will launch a barrage of hate speech. Not like the serious legal hate speech with rape and murder threats but the kind that can definitely ruin a whole day. I had a panic attack again today, after months of not having one. I couldn't breathe, things inside me were sinking fast. I tend to feel pressure more than other people do. Sometimes it is even a strength, it keeps me going twenty four hours a day. Stress is my coffee. Sometimes stressful circumstances overlap with PMS. But, even despite being aware of my relatively fragile mental health (I actually do think I fare better than others in terms of absorbing negative stuff and hitting back even), this time I just can't take it. Warm tears are rolling down as I write.
I can't deal or understand or change people who irresponsibly say mean things, abusive things, flippant and callous things in general or to me specifically. When I signed up to lead a student organization on campus, the worst I anticipated was fundraising ( I am terrified of raising funds) and maybe people not turning up for our events. I also knew it would mean a lot of visibility among the desi crowd on campus. I guess I just wasn't prepared for a random batch mate commenting on my dress and appearance to a group of fellow drunk engineering students (probably this is my price for leaving Humanities?). I wasn't going to let it go. I gave it back, good. He seemed to realize he had fucked up. He kept quiet, basically he knew this could be more trouble. The good or bad thing about dealing with non-American passport holding assholes (especially engineers aspiring to go to Silicon Valley) is that the threat of deportation keeps them polite, civil, tame. It just does. All our interactions are marked by the passport we constantly carry in our pockets. Fast forward to another drunk guy batch mate requesting to use my bathroom and locking himself in. I actually dialled 911 for the first time and it wasn't scary. I couldn't sleep that night obviously. Not just these, other micro-aggressions are daily business. Some guy likes you but if you don't reciprocate, all his friends won't stop speculating. He won't even talk to you anymore. Some other colleague whom I have seen being careless and irresponsible for a long time, has a very different response to me and some others.
I guess I reached my breaking point today (at least serious enough to write this) because of some guy screaming "I am not your servant" through a facebook window. I don't care if he reads this. I've blocked him everywhere. I am physically and mentally scared of him only because his stance in every conversation is "I am not about to be walked all over by a girl". He once actually said "Don't anger me". Imagine me saying that to someone :)
A few days ago (a friend and) I got amply abused and chastised on a group we run. We contemplated shutting the group down except one would manually have to remove 90,000 people to shut it. People called me an NRI (as if it should be an insult), told me I had no clue what this group (that I thought of and built 4 years ago) meant and stood for. I could have totally donned the researcher hat and been like, oh how interesting, users don't even know who started this but look at their ownership. I am rambling. Look at the last blog post I wrote and the comments on it. I didn't aspire to be publicly visible through what I do. I do what I do because I like it. Another friend (who I thought was an ally) sobered me last week. He said "all men actually do talk shit about women, some just disguise it well". He seemed to imply it's a biological or systemic thing. "It's just the way we are" I was so shocked someone could hold that as a worldview I didn't know what to say because I know men who categorically walk away from such stuff.
The point is, every time I tell myself that being a leader, initiating something and being the face of it is going to invite negative attention, hate, criticism but also immense satisfaction of having done things; I feel more drained than happy. And, I am not even doing this on a scale that many other women and men do. What of course hurts is that as a woman, a lot of that stuff also becomes about how I look, where I live, my public photos, emails etc. I hope this post doesn't get read by many people because the comment section is open to all.
Probably I just meet a lot of shitty people. How do you cope with them? All suggestions are welcome.

Rubik's cubing

It's a good time to be writing. That's pretty much what I have been doing for butter and varieties of bread for sometime now. To give a general update, the last thesis chapter is yet to be penned but I have received rare assurance that I will sail through. Also, I have been filling a thousand forms and learning about all kinds of exchange rates and money transferring as preparation for the near future. The next post will of course announce the big changes. For now some other thoughts.

On writing and being alone

Almost a year ago when I interviewed for a paid doctoral position at a university, after the academic questions, my interviewer gently asked, "L_ is a quaint town in a small country compared to yours. It will basically mean spending a lot of time alone and that can require a fair bit of adjustment since you come from a bustling city like D_ and are used to interacting with so many people. How do you feel about that?" In my head I was repeating my own Cartesian formulation - I never am, I can be everything. Basically, in order to get something or somewhere in life, I've accepted the accompanying painful periods of abrupt change and quick adjustment including shared apartments, rooms, beds, bathrooms, food and all that. I doubt it can get rougher than JNU. So, I promptly replied, "Oh, I am used to working on my own. In fact I prefer being left to my own devices." I wasn't entirely sure, even when I said it I felt a kind of sad, cold image of yet another still evening in my head. But, like I said, there's no option really. I didn't get the job. I was partly relieved.

A year later as I am figuratively and perhaps literally entering burnout stage again (in my head I've got bruises on my elbows and finger tips like little forest patches on fire) I have been asking myself to breathe deep. A year ago there were moments when I felt slow descent into madness. I wasn't going insane, I was just melting like I no longer knew if I was making sense to me or anyone else. That was a bad time but it's over. From there to this day, I've come a long way in being alone with myself - a given for academic life and travel. That is probably why even the recent breakup wasn't exactly painful. My sense of me although partially eroded and weathered over this writing period has remained. I've kept self preservation high on the list and it seems to have worked. Better (or worse), I diffuse matters before I start mulling over them and take them in my stride. The strides have gotten longer, so much has been taken in the strides. Not something I was used to doing. Even as I prepare for another move, the only thing keeping me afloat is the idea that being alone in a completely new place is a known feeling. Not alone as in wallowing in my room and crying under the covers but running to the bank alone, eating my food, paying my bills, watching a film, reading a book, maintaining discipline in writing. On the contrary, when I've been with someone special or friends, I often lose track of the schedule and that unnerves me now. (Note: This is also a preparatory post to the impending 24)

To justify the title, it has been today morning's realization that writing is more like Rubik's cubing than being pregnant. It can be as painful as a pregnancy but I've literally written six drafts of one article only to be able to open an argument from different angles. And, every time I wrote a new draft, the disappointment of the earlier first-paragraphs was fatal. Like playing a whole level of Candy Crush again because you couldn't get the last jelly.

On body and love

It hasn't exactly been a great season there. This isn't to criticize any single person but rather a general observation. For someone so terribly awkward and constantly at war with her body, being with another person who isn't completely accepting of who I am is a painful situation. It's probably a heterosexual predicament? I am always collaborating and having wonderful conversations with great women and sometimes men on how everyday sexism operates and how body shaming needs to stop. But, in practice, and love is in practice (that's the tragedy); things turn out quite differently. Attraction and ideology don't cohere. My problem isn't that though. Strangely I have always been with people thinner than me (horrifying realization because it made me suspect I was into thinner people or something) but where it gets problematic is that some of my friends and lovers have been obsessed with the idea of fitness. I think it's only their way of saying thin. Almost makes me want to make Foucault and Butler reading mandatory in high school. In any case, I've fought back when my love handles were poked at but then I've lost love and interest and respect. If the G_ds of OKCupid are listening, my potential partners are going to have to write a small essay on the notion of fitness.Worse, there are so many in the feminist-ish space leading the tirade against body shaming. But, guess what, they all look like size zero ramp walkers and their idea of activism is a photo album at the pride parade. Am I being snide and derisive? (Obviously yes) I don't know. This hasn't been resolved yet. It has not only affected me personally but I've seen many a sense of  self-worth being sacrificed at the altar of physical appearance. Even your educated, liberal men. What gives?

More later. Today has been a good day of writing.

Letters of a reluctant mug (to young daughter)

Dear young daughter,

I started a journal in 2013 eagerly awaiting the Mayan apocalypse (as you may now affably remember). But, such was the anticlimax of ordinary life that continued ever so peacefully, the journal seems rather gleefully suicidal. I have decided to write you a fresh set of learnings from my (yet quite) young life. These letters are convenient for me for a reason that they are not burdened by historicity and may come to your rescue if you should unwittingly inherit my cynicism. You should consider this letter as the middle act of a film that will never end. In any case, I won't know the ending. Just as I unburden myself and pass it on to you, I apologize for so viscous blue a shade of confusion that you didn't sign up for and I must explain why - because my life as is unfolding against the backdrop of larger, intensely frustrating battles of trust, humanity, politics, bodies, religion and more is posing some of the toughest choices I've made so far. A few decades later, hopefully you can tell me if this is relevant to you, I may feel less lonely (and will write to Sylvia Plath that her premature death was unnecessary).

I am already exhausted and my troubles already seem petty but I must continue. As you know, I've chosen academia as my occupation. I lay in bed at night and close my eyes hoping I manage to reach all deadlines. Gradually, as I get drowsier, I feel a strange pressure at the roots of my hair, a feeling that they are greying. I wake up in the morning to check. I am surrounded by a lot of people who "matter", people fighting the right fights, some making art and others lobbying with governments to change laws. I am afraid I've gotten too close to the process of making change (blame it on the unprecedented media proliferation) and hence grown wary of the means they use. Just the other day I took up a rant with A, "are you all playing the gallery? Whose change is it anyway?" Let me explain, there is a deep eagerness to publish, congregate and say. I am not surrounded by academics at this point who would think thrice, dissect an opinion and lay bare their own complicity. I am not surrounded by fellow reluctant mugs, it's the time to say things confidently because there is little consequence and no sanctity. I am no purist, but anything goes - nothing scandalizes, nor are there any limits to how many times you can repeat an idea. I hope you inherit my hesitation and value silence as a virtue. Nothing says I love you more than listening to someone in rapt attention.


There is more, but right now I have work, studies, backache and a conference call.

[To be continued...]

Please call me a cloud

The business of disclaimers: Is a figment of imagination

Every time in my head, when I have imagined coming face to face with you, suddenly, dressed in patched, colorful, layered clothes against what I can see when I close my eyes every morning as blinking neon lights in the night, the mood is that of past betrayal and a fresh scab of longing. There is music, chaos, people are dancing, most are generally happy because they haven't worked so hard for a chance reunion. Things come easier to those who let go quicker. But, it's only you, or something about how the idea of you settled in a corner of my heart so comfortably that it refuses to leave me. Or maybe I like being haunted. I like repeating what you have said and what you would have said to myself often in the silent gaps between two happy days.  

Further in our chance encounter I also, almost always, imagine or actually feel in my imagination a sudden rush of guilt, want, need and sobriety - like something about me is so rickety it can break any moment, but it hasn't for the longest time, I've held it together such. My holding it together is what lends your eyes the cocky confidence in me and you, and lets you have your way. Maybe we decided in an impassioned moment to let you have your way for life. I secretly suspect it was done when we started exchanging books.

I have thus decided to change my name. Please call me a cloud. I feel like a ravenous cloud and my sound is rumbling. The only time that rumble changes is when I break into torrential rains. I am very hungry, my sounds deepening in dissent like the last note of Bhairav and you will only hear me weep in floods, drench you in some strange mix of anger and love. You, be the stone and enhance the pathos of our tragic tale. 

Leaky Eyes

Of late, I've been working hard at changing the state of everything in life. Since it isn't enough to keep saying I am (re)employable, I did actually test the hypothesis. I still am, employable that is (but I only like the idea of employment, not the actual act). Similarly, a revamp is never finished until one really, truly feels like a new person and completely forgets about the recent past heartbreaks or rejections in general. It's amazing how films can help with that transition so well. It's like films and books are the gymnasium of the hypothalamus. You really have to put yourself through someone else's journey to see the light of the day. I know friends can help with that but again, of late, most friends around have been in crises worse than mine. You don't have to curate these books and films. They happen to you and they may not even be saying things but you may be seeing them. If you are waiting for me to list the books and movies, I'll do it at the end of the post.
I watched the 'Ship of Theseus' yesterday. The first story is of a girl who regains her eyesight though donation and experiences a change in her photography practice. The film is about larger things and I've heard this plot before where someone even starts hating their newly gained vision because they aren't able to handle it but I was set to churning by something else.The film portrays it beautifully. After I went home, I kept thinking if the loss and gain of any other sense would be so paradigm changing as that of vision. With limited vision, she relies on texture, ambient sounds, software instruction, light readings, description of colors and shapes and takes an educated guess/click. If you think about it, that's not how we (with full vision) click. We get overwhelmed by the visual cues so much that most of what "seeing" people can produce seems the same. That is probably why the fatigue and a lot of us stop clicking. She does too, and then goes to Chhitkul (where I was two months ago!), and fails miserably to get inspired (deja vu). The point isn't the newness of vision, it is the amount of distraction that it brings to life, my life.

The girl wasn't looking into the mirror, or at pretty young things, delicious food, watching her own body change shape. She radiated a strange kind of stubborn confidence which only came with opaque eyes. It's like things of her, in her, started to leak the moment she could see. The whole order and method of her photography wasn't working anymore. She even tried wearing a blindfold to experiment. You know how there is nothing left to educated guesses? I was so overtaken by how deliberate everything became for her, as if she/I was orchestrating it because she could see. To be able to see is also the ability to look - at someone. I hate it.

When you look at someone, cruelly, kindly, expectant, hurt, welcome or civilly, it's part of what you mean to give away and part of what they should get from you. I've really been training at looking to look indifferently. There's something about 'alive' eyes, the ones with a sparkle/twinkle. I have those. And, there are deadbeat eyes for poker players. I've been practising the look. I doubt I'll get it any soon. To add some wizard wisdom, remember when Snape taught Harry how to close his mind to the Dark Lord? Yes, Occlumency.

The books and movies. I read: The Fault in Our Stars, Hitchhiker's Guide..., High Fidelity and I saw: Lola versus, The Nanny Diaries, Liberal Arts, Submarine, Ship of Theseus.

Making money profane

At some point in life, we all start getting money. And, at some point we become comfortable with spending bits of it without being too afraid. This post is a partly inspired thought experiment after I read the post on Suspended Coffees (Read: 'Suspended coffee' helps those in need) that went viral probably a month or two ago. The idea is that you pay for an extra coffee in a restaurant and that can be given for free to anyone else who might not have the money to buy one. In a time when trust is really a rare commodity in our interactions in public, this phenomenon inspired and moved me a great deal. I was determined to try it out in my own locality (somewhere in India) to see how people react. However, there is another question I have been battling in the past year: how do I make spending money more fulfilling?
So, let me tell you of the three instances where I tweaked this "suspension" experiment and the different things I felt.
Part 1:
First, of course, was a straight replication of this suspension idea. I was visiting a friend in Bombay and told him about suspended coffees. He was also excited. So, while we are at the beach and this kid badgered us to buy a rose, we thought of trying it out there. The way I saw it, was simple. Buying a rose for someone we like at the beach seems so cliched and corny. But, wouldn't it be really amusing if we randomly got a rose that we never paid for (or realize we have an admirer whom we may never meet)? So, we paid for a rose and the kid gave it to a boy clicking pictures of himself at the beach. From what we could make out, the boy was not only astonished but also a little intrigued. He was visibly happy and I'd like to think it made his day.

Part 2:
While I was really happy with the rose incident, I kept asking as to what really happened there which was disruptive. Some possible causes to describe this: unexpected, good faith, personal gesture. So, I wondered if I could buy other things in the same vein but increase the utility part. And, the most obvious things I could think of were: food, travel and education expenses. So, again while in Bombay I found a taxi driver and gave him a hundred rupees. I roughly explained my idea to him - told him to take people where they want and in the end deduct hundred rupees. He seemed baffled but he could see the twinkle in my eyes. (This may already seem a bit hipster to you) I am assuming he actually executed my plan because he nodded in satisfaction, just like the rose boy earlier.

Part 3:
This I did in Delhi. For a year now I have been not-so-broke and I can't recall the days when I used to be down to a hundred bucks for the last week of the month. And then, something came up for photocopying or printing. So, I went and gave three hundred rupees to Sonu, my university's photocopier and told him to use this for a day and offer free copies. My university has a very high moral ground and such so I knew Sonu would do it. I went back to him the next day and he told me that people spread this "offer" and used it wholeheartedly, to copy anything and everything!

I am sure a lot of you already do some form of charity. My mum also feeds X number of needy people on special occasions. But, the purpose of my experiment/exploration was different. I wasn't interested in generosity or personal happiness or equality so much. And, I realized that was my kick was in disrupting routines, seeing if I can momentarily change how we are used to feeling about the world around us. When we don't have the money for that taxi ride or photocopy or tattoo or movie or gift, money seems like a really big deal. When we do have money, many of those things don't seem so special anymore for several reasons.
Can I make money absolutely nothing by inserting it in places where people expect to struggle for it? Money and struggle, the relationship is routine and obvious - one that you can't escape. But, in this routine living is where the jadedness seeps in and thinking for oneself (instrumental reason) sets in. That is why deeds of kindness, honesty, loyalty etc which are the given foundations of our society seem to take us by surprise. At times using money against its own logic can give the maximum satisfaction, at least to me.

Date a girl who isn't afraid

**In case you don't know the format of "date a girl who...", Google it. It has some stellar (and corny) posts that went viral. I am writing this because I live in Delhi, India and am at a loss to articulate how I feel as a woman about safety.**

Date a girl who isn't afraid. Date a girl who isn't afraid of you, her parents, her entire extended family, teachers, the police, politicians, others' opinions and of embarrassing herself. She will probably be like a pot of boiling, molten substances. You might see her everywhere, all the time, more than any other girl you know. Her opinions maybe ridiculous and her bravado may seem foolish at times. Admit to yourself she is trouble.

Find a girl who doesn't seem to be afraid. Go closer and smile at her understandingly to tell her that you have a hint about how many people she makes unhappy as she steps out waving her bag and flailing her arms, walking with a careless hop in the most unsuspecting of places, at a time when no one seems to be around, doing nothing at all. Follow her as she loiters endlessly. If you are taller, match your steps silently and watch what a world takes away from her within an hour of joyful loitering.

Keep watching out for a girl who isn't afraid because there is a daily possibility that someone will want to squeeze her, pinch her and undress her in the middle of the crowded market. Step back as she continues to walk and ends up being slapped on the bottom. Her cheeks will turn a bright crimson and the molten substances may spill out from within. Look up at the sky of densely impossible clouds. You may see them form familiar faces who have no confidence in her ability to walk by herself and be left to her devices. That is when you should walk up to her.
Face the tearing girl who is on the verge of being afraid and don't offer her your critique of the society. Shake her hand and take a minute to admire her. Not her face, not her body, but the warm, stubborn extension of her wherever she walks. It's like her walk builds a little garden of not-so-afraid wherever she goes.

Propose to be around her, express your earnest desire to know her and in the same breath, admit your terror at the risks she chooses to take. In her enthusiasm, she might topple her bag full of books and biscuits and flowers and a knife, maybe. Avoid the urge to start sermonizing on self defense, Swiss knives and pepper sprays. Her mouth might be half open with no words coming out. You might get an inkling that she's been through this before. At least twenty times. If she hesitates, don't chase her until she relents.

It's painful to date a girl who isn't afraid. What can you offer? How much will she accept of your genuine, non-chauvinistic support? But, you should know it is an immense pang of relief for her when you say that rape isn't about the loss of dignity. She will be your statement to the world, your illustration of balanced feminisms and of honest changes by walking through the world day and night.

Plan long walks, to lanes, gardens, slums and the beach. Make sure you've seen them all with her in the morning, afternoon, evening and the winter night. Kiss her in public view, nibble at her ear to tell her you are equally unafraid of how you feel, where you are and what you do. Don't forget to sing. And whistle.

Find a girl who isn't afraid and soon enough you will know what scares her. Be with her and make sure, that a few years later you both know more girls who aren't afraid.

The end of the first job

So, I am moving on. Almost no one is unhappy that I quit, including me. For those who love me, there is absolute confidence that I will move on to do better things. I've often told myself how it is absolutely necessary to not get comfortable in a spot, city, job, relationship, program. Ironically, I've always said that after having arrived at a new place, job, program, relationship; asked myself, wondered what I will do after what I haven't even begun yet. This was me, at least a year ago. I would call myself the insider/outsider and I think others called me (to my face and otherwise) the forever-discontent-trouble-maker. As you can surmise, I am not a fan of systems, team meetings, group work, departments and such. In the past one year I've secretly admitted to so many occasional-delvers-into-my-life that I loathe asking for favors and meeting people to solve their problems. Similarly, I cannot suffer idiots, if I see a luddite I call her one, I've been lauded/hit with descriptives like clear and articulate. Have I changed in the past year? Obviously, yes.
I would do all this with no hesitation a year ago. To do a small detour/parentheses, not all of you will agree with what I have written of me so far. That is because, like most of you have realized, I span a vast, vast territory of people. That is the only strength that I can own up to any day. I am very awkward but I will always have something to talk to you about. I can be funny as some of you know. I used to feel pretty, I feel cleaner and not so arty anymore. I don't click pictures with my camera and I've cut my hair short. The point is, almost none of you see my expanse of relationships the way I do. That is where my skills work like magic in keeping clean cubicles of every person I've ever met, like a file with their stories in the strangest of their phases and moments. I might have pictures, incidents, secrets, lost interests, love stories - everything about them/you. But, today I wonder, what use is this little museum inside of me to the real world where I've been hustling for a year? Does all this matter?

The change in me has been about tempering myself. I've cried hoarse to many of you about the kind of people I have to work with (study with, volunteer with, intern with, live with, reach out to, travel with - the post is not *only* about you or you). It was a new phase and degree of hustling. I traveled a lot in this one year. I was forced to make new friends with some of you because I had to work with you. I did implementation in office. I did theory in class. I crashed in the room. I visited home after a whole year. For the first time ever, my parents experimented with the thrill of giving a surprise gift on my birthday. A lot of firsts, you can see.
Come to think of it, I've never really imagined a realistic and immediate profession. It's always been between finishing three thousand word papers in one night and being a professor, politician or world traveler (as soon as possible, like right now). So yeah, we fall from imaginary stars, we lose some love and we sit down close in the face of uncertainty. Wake up to a morning of non-work and reconcile with the idea of all that you have so far other-ed - non-work, aimless, lost, nothing-much, what next, don't know, yeah-me-I-don't-have-a-clue-either. It's not so bad outside my head. I can be employed in generic professions. I can teach, do journalism, write reports and such. But, those do nothing to convey the panoramic and conflicted perspective that I have acquired so far in my work, study and life. That is why I am not jumping to another job. Most things come to me by eliminating things I don't want to do. Maybe that explains a strong craving stench in me for some stability in personal life. I find the idea of freelance work dreadful.

Till I find a new peg, it is going to be all about addressing uncertainty. And, I know that needs some courage and some pro-active measures. Maybe not yet. I think I want to go home for now. Or be loved and pampered. Life gets better, right? 

For those who don't "get" art

 Come Venice Biennale every year, across the world and more such, many popular fora get flooded with jokes on art and how many sensible, common people with little or no education in fine art (or aesthetics) don't get what's happening. It ends in whimpers from many within the art community and outside. I've been dealing with this question myself and in this post, I will address two issues, one of personal taste and the other, what you should look for in art.

Just a line before I start. You might be curious who I am, what my authority on the topic is and so on. I also find it useful to explain my vantage point because it will help you empathize and stay with my argument. I have received formal education in literature, psychology and media studies and my first encounter with (fine) art theory was in my graduate programme. From then on, I studied visual art, theater and performance and cinema. As you can see, most of these disciplines that I've had the chance to dip my fingers in, have been accused of bull shitting. In other words, it is a common claim that many people do not understand what literature, poetry, psychology, media theory, cinema and visual art produce. So, basically this question haunts me every single day while I try to produce research on these subjects and make truth value claims. I am/was as skeptical as you might be at some point.

Setting the ground:

Have a look at this: I'm Sick Of Pretending: I Don't "Get" Art | VICE United Kingdom
Is this how you feel? Does this post echo your sentiments and also reflect the rubbish you encounter at art galleries, fairs and museums? Good, then we are on the same page. The student here claims to be an art student and has done all kinds of things to participate in the contemporary art culture but simply fails to "get it"! This tells us that she, just like you and I, has a personal taste. She has an opinion on what is pretty and what is ugly or what moves her heart and what doesn't. This is true for all of us. Most of the times when someone calls you Philistine (a person who is hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts) you quickly bounce back and say, "I know what's pretty and what's not." The question to be asked is, is all art pretty? Not necessarily. Does art have a function? Of course it does. Art can heal, it can inspire social change, it can educate people (the language of the image precedes the written word in fact), art can earn money in modern societies (so it can feed people too) and art can be as dangerous as 'the bomb'.

If you are wondering why I am talking of personal taste and the function of art, most of us go to look at art and ask these questions. We ask why red and blue, why metal and glass, what is this object trying to "do" and what is its meaning (in the functional sense; like bridges are meant to connect, food is meant to feed and art?). Of course, these questions come after your first impression (where personal taste comes in). What I am asking of you is to ask a more abstract question of art. And, this is my strategy to know "good"/inspiring art from bad/pretentious/uninspiring art.
Disclaimer: Just like you may not appreciate beer, different cuisines, the complexity of a new sport, dance or find a cultural ritual absolutely absurd, anything without a historical context can seem bizarre. So, before you write it off, read up a little around it. For example, Marcel Duchamp's Fountain or Rauschenberg's Black Painting may seem unworthy of being masterpieces to you. However, if you knew that Duchamp deliberately used a urinal to make fun of high art monopoly and Rauschenberg wanted to explore nature's essence by simply painting a canvas black you might warm up to them, no? I could go on about what makes us like popular art (different for everyone) but will save that for later. 

So, to give you my final strategy to engage with art works or performances, talk to the art. Ask the art object if it represents or acts. Simply put, in my opinion, a photograph of a woman rubbing money on her vagina is of less artistic value or maybe none as compared to video of women in burqa and hot pants in France walking on the street to oppose the Hijab ban.[5] If you see, while both instances seem like "shocking" acts by women, the first may not be disrupting, talking back or breaking stereotypes and its shock value merely relies on the nudity element or the obvious statement it makes. The second instance becomes interesting for me, not because of what it has inherently but for what it does to the society around. That is, to me, the crucial line between inspiring and 'dead' art. Of course, people make pretty, shocking, new things that may not be performing this disruptive function. And, you can like that too.

If you liked my argument but wish I could substantiate it with more examples, let me tell you about John Cage and his piece 4'33''. John Cage, a famous music composer produced a 4 minute piece which was completely silent. Yes, you would ask - where is the music? Use my strategy, ask what the piece/artist is trying to do, not what it seems like (not music or noise or silence). What Cage claimed his piece was trying to do is to assert that any sound is music, including the sound of silence.

Apologies for the longish post, but I hope this gives you more confidence to walk into a gallery and ask again - is this art?

Analogy

Long distance affairs are like a song with a beautiful, steady melody. There is a song because there is obvious melody, something consistently sweet in there. Peaking in little bumps time and again, week days are for silence, heightening the melody's haunting, soothing effect on you. And, at times it feels like the song is about to reach a crescendo, culminate. That is when you will know whether it is a song of victory or despair. But, instead, it just softly climbs down and continues to haunt you. You could choose to leave the room, in which case the melody is over for you. Or,  you could choose to stay and be tortured in sweet agony for an indefinite period. You could wait.

Post depression post

Edit: I am not emo. This is more like 'Hero' by Regina Spektor mood.

"Power to the people, we don't want it, we want pleasure 
And the TV's try to rape us and I guess that they're succeeding
And we're going to these meetings but we're not doing any meeting  
And we're trying to be faithful but we're cheating, cheating, cheating" 

Edit #2: This post was supposed to start this way: Like a rolling stone, for all wrong things known, like a bum without a home. An academic forlorn. Like a mossy mossy rolling stone. That's to show you I am tired of rootlessness and fluidity already. This is the prelude to my anti-globalization rants. Read on.

It's been a few days since I started my journal writings titled twenty days to apocalypse. Actually, since the beginning of this year I've been waiting for one. Don't ask me why. No, it's obviously not because I am depressed or superstitious or have nothing to do or had a few rough days. I don't even know what depression means anymore really. Everything around is mildly depressing in a grainy, white noise sort of a way. I am sure the time has come to coin a new word of this state of being. I am writing this on a rainy December evening in Delhi. You can imagine how that pushes the apocalyptic feel just an extra bit. It's probably also about December that I start craving clean slate.
You can take this as a dedication to all those who had predictable careers and snugly stuck in a regular desk job. Most of those who know me, complain that I am rarely seen or encountered in meat space, that I am around but never really and to get me to be somewhere means accepting I will join in only halfway. I've often even complained about time-turners not being invented just as yet. I've also complained about the absolutely illusory notion of good luck and always being on the wrong side of it. It's like there are five dates in every calendar month where everyone is free or wants to do an event or discuss something important. I can obviously not be at all, except I am no celebrity and hence my absence translates from callousness to snobbery to simple inability to contribute to "useful discourses of the ever changing world". Sometimes I hate you, Foucault. I hate the fact that these 'discursive interventions' were so powerful that everyone from marketing analysts to socialites lapped the vocabulary up and then throw their money at you only if you can present to them exciting observations of societal change.
I'll tell you why I think you are safe if you chose a conventional career. I am sure it's a grass-is-greener scenario but hear my side out. Have you ever felt existential crises as a regular breathing exercise? Ever imagined a Gutenberg world, of relentless publishing machines? Felt like you cannot take the next breath without justifying it first to yourself and then humbly (in apologetic parentheses with aptly referenced sources) to the whole society that seems to have suddenly discovered its potential political-ness? Every position is political and has disruptive potential. Yeah, you didn't even know that earlier and now that you know you are a stakeholder in cultural, economic, social, ethical and falafel way. So, I have to take your smelly shit and examine it to every thread. No, if you are an engineer reading this, you'll think I am talking about social media type statements. I am not. I am talking hardcore academic and worse, my recent experiences with art practices.
So, basically what happens is that you become the mother of jaded with two permanently grey hairs and even before you see an art show you hate the artist's guts. You can only think about how he fooled someone to get their money and trust me, an entire graphic novel of his "playing the field" floats past my eyes. Obviously, it's so uncouth to bitch about the world's exploding potential. That's why I am not writing a research paper on this. If you ever spoke to me on a day when I am more awake than asleep, I'd make the most disgusting faces at your every sentence. There's no way you could talk to me without upsetting me. Obviously, it's a part of your postnational, coerced global, techno-euphoric and all such portmanteau being. Even your being born and fully blossomed into an offensive individual professionally excites me. That's where I get my fodder.
If I go to America, they smirk. If I have a heterosexual boyfriend, they pitifully smile. New addition: if I buy a lomo camera I am a hipster. Worst, if I leave my text left or right aligned, it inspires terrible political jokes. That's why saying I am depressed will immediately throw me in your lot - the non observers.
What does this world look like then? I'll give you my own version of the Brave New World. While learning psychology I'd learned about the different stages of coping with stress. This is a world in its burnt out, lower level functioning phase. Being happy is naive, having a problem is not enough, having a bizarre problem that seems to dangle on the threshold of paradigm changes is the best bet. It's a post gay, post queer, post depressed, post Che Guevara t-shirt, post national, post digital world.  I can hardly utter that I see nothing new. I am waiting for the day someone says nothing is new and just proclaims a worldly TIME OUT with a T sign. Does this all let you breathe? Maybe you haven't even come across such acute anxieties because you've always aspired to actually reach America and get a house and have a baby. I really wish there were more of you.
So, before you all can jump on me and say this is all pervasive and nothing new, I am just going to say it's my quarter life crises moment where I cannot decide between desirable and undesirable. But, I cannot stop, I must continue investigating the undesirable because that's what a career in academics means. Btw, we call this feelings stuff 'affect', just in case some of you are cornered in a social science debate, this should save you.

"It's alright, it's alright, it's alright" ('Hero - Regina Spektor)

Post-it conspiracies feed on golden dust

Black dog and I, separated by tens of meters of uneven grassy patches were both sniffing the headiest drug of a midsummer evening today - petrichor. It was an evening of accomplishment - six rounds of jogging then running then flailing, panting, drinking, stretching, gawking, running and resting in that succession of action with the mise en scene of black dog sniffing wet mud from far away places changing to nearing drizzles and bodily fluid sweat meet atmospheric fluid rain as trees sway hips in joyous undulating motions. Of course, the dirty shade of blue black (dirty like Old Monk) sky was still busy delivering foreign people from unknown lands in incessant plane drones above. That's the background score to life in South Delhi I suppose.
The day had its moments. Apparently, the British character in 'Girls' is an ENFP. Basically, she is cool, tall, pretty and has the license to be mean. It's supposed to be some kind of an irrevocable truth that us ENFJs just have to live with. Then, the whole schedule thing. Everyone's applauding me for reaching deadlines and waking up early and sleeping on time and eating no carbs and not having hit a single dog in the past few months. It's like gradually discovering the entire rulebook that the world actually is. In our shared heads (me and these sane freaks) hippies are no longer cool. I don't even know if I should go back to thinking they were or just make really wry jokes about hippies, sexually transmitted diseases and World Wars. And worse, being nice to people because they are watching all the time. No, don't throw the you-don't-have-to-care-about-others crap. If I didn't have to, none of us would have bothered getting a job or studying or even procuring food. We'd just be gnawing at each others' skin and muscles, in turn growing fat and being food for others to feast on (like a symbiotic cannibal fest). All these are not like isolated rules or something. Once you start waking up on time, you take a bath regularly, then you want to wear neutral tones and you stop yelling at douche bags who keep pinging you forever with Youtube links (because apparently it's okay for people to forget that you have a 256 kbps Internet connection).
Then, there are also those who tell you the world doesn't revolve around you. Oh really? Then, how come the ENFPs get by with oh-my-life rants like it's a new one everyday? There's nothing like negativity or positivity. That's the problem with labels, post-its, notes and schedules. Also, progress, the mother of all trouble. Most people don't realize that profundity is basically a matter of striking a chord with those who listen to your kind of stuff and read your kind of books. So, you could be extremely profound without being retweeted or shared or liked a hundred times simply because most people's attention spans and vocabularies are one millionth of yours. Does moderation means not being obsessed about the right punctuations and taking a bath only twice a day? But, what happened to all your schedules and rules?
Also, annoyingly, most of these science turned arts lovers/converts reductively shake their heads vigorously when you point out the trouble with progress. They think they get it, but I doubt anyone's ever had a course in epistemology. Someone should prescribe that for nursery class. So, what happens when people tell you that you are an ENFJ or that your thighs are fat or that you might have missed the bus or should take a test to get into a program or move into a house ceaselessly? It tells you about overarching labels, echoes ticking clocks, piles up unfinished scholarship applications and constantly feels like jiggling body parts.

Scenario 1: Sans progress need

Hey, your thighs are fat and that's what makes you as a person when someone looks at you. Wonderful, continue to grow like you can't control anything! That's how your photographs won't have held breaths or shit ass contemporary hair styles!

Scenario 2: Progress need activated

Hey, your thighs are fat and there's always a solution! Basically, because there's a solution in life, everything is a problem including your fat thighs, occasional drunk calls, your needs for love or just simply that you like kicking dogs. It's all a big problem until you spend your entire lifetime trying to find solutions for everything that ever existed!

Yeah, this rant goes all over the place. I think this is how a push over rants. Somewhere I am beginning to remember the days when I was terribly brusque and as Victorians put it, "the wind would barely touch my sublime, supple bosom". I feel a lot saner now and maybe even less magical. There's always that hoard of men wanting things. Most used to think I was immodest, now most think I want to be unattainable. I guess I could start with going away to places every month and being more unresponsive in general. I need to switch off and stop being so understanding about everything.

Happiness is in looking again

There's been such a long break, I don't even know where to start. Two years have gone by and Christ seems like such a wooly memory in my head. You know how once removed, twice reflected, multiple times relived, it's hard to differentiate between memory and myth. You cherish something so much you gradually start returning to it in every low, then you reimagine it, try to tweak it a little, wish for things that could have been better. The memory changes a little, adjusts itself and you keep revisiting it turns into your favorite story book. Christ was probably one of those, a Grimm tale albeit. But, only traumatic childhoods make for good revenge tales. Coming back, J.N.U and of all places Delhi, are responsible for this happy amnesia. To be fined for sitting on some pavement versus rolling on the road in merry inebriation, knots loosen. It's so important to let go, if one doesn't by herself, the universe has to be churned for a conspiracy towards it. Of course, learning is one aspect and maybe I learned a lot more back there but, how one sees oneself, the confidence and the ability to speak up again without being made to write apology letters is something that took two whole years to regain. This is not some public note to start loving or looking at places like Delhi positively. Places don't exist really, people don't either. It's just a moment in your head or those changing days and months, the things they bring, your fights and troubles. Simply put, it's myth and memory. If the former weighs heavier, it's a signal to move on and find a better place to live outside your head. It's also funny that most of what I wrote came so easy back then. Probably, side effects of talking to oneself for eight hours a day, at the end one has a lot accumulated to say. Here, there's nothing to fight, no one to resist, all in a lazy hazy perpetual Woodstock. I've liked Delhi maybe because of where I stay. So, while I know not what awaits in the next few months to come, here's a half baked blog revival and some cool picture of my wall. Remember, myths, not memories.

Semi-analog love life

If someone asked me if I felt nostalgic about typewriters or gramophone records or cassettes or tapes, I’d probably say no. You’ll understand better why when I tell you that I was born in the 90’s when typewriters and records were long gone, cassettes were around only for a good 6-7 years when I was growing up. So, for me, inversely, the joy and moments of triumph at owning a CD or boasting of an attic full of floppy disks (which my father still preserves) or telling you that I played ‘Gus goes to Cyberstone park’ on a b/w PC while others were still learning how to switch on a computer; those moments are better registered in my memory. Interestingly, I think me and my generation belong to the semi-analog group where as much as we are bound to be excited by new gadgets and more virtuality, somewhere, we were still shaped in hardcore mud and clay and nuts and bolts. To give you an analogy, I feel like a pager or a netbook sometimes. Those are intermittent technologies that very much look like what used to be, but are anticipating some mind blowing, life changing moment. Eventually, that happens, human kind evolves to mobile phones and tablets.
However, there is something that I do feel nostalgic about: images, photographs. Partly because I have always been a keen movie watcher and loved clicking pictures as a child and partly because I actually participated in the semi-analog to digital move of the camera, I can relate to this one. I still remember how there were two cameras at home. A Yashica manual point and shoot that needed batteries and gave good results, another was a freebie that churned out okay images. Needless to say what kids got. Albums at home are still lying there, loaded with half burnt, half exposed, blurry yet proud memories of trips past. Recently, in a cinema class, a professor was narrating how he used to work at a film archive and one could see his eyes gleam as he narrated tales after tales of resurrecting negatives lying in tatters. I admit I feel his thrill. There is a different feeling when you touch a photograph that magically develops out of a single click. More important, the camera has a mind (mechanics+chemistry) of its own. So what you see is not what you always get on the print!
This is when my turn to analog happened. After a few years of clicking with digital cameras, I discovered lomography. That in turn led me to how pretty these cameras are! More, they entirely manipulate colors to produce instant impressionist to surreal pictures! So, I bought a Diana F+ and after much hassle and a lot of expenditure, I developed my first roll. It wasn’t that great like on the website, but I got the hang of it. This isn’t just sheer nostalgia; this helps me rethink what I am doing. Using manual lenses against automatic make me move and put in effort in composition. At times I feel that reducing the number of steps and making things easier through technologies has a severe impact on the process of art and the experience.
Warning: Analog inspires LONG rants :P
This brings me to a couple of projects that I started looking at in the course of my analog obsession. The biggest of course, was the impossible project to save Polaroid cameras. When Polaroid announced they were ceasing all operation and production of films and instant cameras in 2008, a large community of instant camera lovers across the globe came together to keep the tradition alive. If nostalgia produces that kind of art, nostalgia is a great thing! Yet another project was ‘Before I die I want to…” project. It’s not just the camera or the photograph, people mobilize their situations, clothing, old glasses, souvenirs, bring them all to create what fits in that imagination of time. I did my little take with my mother’s sunglasses when she was in her 20’s. To surmise, as much as I hate analog nostalgia in general and sitting down to write a poem on the typewriter, I guess I participate in the analog love culture too, in my own ways. I guess nostalgia is long vast landscape and mine is a semi-analog house in it.

On creeps and ball games (cooler than Radiohead)

It’s a different ball game. That means it is a ball game which means there is throw and catch, pass and snatch and most importantly the ball is in the air only so long as both keep it going. But, what if you were pitching all these balls full of fragrant potpourri and the choicest of your tickles and pokes to some player who’s not your game? Well, the balls don’t return and occasionally if one does; it’s a smack, literally on the face. That, dear reader, is how a creep feels.

While most creeps are easily identified, warded off and branded by all of us, including me, you will never know when you end up on the other side of the ball game. Creepiness is relative and so is desperation. Mostly desperation is nothing but failure on the part of the recipient to reciprocate with equal enthusiasm. So, the poor hypersuperduper enthusiastic ball pitcher sees the embarrassing loud thuds of his public displays dwindle and droop into small bounces, all leaking desperate sounds as they fade into the darkness of awkward-irretrievable-relationships-that-never-started. I recently faced much such ill matched word exchanges.

One fine sunny day on the right side of morality can make you start creep bashing. But while you embark on that fantastic adventure of social inclusion, do spare a thought for all that avant garde-ism in your Dali-advances-on-women or some man wanting to race cars on some woman’s naked chest. Basically, we all like to hear of such momentary forward sparks and gasp in the delight of the imagery but, come to your own world of daily misgivings, ‘dude, that’s so creepy…’ Greet her with a friendly word for a whole week continuously or stalk him in admiration for all the fascinating information you discovered on Google search, write an extra friendly word on the text message or simply give an unexpected hug and you’ve blown it.

That is not the worst. For those of you who have been on somebody’s creep radars, you would know that straight faced speech with a perfectly drained asexual tone, carrying the burden of civil refrain from hitting your face: ‘Ummm…I just don’t talk to people I don’t know’. (In your heart you say: ‘Yeah, balls!’) Yes, because those who say such things never solicit friendship or more from attractive or interesting or talented or simply pleasant strangers. Never. They only rely on their trusted network of friends (who bitch about them) and acquaintances (they met one night at the wild party and got hanky panky with) or well, more talented and uber cool people (they randomly met at a conference and approached because they simply mistranslated sex appeal to talent).
The point is, people are pussies and flaneurs (persons who walk about aimlessly in the city) exist only in Baudelaire books. Also, for those in denial, everything is about a sexual experience. The impulse that you cloud under ‘fellow voracious reader’ or ‘Pink Floyd connoisseur’ is basically just your sex chemicals alerting your charm radar. And, that’s not bad news. Once you’ve acknowledged this simple idea it becomes so much easier to allow more people a chance to add colors to yours otherwise guiltless life. Think about it the next time you shamelessly feign shock at your encounters with a creep.
Yours sincerely,
Oddly bisexual woman with potential creep behavior

Things I collected over summer- Part II

Dilli bus


Railway station


Dilli culture

Things I collected over summer- part I

JNU living


Sarnath entry


Art summit overdose

The thunder thieving

It seems strange to me that lumps in memory only happen to a few of us, at least consciously. For me, a concentrated mulling is the roadblock of the otherwise speeding attention wagon, like water passing through a pipe with lumps of acerbic soluble substances, passing each time, melting a little of that and this, renewing throbbing pain, nostalgia, anguish, little brush strokes in the larger dark daubs of angst. I should not even begin on the German-ness of angst; it turns me into a Greek tragedy conversely.

The beginnings of an Indian summer, although drastically changing with the passing days, still ushers in the usual love-hate with sweet heat and occasional breezes in the 4 p.m. culmination of a not hurried, never occupied day. These days remind me of the “mighty heart” metaphor, huge and bulb like, rising like hopeful dough, deflating in familiar normalcy. Despite the general pleasantness of these surroundings and a color palette of dark browns and ochre of the shedding trees, anticipating little moist spells of air, when I am spiraling down, it’s just further downhill. No self picture of a girl with a backpack and a paper plane in hand, no catching the wind in hair as faint freckled pink turns to sandstone on skin, nor any spontaneous buckling under a greenwood tree and reading some Rilke poetry. It wasn’t always so, of course, not until the newest lump.

He and many others laugh, or dismiss with a “not-again” groan, when I often mention of my cruel ‘love-spots’. Of love I have much to say, but that is reserved for wittier days. Love spots are typically those ‘Alchemist’ spots where “the whole universe conspires for you to fall in love…”In my case,music moves my cheese. In the last remains of my romantic imagination, there would be a spot, a situation and a song in the background that would all ‘enable my access’ to love, like a bomb blast in the background and a Faiz recital in the side wing or a sulky Darbari song. Less dramatic, to wake up and march in the lobby to Bjork or walk through a loaded day with Fiona Apple and get drunk and lip-sync to Portishead. The list goes on and love-faces could be many. But, basically, one needs a background score to the play of daily life! This should answer my parent’s persistent surprise at teens with headphones.

The more I realized this, the abysmal lack of possessing one became. An i-pod that is. Or any music player, I am not an Apple snob. Switching over, after months of losing it to you, oh nameless thief of a commodified market, I weep silently every noon. This is where the impersonal industrial society pokes me in the shins and this defines oppression for me. Not burgers and colas and sky scrapers.
There used to be a roaring cloud above the head with ears stuffed beneath. The thief stole all my thunder away. Gone far away.