Friday, March 6, 2009

The only way to get back

Shruti lost her bag. She would think it too selfish for me to narrate my similar experience. So, I am blogging it. Someone stole it from the library locker! No fault of hers but money, debit card, project gone. We roamed all around the college for an hour or so with the security guy. Some utterly inhumane conversations in between:

Library guy (sitting, reading): Oh, you should have brought a lock along... (reverts back to reading)

Reception guy: Um...No, I TOLD YOU ALREADY, WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT IT! There is no lost and found department, hundreds of laptops are stolen everyday but a bag, this is first time...mmmmmm...

Library lady: Go, now take a lock and put

This all just took me through a familiar stream of thought when my phone was stolen twice. On the one hand this lady was crying her heart out because theft indeed IS the worst emotional hurt you can inflict upon someone and on the other hand there were people acting like a bunch of jerks in the newest of fashion.
In fact its not their fault because most of us don't even know how to react after 5 seconds of shock to a person who has just lost something, forget someone. More than that was the bitter experience of gulping down the visits to every jerk administrative office in the college. You just realise the mindless, unintelligent, crude lack of organization and insensitivity to student needs embedded in this kitsch, dirty, porous imitation of an american university. The problem again, is not that they don't care, but that they reinforce faith in anti-establishment and the worst: they make you feel helpless, miserable and ruin a couple of your days, leave you in the corridors wondering why you ever admitted yourself to an institution like this. This apart, this is just projection of the loss of the bag/cell phone/purse etc onto the peripheral terrorists.
Then, when I was walking past a dustbin gazing at Shruti, I felt, what if I go to the library now and steal a couple of other bags. Would that make her feel better? Of course, some others will cry like her, but who cares? Either its just me with the kleptomaniac tendency or disposition to get over affected by theft or the only way to get back and make your day is do your little bit of "swapping" and balance your losses. Mind you, I will be a different theif, even today when I see a pink and white phone I suspect it is mine, travelling through hundreds of chor bazaar lanes and finally landed in this filthy hand that I just saw. When you steal, you steal a piece of my mind, a piece of my over sentimental heart and my dear bag/purse/cell phone. The only way to get back I see now, is to become like you.

Few days later:
Me: Hmmm... you lost your self in this place, ma? Too bad. Should keep such things in a safe (back to sleeping)

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

I am India




This is a little lame poster that I designed as an assertion of the indian identity. Chumma. Pass time. No appreciation entertained ;)

When I first saw the sea





One of us, she saw the sea for th first time ever in Manipal. The trip was fun. We walked and jumped and spoke and ate and travelled. I had a weird feeling standing at the brink of the sand dispersing in water and was so tempted to write. No camera could pan the whole sky, the sea up till the horizon and the stretch of white sand that my eyes were feasting on. Blue wisps of liquid hit my white pearly walls. Plastic, oil and sand were gracing my scalp cream. Rub some slick ash on the border of my vision, the Sun has already friend my pink, deep golden. Smoothen the waves and curves of supple margarine bosom,brush red mud off my soles and wave my hand to little clusters of tadpoles. I breathed air. I had fun!

Performative thought



I sit clawing, scraping at the blue flakey walls of your skin,right where your spine does a sudden curve and changes to opaline, hissing green in time when you trigger the sequence even without poking a lash. I cannot bear the ecstatic, cathartic chewing noises from father's mouth mixed with wet fingers on my shirt. Let me ululate into this tender ear of yours and generate low frequency waves like the drone of a blue scooter, the rattle of a cottong grey cloud, the biting and chewing of your brown hair by copper moonlight.
Cut me up, slightly, by each grain like a red watermelon's womb and make an eight on the peach with the tip of my finger before it punctures a hole. Create more fury by dipping finger in the vermillion tube. Rub the paint, smear, smudge and rough it up against the skin texture. Pour some oil, breeze through a bucket balancing on dead curls of fibre and mosquito legs dismantled near the drain. Do the yoga of my unstable wants and grin with me. Get up, its morning.
We are free, from jealousy.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009