SCRAPBOOK STREAMERS

2012-01-03T05:24:00.000-08:00

NO OBSTRUCTION AHEAD

While keeping intact the fun of having ‘the child inside’ and all that, one senses the presence of some oft-ignored reminders that gesture towards the unfinished business of growing-up, one that you never got around to finishing. Which is also fun—greater and more long-lasting fun in some way because all along you were told what scary business it is. So the very thought of it of not having done it so far would sober you down even when you were having your usual kind of fun. It would ask you to observe a moment of silence and humbly, even a tad shamefully, acknowledge your limitations before you resume playing. But once you have checked growing up on your to-do list, you won’t have to put up with these irksome interruptions in your intriguing sport. You can tell them you’ve been there and done that and and that you've done this too and are still going steady your two pretty feet and feel very much up to another round of the game, so they will stutter their apologies and leave you in peace and you can smugly get back to some seriously fun gaming.

2011-12-29T03:01:00.000-08:00

PICTURE PERFECT CLICHÉ

Brought by a matronly waitress

Who tells you what not to order

A thick slice of bread

Snugly layered marmalade

With butter in between for salty relief

Before the first tentative tongue-and-lip sip of light cardamom tea

In an old bright plump china cup

On a square table

That seats no more than two

Next to a window

Which shows passers-by in view

And lets the noon sun in

To toast the sepia of an open book

In a timeless English village

2011-06-28T10:57:00.001-07:00

Sometimes you need to tell people what you feel just so you can move on with life and other important things.

2011-06-06T05:46:00.001-07:00

Sweet insists on coupling sour to give that ingenuous taste; rhapsody fondly carries on its back the promise of self-ruination. The certainty of obliteration keeps the forward march on. There is just so much of this life that was worthy of living. Now a new one must be created, which can’t happen without effacing the previous. Therefore this joy in destruction. The tremors are not those of fear; the shoot trembles in trying to tear through the roof of the soil.

2011-04-12T09:42:00.000-07:00

Waiting is the most difficult test in love and the strictest training is holding passion’s breath. Where is the space to store gushing torrents? Are you to tell them ‘Please be patient while we transfer your call’? And they’ll listen?

They are here to flow, to inundate all the plains and mountains of the heart and then run up its walls to become whispering curtains of the stage where each scene must be played out as outlined in the storyboard which must be respected under all circumstances. The actors’ duty is to deliver the lines as given in the script, not question them. They are not to say what they would have said in their own life. They are living the characters’ lives, not their own. Whatever life the actors have must be put into each Act, to culminate in the story the world should get to hear because no matter what bread and water you survive on at home, you don’t dish out just anything to visitors.

2011-04-12T08:26:00.000-07:00

दिल का फरमान निकला 'इधर आओ', फिर कहा 'नहीं, उधर जाओ'

माथे पर हाथ धरते जहन ने कहा 'सुधर जाओ . . . सुधर जाओ'

2011-04-05T21:13:00.001-07:00

COLOUR COORDINATED

I may have privileges you lack

Yet I am not that different from you

I too have been black

And at times blue too

2011-03-28T07:04:00.000-07:00

quarter-life crisis

when the years

spent

in

making

frantic

efforts

at

self-realization

finally begin

to throw up

results

that show you

are so full of

shit

that

to make

an altogether new

you

you

need

to begin

a-new

beginning

to

start

all

over

a-gain

2011-03-26T13:15:00.000-07:00

HOME

Sunkissed wheat

Wheatkissed hands

Handkissed flowers

Flowerkissed books

Bookkissed blankets

Blanketkissed sleep

2011-03-20T11:57:00.000-07:00

UNSOLICITED

I got a love letter to post and nowhere to post it to
A red red letter box for a red red love letter
Which doesn’t ask for the mailing address
And does what the sea does for a message in a bottle
Would be welcome

2011-02-28T19:45:00.000-08:00

What would be left to aspire to, the day we stop dreaming of fantastic utopias and tailing impossible loves?

2011-02-28T10:56:00.000-08:00

Always offer a seat to that stray thought.

2011-01-27T11:14:00.000-08:00

सड़कों की ख़ाक छानना ज़रूरी है
ताकि घर को चाय के साथ आपका इंतज़ार करने का मौका मिले . . .

2010-12-10T22:05:00.000-08:00

In the middle of nowhere you are confronted with the smell of old, damp libraries, with all their loneliness and eroticism.

2010-08-03T09:03:00.000-07:00

To evade self-destruction

While aware of the evil inside

Is to be in control

2010-07-31T00:20:00.000-07:00

Some people go about the world with their puppy-faces raised to be petted. From where do you bring the heart to refuse them?

2010-07-18T05:03:00.000-07:00

FASTING, FEASTING

The interminable wait

To see the face of a mouth when forming a certain syllable.

Chewing on rubbery time to quickly arrive at its centre

And gobble up a word when it has been let go of.

Like Miss Celie said,

I can’t fix my mouth to say how I feel.

2010-07-06T10:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it takes years to understand what just happened.

2010-07-06T10:11:00.000-07:00

Writing is getting that chip of nut out of your molar.

2010-07-06T09:45:00.000-07:00

The next best thing to talking to a woman is reading one.

2010-07-06T09:36:00.000-07:00

Deleting is healthy. It gives you the confidence of letting go.

2010-06-22T10:33:00.000-07:00

They say he's an honest guy.
I say he hasn't lived long enough.

2010-06-15T02:34:00.000-07:00

Those who aspire to be true to their work must be prepared to look absurd from time to time.

2010-06-02T01:40:00.000-07:00

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

Worse than being trapped in others' image of you is being trapped in your own image of you.

2010-05-19T06:45:00.000-07:00

Being in Sevagram (Maharashtra) is a complete antidote to living in Delhi. Originally a village but brought to prominence due to Mahatma Gandhi’s stay there, Sevagram is still making up its mind about whether to behave as a town or village. Luckily for tourists, this perplexity offers them the best of both worlds. It is peaceful as a village and yet manages to provide the amenities of a town, from conveyances to cyber cafes. As I disembarked at the Sevagram station and stopped at the a bookshop to buy some (now rarely found) books in Hindi, the bookseller shared his guilt about not having visited Bapu’s ashram and made me promise that I will not follow him in his sin.

It is true that the most rewarding treat of staying at Sevagram is a visit to Bapu Kuti. One does not have to be a Gandhi devotee to be able to appreciate the austere beauty of the ashram’s premises. The hut which welcomed Bapu and his many visitors is nothing short of a museum. A quaint bath, an elderly, dignified telephone box and neat, little alcoves shyly peeping from the walls, all serve to create an inexplicable nostalgia of a past that we were not even a part of. The sacredness of the place is defended by the several trees that have themselves withstood the many ravages of time.

But the place does not suggest that we slip into primeval times. Sevagram boasts of housing the first rural medical college, along with an engineering institute. The road down Bapu Kuti leads you to many small cooperative societies named after the legend and doing good business. It makes you reconsider whether the only way to meet development is to cartwheel into it headlong.

2010-05-18T15:20:00.001-07:00

Cynics are shy hopeless romantics.

2010-05-13T04:25:00.000-07:00

Everyone beagn to chat-everyone, that is, except Jim and myself. Jim observed the conversation in silence. Then he glanced in my direction, and I had to avert my eyes so he did not catch me observing him. But he continued to look at me in his steady, penetrating manner until eventually he said, "You're a watchful guy. You know where that comes from?" I shook my head. "It comes from feeling out of place, " he said. "Believe me, I know."

2010-05-12T23:20:00.000-07:00

You know you have stopped learning when you are not humbled often enough.

2010-05-11T11:25:00.000-07:00

Most editors are failed writers.
But so are most writers.

T S

2010-04-21T01:31:00.000-07:00

" ...nothing is quite as bad as that, that at the end of what is called 'the sexual life' the only love which has lasted is the love that has accepted everything, every disappointment, every failure and betrayal, which has accepted even the sad fact that in the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship. "

2010-04-20T23:50:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how many people are dying to smirk out, "So noone told you life was gonna be this way?!"to you. They're just dying, dying, dying. It's their life-blood, their soul-saviour, their joie de vivre.

2010-04-20T23:28:00.000-07:00

Choosing to push against (hitherto) unyielding megaliths does not necessarily mean you expect them to relent. It is a useful exercise in pushing your own limits.

2010-04-01T03:10:00.000-07:00

If all the world's a stage, aren't actors the biggest realists?

2010-03-30T08:30:00.001-07:00

2010-03-29T17:06:00.000-07:00

I know the exotic faraway feel from a dream.

2010-03-22T23:45:00.000-07:00

We try so hard to be unique and then complain of loneliness.

2010-03-22T21:44:00.001-07:00

A kid bumps into you in a mall and says, "Sorry, aunty." That will take some getting used to.

2010-03-20T00:02:00.000-07:00

I want to watch this. But must India always = elephants+polychrome weddings?
Et tu, Julia :( ?

2010-03-18T14:25:00.001-07:00

A heart bursting at the seams with unspeakables.
Restraining orders no good.
Bubbles can't be compressed back into droplets.
What the heck, then. Burst it will.

2010-03-18T13:28:00.000-07:00

Now this tiny smudge of a stella I see is somewhere in the distance. And because I can't calcualte the distance, I can't arrive on its real size and am therefore unable to devise the proper method to catch hold of it. My grasp is never right. If I cup my hands, it falls through. If I catch it bewtween a finger and thumb, it cascades down and I realise it's not that slim. If I grab it with one hand, I get beaten by its breadth and end up barely touching it. It's all touch and go, you see. So I am thinking maybe the thing to do is to pretend to not notice at all (sure I'll be watching from the corner of my eye), and then when it's creeping behind my back, burning with the curiosity to see what I am upto, why I haven't called etc, I nothing short of pounce on it and keep it pinned down till it coughs up the promise to stay.

2010-03-18T13:07:00.000-07:00

days should melt into nights should melt into days should melt into nights.

breaks = time for profound confounders

2010-03-18T12:04:00.000-07:00

"क्या करें ज़िन्दगी इसको जो हम मिले
इसकी जाँ खा गए रात दिन के गिले
रात-दिन गिले...

मेरी आरज़ू कमीनी
मेरे ख्वाब भी कमीने
एक दिल से दोस्ती थी
ये हुज़ूर भी कमीने..."

2010-03-18T11:55:00.000-07:00

इन रोशनियों से जी ही नहीं भरता

यों चिराग तो हमारे घर भी जलता है

BRIC-A-BRAC

2010-03-16T13:38:00.000-07:00

"Little things that no one needs --
Little things to joke about --
Little landscapes, done in beads.
Little morals, woven out,
Little wreaths of gilded grass,
Little brigs of whittled oak
Bottled painfully in glass;
These are made by lonely folk.

Lonely folk have lines of days
Long and faltering and thin;
Therefore -- little wax bouquets,
Prayers cut upon a pin,
Little maps of pinkish lands,
Little charts of curly seas,
Little plats of linen strands,
Little verses, such as these."

-Dorothy Parker

2010-03-16T11:32:00.000-07:00

Stories of little boys pinching butterflies and sticking them in a scrapbook always seemed revolting. But the idea of fix-depositing beauty (without cruelty, of course) remains enticing. Sunshine tendrils float in front but stay with you only as long as the eyes can follow without blinking. The option of putting them in a safe-box for leisurely perusal is desirable not only for soothing the self but for sharing with anyone who needed it.

"थका-थका सूरज जब नदी से होके निकलेगा

हरी-हरी काई पे पाँव पड़ा तो फिसलेगा

तुम रोक के रखना
मैं जाल लगाऊँ
तुम पीठ पे लेना
मैं हाथ लगाऊँ

दिन डूबे ना..."

2010-03-14T08:56:00.000-07:00

I have been a woman for too long to feel more comfortable in any other skin I might have.

2010-03-14T08:33:00.000-07:00

"John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage."

2010-03-11T09:29:00.000-08:00

Why isn't dying an option? Because it would be a dead bore.

2010-03-11T01:09:00.000-08:00

For V

Contradictions, like freckles on the skin, have their roots deep within us and cannot be wished away. As they stare us in the face everyday, the only option we have is to learn to live with them, not deny them.

2010-03-11T00:37:00.000-08:00

I am not going to answer, 'How are you?' If it were a real question, it would have belonged in the middle of a conversation, not in the beginning. It won't have been a substitute for a conversation either.

2010-03-09T12:36:00.000-08:00

People say this all the time and I have said it to myself, "You can't just up and leave." But is there ever a perfect time to leave? You have to do precisely that. Up. And leave.

2010-03-09T12:23:00.000-08:00

'"Take care of yourself," he whispered lovingly as she walked away..."Take care of myself." Yes, she thought. I see that is what I have to do. But she thought this self-pityingly, which invalidated it. She had expected him to take care of her, and she blamed him for not doing so now.

Well, she was a fraud, anyway. She had known after a year of marriage that it bored her. "The Experience of Having a Child" was to distract her from this fact. Still, she expected him to "take care of her." She was lucky he didn't pack up and leave. But he seemed to know, as she did, that if anyone packed and left, it would be her. Precisely because she was a fraud and because in the end he would settle for fraud and she could not.'

2010-03-07T11:09:00.000-08:00

YAYNESS

All my women, you know I love you. We have lived to be a hundred and will stay alive and kicking for many more eons. I have shied away from writing on many marked days, felt awkward in celebrating many card days. But today I had to and today isn't so difficult. Not with you the unease in expressing myself, no choking on words here, nor the frustrated tears for not being understood no matter how hard you try. Not even the pressure of squeezing some eloquence out of words. Because I know you will overlook all that, wade through all the lisping and the slurring and the stuttering and get right to me. So no speeches today. Just all-knowing smiles, devilish winks, raucous high-fives and caps in the air!

2010-03-07T01:21:00.000-08:00

'When they made love she was disappointed. He did not appear to believe in unhurried pleasure, and thought the things she suggested she might do to please her very awkward at the least. But it hardly mattered, since what mattered was the fact of having a lover. She liked snuggling up to him, liked kissing him along the sides of his face-his cheeks were just beginning to be a trifle flabby but would still be good for several years-and loved to write him silly letters-scorching with passion and promises of abandon-that made her seem head over heels in love. She enjoyed writing the letters because she enjoyed feeling to her full capacity and for as long as possible the excitement having a lover brought. It was the kind of excitement she'd felt years ago, in high school and perhaps twice in college (once when she'd fallen for a student and once when she was seduced-with her help and consent-by a teacher), and she recognized it as a feeling to be enjoyed for all it was worth. Her body felt on fire, her heart jumped in her breast, her pulse raced-she was aware, for the first time in years, of actually needing to make love.

He began to think he must fight her off, at least a little bit. She was too intense, he said. He did not have time for intense relationships, that's why he had finally accepted a divorce from his wife. He was also writing a great poem which he had begun in 1950 and which-now that he was at the Colony-he hoped to finish. She should concentrate on her own work if she expected to win any more prizes. She wanted to win more, didn't she?

She laughed at him, but would not tell him why. Instead she tried, very gently (while sitting on his lap with her bosom maternally opposite his face), to tell him he misunderstood. That she wanted nothing from him beyond the sensation of being in love itself. (His stare was at first blank, then cynical, at this.) As for her work, she did not do hers the way he apparently did his. Hers did not mean to her what he seemed to think it meant. It did not get in the way of her living, for example, and if it ever did, she felt sure she would remove it. Prizes were nice-especially if they brought one money (which one might then use to explore Barbados! China! Mozambique!)-but they were not rewards she could count on. (He became impatient with this explanation and a little angry.)

It was their first quarrel.

When he saw her again she had spent the weekend (which had been coming up) in nearby Boston. She looked cheerful, happy and relaxed. From her letters to him-which he had thought embarrassingly self-revealing and erotic, though flattering, of course, to him-he had assumed she was on the point of declaring her undying love and of wanting to run away with him. Instead, she had gone off for two days, without mentioning it to him. And she had gone, so she said, by herself!

She soothed him as best as she could. Lied, which she hated more than anything, about her work. "It was going so poorly,: she complained (and the words rang metallic in her mouth); "I just couldn't bear staying here doing nothing where working conditions are so idyllic!" He appeared somewhat mollified. Actually, her work was going fine and she had sent off to her publishers a completed book of poems and jazz arrangements-which was what she had come to the Colony to do. "Your work was going swimmingly down at the lake," she giggled. "I didn't wish to disturb you."

And yet it was clear he was disturbed.'

2010-02-27T21:48:00.000-08:00

I had once protested in class against inconclusive endings but the status running is so much more exciting. ‘Now showing’. The groove of here and now. The joy of existing now without having to explain yourself, or having to reconcile the now you with the then you so others can have the ease of making definitions, without your own embarrassment of reconciling the present you with the future you which you don’t even have the blueprint of. An unapologetic existence with the courage to make peace with misinterpreted versions of you in people’s minds. That will be the day.

2010-02-11T05:24:00.000-08:00

I come across some prize bumper stickers in my travels and couldn't resist putting down some here:

1. Buri nazar wale, operation karwa le.

2. Jalo mat, kishton mein aayeen hoon.

3. Dulhan bana kar laye the, kabhi mat bhulana
Jeevan bhar sath nibhaoongi, mujhe peekar na chalana.

4. Tujh chand ko dekh kar, chandni bhi sharma gayi,
Kismat thi hum gareeb ki, sawari gaadi mein aa gayi.

5. We two, our two.

6. Ae khuda tu mujhe kisi pe fida na karna
Aur fida kare toh usse,phir kabhi juda na karna.

2010-01-12T02:38:00.000-08:00

I don't want different things in life. I want different lives and to be able to swing between them.

2010-01-11T21:20:00.000-08:00

Looking for stories.
One for each day.
In a book or a movie.
To find beginning, middle, end, hope and a hint of magic.

2010-01-10T10:03:00.000-08:00

Would be heaven to have the luxury to lock myself in a room and read feverishly. Finding all the words and meaningful sentences that concretise my own garbled thoughts. 'I' seems more and more to be ruining the flavour of a sentence. Reading others who write what you mean(would have liked to mean)affords the simultaneous pleasures of self-effacement and self-indulgence. How I would like to unbear the lightness of being!

2010-01-10T09:25:00.000-08:00

Thoughts crawling, wriggling, stretching, sticking their thin necks out to become an 'outpour'. All running together, falling atop each other, 'I first, you second.'wild wild wild. hesitant about audience. grammatical and syntactical inhibitions still not shed. the time in getting to caps lock loses a thread. start anew. always strongly felt artist should't force any claptrap down the audience throat under garb of experiment. also reservations about taking the abstract too far. same feelings about not understanding the absurd enough still trying to use same. why this. and here too. purging

Belief and Technique for Modern Prose

2010-01-10T09:11:00.000-08:00

1.Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy

2.Submissive to everything, open, listening

3.Try never get drunk outside your own house

4.Be in love with your life

5.Something that you feel will find its own form

6.Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind

7.Blow as deep as you want to blow

8.Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind

9.The unspeakable visions of the individual

10.No time for poetry but exactly what is

11.Visionary tics shivering in the chest

12.In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you

13.Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition

14.Like Proust be an old teahead of time

15.Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog

16.The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye

17.Write in recollection and amazement for yourself

18.Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea

19.Accept loss forever

20.Believe in the holy contour of life

21.Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind

22.Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better

23.Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning

24.No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge

25.Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it

26.Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form

27.In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness

28.Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better

29.You're a Genius all the time

30.Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

-Jack Kerouac

2010-01-07T20:49:00.000-08:00

More than anything,I would like to be at peace with myself.

2010-01-03T18:05:00.000-08:00

The romance of solitude is unparalleled.

2010-01-01T19:51:00.000-08:00

In January 2010, how can you feel the way you felt in January 2009?What they mean when they say something is 'in the air' becomes clearer. Has to be the January air.

2009-12-31T06:47:00.000-08:00

Someone had said to someone, "Aapke dost phone par toh khoob batein karte hain, inse kahiye kabhi khud se bhi baat kar liya karein."

That's one resolution I would do well to honour this year.

2009-12-31T05:39:00.001-08:00

Did the chicken come first, or was it really the egg?
As old is the question of who made history, and by who it was 'made'.

2009-12-30T06:58:00.000-08:00

What, my good man, have you got against a harmless bit of hearty fun,
Wasn't the world enough, that now I must also face the Inquisition?

2009-11-07T07:26:00.001-08:00

'Why not' makes so much more sense than 'why'.

2009-10-14T03:46:00.000-07:00

Components of 'the good life' give quick gratification. Long term fulfillment could be aimed at but efforts in that direction are impeded by 'everyday'.

2009-07-06T04:53:00.000-07:00

The people in the public relations industry aren't there for the fun of it. They're doing work. They're trying to instill the right values. In fact, they have a conception of what democracy ought to be: It ought to be a system in which the specialized class is trained to work in the service of the masters, the people who own the society. The rest of the population ought to be deprived of any form of organization, because organization just causes trouble. They ought to be sitting alone in front of the TV and having drilled into their heads the message, which says, the only value in life is to have more commodities or live like that rich middle class family you're watching and to have nice values like harmony and Americanism. That's all there is in life. You may think in your own head that there's something more in life than this, but since you're watching the tube alone you assume, I must be crazy, because that's all that's going on over there. And since there is no organization permitted-that's absolutely crucial-you never have a way of finding out whether you are crazy, and you just assume it, because it's the natural thing to assume.

2009-06-30T20:04:00.000-07:00

I write, for I cannot have.

2009-06-29T00:59:00.000-07:00

What's this ?

2009-06-03T08:04:00.000-07:00

That they were both 'insecure' and 'unrooted', words which dated from the era of Mother Sugar, they both freely acknowledged.But Anna had recently been learning to use these words in a different way, not as something to be apologized for, but as flags or banners for an attitude that amounted to a different philosophy.She had enjoyed fantasies of saying to Molly: We've had the wrong attitude to the whole thing, and it's Mother Sugar's fault-what is the security and balance that's supposed to be so good?What's wrong with living emotionally from hand-to-mouth in a world that's changing as fast as it is?

But now, sitting with Molly talking, as they had so many hundreds of times before, Anna was saying to herself: Why do I always have this awful need to make other people see things as I do?It's childish, why should they?What it amounts to is that I'm scared of being alone in what I feel.

2009-02-28T00:11:00.001-08:00

The last of Delhi winter.

2009-02-27T03:14:00.000-08:00

What's an office without a window.

2009-01-25T08:24:00.000-08:00

For Peskipiksi Pesternomi

Ah,it's one of those days,you mean,when all seam to cheese
But take heart yet,my tiny took,for they never become these.

2009-01-24T02:32:00.000-08:00

eena meena mina mo

If good love maketh bad poetry and good verse fancies love gone bad,
To be loved by your readers or read by your lover,what would you rather have?

2009-01-23T03:18:00.000-08:00

Beauty and Sadness

Sleep well,my pretty,sleep deep
Shaken,nor stirred
Settle into the very depths
For that is still a kind of peace,some kind.

(To Yasunari Kawabata)

2009-01-21T05:13:00.000-08:00

As a matter of course,I wear enough steel.
Once in a while,though,won't mind a place to kneel.

2009-01-21T03:03:00.000-08:00

Some truths suffice if known and believed.
Others need to be felt.

2009-01-17T02:03:00.000-08:00

A PORTRAIT OF THE PARCHMENT

I always had this hazy vision of letters being the final solutions to the most complicated of situations.They had promised to be particularly potent when they even washed away the quagmires of fallacies between the constantly misunderstanding and misunderstood Elizabeth and Darcy.
Like they could run through a dirty double helix as detergent granules and emerge making it sparkling clean.A roll of old parchment with curling y's and swishing s's.A tremulous hand dipping the quill in the deepest bottles of tenderness and trying to pack all of it in slender letters of the alphabet.Ugly,staccato verbal fights silenced into awe in the paper's dignified presence and turning into patient entreaties."...journeying into the heart of language",like an author says,"trying to minimize,if not eliminate,the distance between thought and language..."In its shy I's,endearing 'you's' and nervous,yet brave,'we's'.One's whole life lain naked asking to be understood,forgiven,loved,being given a chance.Begging that its vulnerability be remembered long enough to understand the writer's inconsistencies and then forgotten,before it could become a source of embarrassment.

Not to put too fine a point on it,it was smugly taken for granted that the effort of writing a letter was worthy of merit.The time,the effort,the struggle to understand the seemingly unfathomable in one's own self and then have the guts to push it down someone else'e throat,all combined to make the writer hopeful of redemption.

But now I don't know.While the charm may still work in many cases,it makes me nervous to use it.It could make the other person believe you have all the time in the world to twirl on your heels over and over and then complain your head is spinning.That you take double helixes to be things that are worn around your body and then squeal for help.That you are deserving of the sympathy each 'freak' deserves but no more.That you are a threat to the environment because you choose paper over phones and the internet.So I'll wait till a tree plonks itself down and impedes my way till I promise to use it for writing that letter.Till then,I'll roll up and wait.

2009-01-17T00:46:00.000-08:00

Inventory

1.Sea of Poppies/Amitav Ghosh:*PP-Rs 600,*SP-Rs 500
2.A Thousand Splendid Suns/Khaled Hosseini:PP/SP:Rs 400 :(
3.Testaments Betrayed/Milan Kundera:PP-Rs 292,SP-Rs 200
4.City Of Djinns/William Dalrymple:PP-Rs 325,SP-Rs 260
5.The Elephant,the Tiger and the Cellphone/Shashi Tharoor:PP-Rs 500,SP-Rs 320
6.England Made Me/Graham Greene:PP-Unknown,SP-Rs 100 :)
7.City of Joy/Dominique Lapierre:PP-Unknown,SP-Rs 100

Venue:Nanda Book Service,Nehru Place.

Stated aim: To get passers by to console the buyer she wasn't duped.(If she was,the blame may be duly passed on to Dreamcatcher of 45-books-for-1200 fame,who set the buyer on the spree.)

(*PP-Printed Price/SP-Sale Price)

2009-01-13T23:28:00.000-08:00

OF PREPOSITIONS AND PROPOSITIONS

Like prepositions,most men would seem similar,almost swappable.Would it really make a difference if we choose one over the other?Don't they perform the same function?At times,either of the two would even be technically right for(in?)a particular situation.But there would still be one that apart from being 'right',would fit into the sentence like a glove,sounding appropriately handsome.That should be used to fill in the blanks.

QUILL SPILL

2009-01-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

January 3,2008

Like in all other sorrows,writers,too,have companions to share their woes.Thankfully,misery doesn't discrminate between amateurs and professionals.While thoughts race through our minds giving time tough competition,when we put pen to paper,or fingers to keyboard,they stick out their tongues in unison and vanish before one can swear "shitting bricks"!

When we think,we do it freely because we assume noone is watching.Being face to face with paper is like facing another person.Words in the mind can be read by the mind's eye alone.Committing them to paper makes them visible to the naked eye,even if the gaze is our own.They acquire an existence separate from ours.We get particular about the grammar,feel queasy about the style,restless when the appropriate phrase eludes us.

Does the sub-soncsious know the piece may not remain private?That even if it escapes the eagle eyes of a parent,we would violate its solitude ourselves?A lot of us feel compelled to share it.Some do it with lovers,under the presumption that it is a way of bestowing honour.She/he has been the chosen one to safeguard the otherwise off-the-record(sordid)details of one's life...

2008-12-29T00:36:00.000-08:00

Remarkable how contingent the state of affairs is on the affairs of the state.

2008-12-29T00:32:00.000-08:00

When in doubt,run.

2008-12-28T23:21:00.000-08:00

It's cruel of them to sell such lovely roses in their dirty white shirts or no shirts.They should stick to car mops or agrabattis.But not shiny airplanes or roses.That's cruel.

2008-12-01T03:07:00.000-08:00

It's not the same as being unwelcome,really,but going to a city where noone awaits you can be a little sad at times.

2008-09-20T15:09:00.000-07:00

THE DEPTHS OF DEPRAVITY

WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?
Amrita Anand was named after Amrita Pritam and as always, “one, two” was followed by “buckle my shoe.”

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?
Yet to get to the last time.

DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?
When I think it is getting distantly close to Dakshta’s, who is known to vomit pearls when she writes.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE LUNCH MEAT?
Maneka Gandhi had a particularly strong effect on a particular tabula rasa.

DO YOU HAVE KIDS?
Yes, and my kids and the time to do this tag also co-exist.

IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU?
A slightly suspicious friend, maybe.

DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT?
What gave you the idea???

DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS?
Tonsils?! How do they figure here? If this is a linguistics paper I back out NOW.

WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP?
Anyday.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE CEREAL?
Now it looks like a Kellog’s survey, the kind whose result is already known because all the other competitors have been strangled by brutally strong hands fed on more Kellog’s.

DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF?
Not even when I am putting them back on.

DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG?
I allow myself to humour my self.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE ICE CREAM?
Almond caramel crunch.

WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?
"Those little acts of kindness.”

RED OR PINK?
Red.

WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVOURITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF?
Repeating myself in the patterns in which I lead life.

WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST?
My hostel group in its entirety, if it is about what you are unlikely to get back.

WHAT COLOUR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING?
Pants are generally not considered to mate very well with night-dresses and I am not wearing shoes.

WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE?
Brittania Pure Magic.

WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?
The whirring of a fan.

IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOUR WOULD YOU BE?
Blue.

FAVOURITE SMELLS?
Unfair question.

WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE?
Rajat.

DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO TAGGED YOU?
Wasn’t tagged but the one who suggested I do this is an absolute one of a kind :).

FAVOURITE SPORT TO WATCH?
Football. But I try not to watch any sport because it makes me wistful about not having the time to play.

HAIR COLOUR?
Black and grey.

EYE COLOUR?
Black and red.

DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS?
No.

FAVOURITE FOOD?
Well done salads with the right seasonings.

SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?
Happy endings. As you can see, I could do with some right now.

LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED?
Vivah.

WHAT COLOUR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING?
N.A.

SUMMER OR WINTER?
Yet to decide.

HUGS OR KISSES?
Big hugs, small kisses.

FAVOURITE DESSERT?
Fruit cake.

WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW?
Bare Act on The Right to Information Act, 2005.

WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD?
Don't have one.

WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON T.V. LAST NIGHT?
A film of dust.

FAVOURITE SOUND?
Kids’ gurgling laughter.

ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES?
Huh?

WHAT IS THE FURTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME?
The Sultanate of (N)Oman.

DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT?
Wiggling ears (sheepish admission).

WHERE WERE YOU BORN?
Bhagalpur.

2008-09-20T10:02:00.000-07:00

The inability to let go of glorious pasts and ideas that seem to hold the promise of potentially glorious futures:recurring communication blocks.

2008-09-08T05:29:00.000-07:00

I didn't know the last line of my previous post would be so oracular,that I would be so enmeshed in THE world as to stay away from this place for so long.The best of wisdom resides in the oldest of adages and one of them suggests that if you don't do what you think you wanted to do,it means you didn't want it enough.Does it mean,words,that I do not love you enough?That I have only taken and not given half as much in this ancient relationship that we share.In fact,I am not even sure I should be presumptuous enough to call it a relationship,because if you did all the giving,it means there was nothing mutual about the process.Please tell me I am imagining things!At least it would tell me I am still capable of imagination.

2008-07-07T03:03:00.000-07:00

"ARE YOU ENTERTAINED?ARE YOU ENTERTAINED???"

With I trying to convert the unearned vacation into an apology for a sabbatical, the last month witnessed periodic TV viewing bouts.I told myself I was t-learning,though after one day of heavy viewing, one felt the need to be away from the living room for the whole of the consecutive day, at least.

It often left me dissatisfied, trying to cover national news and then wanting to know about the regional bits (which means Delhi as well as Bihar-Jharkhand for me), moving on to BBC,CNN,Al-Jazeera…When I was off guard and forgot to remind myself about not looking back, it was frustrating to realise how much I have missed . I cursed myself for not having paid enough attention when my gramps tried to drum into me the rights-and-duties conscious citizen's habit of regular newspaper reading and motivation failed me after the first few days, as I got busy with staring deep into the soulful, liquid eyes of Dickens' heroes.

Then there were the Pakistani channels which offered so much better and more realistic soaps than what we have on the domestic menu here. Apparently, the middle class still exists for our neighbouring creative heads. And then, of course, were the movies. Fox, MBC 1, MBC 2, MBC 3, MBC 4, Dubai One, City 7. They don't just churn out the regular Star Movies-HBO stuff but also feature some that are unheard of but are surprisingly intriguing. Or maybe boredom made me inept at distinguishing the good from the bad, as long as I had a roomful of people speaking.

CSIs were quite a hit. Thank god for re-runs. One didn’t have to wait for a week for the follow up. So one could cover the whole CSI range in a day, Miami, NY, LVPD, the whole lot. I also bumped into 'Bones', whose existence I was sinfully unaware of until now. I never thought I was much for blood and gore but I admit I couldn't help a mean, satisfied smirk when I noticed the grimaces of my co-spectators. No matter how fictitious the contents, it was the fascinating picture dictionary I never had. "And look Dad, it talks, too!"

Indoor evenings were spent watching Munnibai's ghazal recitals,the mention of whose gharana still makes people touch their ears in reverence.As she voiced the pining lover's ostensibly self-effacing, actually narcissistic,taunt-laden entreaties,it was easy to see where the effusive wah-wahs of the audience came from. After reading Naguib Mahfuz and Abdelrehman Munif, it was one more step towards furthering my conscientious, hangdog,mea culpa -enclosed- herewith, project of privileging the Orient.

I tried to delight in all of it, knowing I was never going to grace my couch this often, unless I planned to practice total self-abhorrence. The me-tube alliance was welcome until recently but its best-before date has arrived and am keener now on delving into the off screen, unedited version of 'The World As You Know'.

2008-06-20T03:23:00.001-07:00

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT BLACK SHEEP

aabb, abab, abba, baa, baa, black sheep, have you got any wool?
Um…no ma'am, my apologies, sir, only some worthless spool.

2008-06-17T13:34:00.000-07:00

Of all the things that the two of them shared
What coupled the couple was what they both feared

2008-06-17T13:32:00.000-07:00

United we stood
Until divided by the fall

2008-06-17T09:45:00.000-07:00

As pleased to hear
"I love you for what you are"
As incredulous of your knowledge
Of what I am

2008-06-15T10:24:00.000-07:00

The fiction of an equal relationship is sustained only by the equally strong fact that the unyielding party keeps trying to make up for its guilt by proffering regular perks and privileges the compromising party rightfully acknowledges as its due.

2008-06-07T00:47:00.000-07:00

FOOL'S PARADISE

Only the most perfect fools can attain the most perfect happiness.
Suddenly I don't mind being a fool.

2008-05-31T11:26:00.000-07:00

I have traded the sea of humanity for stretching deserts and sombre mountains. But I don't seem to hate them. People find ways of seeking out friendships that they need in order to survive. I find myself wanting to run the back of my hand across the yearning bellies of the sand-dunes and watch the grains tremble down gratefully. If I cannot be comforted and feel reassured about my importance, I must comfort and prove myself useful. It is the same utilitarianism that makes me ache to bloom into wild flowers on the mountains and tell them with smiling eyes that being old doesn't mean new things do not like to hang out with them. I wish I could let them know.Pity.Pity.

2008-05-31T08:36:00.000-07:00

Sarcasm leaves you a desirable entertainer but a mistrusted friend.