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. 

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.

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)