Not this! I asked for a 'Life of Quiet Desperation'!

Body as Livewire

2019-04-09T14:18:00.000+05:30

I sing in the morning,
so my throat will open
and blackbirds will soar
from my gaping maw.

I lay on my back,

waiting to be straightened

for my spine to be settled

with a lumbar knock.

When I'm meditating,

and my fingers unfold

I feel a sudden tenderness

engulf my soul.

I can't really follow

how frequently i blink

but as I stare ahead

a power radiates within.

Sometimes I desperately wish

to be cracked open - like a walnut

with a mallet

and lulled into mush.

Every time I hope,

I'm keeping myself open

Letting all the world's joy and pain

Into my arms

Until I'm truly broken.

Baby Steps

2018-02-21T21:00:00.000+05:30

Eventually, when you emerge into the world
find your two feet firmly tentative, shuffling
muffledly, Unleash your desire into the world recklessly
"walk", you think. (did you just command me?)

Your body, inexorably, acquiesced to motion,
your shoulders still stiff, ready to slump.
Pinpricks - like needles, accompanying sweat beads,
accumulate, accessorizing your neck hair.

Two hundred and six goodish bones, so many
specialised muscle tissues (find out which, yourself)
Limbs, skin, face hanging in the periphery,
won't let on the secret workings of their machinery.

Yeah you can learn lessons of what lies within
collect stories of how we work, when you observe a
cadaver, getting the royal dug-out treatment.
Innards laid bare, a post-person's ultimate unwitting surrender.

Journal-schism

2018-02-21T20:36:00.000+05:30

So I haven't made a journal-like entry on this blog for a long time. At some point I had decided to take off on a journey to 'live' my life and not chronicle it. I'm gonna refer to the entire intervening period as the Lost Weekend.

I used to journal before because it gave me a space to come into myself. To stretch within my skin and focus my vision through my eyes and breathe through my nostrils, etc etc, you get the picture.

I clearly did not want to make the connection that I had lost a part of this peacemaking process w/ self during the Lost Weekend. One hell of a long lost weekend it was. Lost my mind, my money, my self, my way, started finding some things again. But I think I am finally ready to make that admission and that's why I'm here.

Of course I revived this blog while I basked in all that internal turmoil (because, whichever way you slice it, fucking yourself up is the best way to stay right in the middle of the drama) and wrote poetry. Now, I am told by some people that this poetry is good. But of course, I have to remind myself that the people who reach out to tell me that it is good are the ones who liked it after reading. Not that I want or think it is even possible that *everybody* likes my work, but I would like that whoever likes it, has legit reasons for doing so, and identifies with it resoundingly. Just a few things I'd like, it's not too much to ask is it.

So, while this will continue to be the place where I journal I want to move my poetry into a website.

I don't want to stop, now that I have guided myself into this place where I can look at a revival of this space where I carry on my sometimes inane sometimes important, perhaps, profound dialog with self.

But I only have myself to turn my head away from the distractions and look at the empty white space and cursor, and type.

Here's to making your mind and body your friend.

-xx-

Every House

2017-11-26T13:44:00.000+05:30

Every house I ever entered

whether to live in or breathe of -

- awhile, I would keep trying

To find the cornermost corner,

At the angle furthest from

When you enter the door.

And then when I encountered

each such corner, I sat down

in the comfortable darkened edge

yet to see the light of knowledge

-That usually pervaded a house -

of who I was, when I entered it.

Yesterday was different.

I had set myself up to fail,

And found that my last corner

Had in turn, turned upon me.

I turned back from my corner

To face the rest of the room

And I was awash in light.

The Somersaulting Heart

2017-08-09T17:07:00.001+05:30

I think of leaving all this behind

but the furthest that I’ve got

are peremptory boasts (a wish) that

my heart lies somewhere better.

Still, slow retreating steps’ll do;

hold me in better stead I guess

than going forth where I’m never true

a penny-counting half-witness.

A few days ago, a stab of jealousy -

like a poisoned dart - enveloped in me

a nice, deceiving warmth, you know

almost what they call ‘inner glow’.

It was at first, a fling with Art;

tho now I’d like to be committed.

The asylum’s not far, but my heart is flung

somersaulting away, all song and drama.

Spud Piece

2017-06-24T22:46:00.004+05:30

You enter the room

there are two chairs

one has a potato

you sit next to that one

you don’t happen to know,

what it’s for, how it’s this

Phenomenon (but just before

you said that; I stopped you).

The potato is alive.

no boo - not in the realm

of the Possessed, you just know

the vibe a living thing has.

But the truth is, the potato,

it’s me. I wish I was only

aloo-ding to a piece of fried me.

But i’m just a spotty spud.

Roundabout Truths

2017-06-20T01:37:00.000+05:30

If we can – freely –

admit to ourselves that the

Underprivileged automatically

lead more virtuous lives

and the righteous follow in file:

then we might suspend this

acting out we do in difficult ways;

misdirected (almost) always

on unsuspecting souls & elbows

[it’s a privilege to be unlovable]

Then we might even find ways

to answer the oldest question ever posed

How to pass the time? This time, with fewer scars;

who knows? We might even make ourselves

useful.

There’s virtue in being useful; mostly
it’s honest and has constructive results -

- usually. When I sit with my grandma a while

I feel I have been of some use.

And I pat my own deserving back for it.

Witchful, Watchful

2017-01-19T13:28:00.000+05:30

There she sits, always across

The room from me, distant

Enough that I can’t really tell

If she’s looking at me and smiling

Or if that wily smiling fetching

flirt is someone else’s to tackle,

for the moment. I gather, only

to disperse, my thoughts and fears.

Just so, her legs aren’t impossibly

Long; hair tousled in a fashionable way.

Smidge of ennui flickers on her face

I sigh; I rise to take her hand.

A dubious idea rather dismissed

ere I destroy her charmerie.

In my mind I blow her a kiss

her eyelashes acknowledge me softly.

Tote

2017-01-14T21:12:00.002+05:30

Sometime this season

You'll stop the spiralling

Out of control. The

bristling'll cease.

You'll bless your breath

As it leaves your body,

and you heave 'self to

and fro quietly.

The colours are the

kind that seep through

The folds they fall,

becoming you.

Drive about town;

a deserted look

Eyebrows that have

been abandoned.

Persisting sulk

Burl won't go away

Acquainting with

a gaggle of freaks.

Last and final call

Grab some empathy

Stuff it down your bra

Proceed to boarding.

Arbeit Macht Frei

2016-05-24T10:32:00.002+05:30

There's many a metaphor straddling
The continuum of work and death
A slave knows one leads to the other
And the other is deliverance from hell

We hope we go, when we do, with grace
Die as we live, hard at work, always
That there won't be much room for regret
At the end of a life of constant effort

Still others have made death their work
Diggers of graves, burners of bodies
Butchers, fishermen, farmers and priests
Nurses and caregivers at the hospice

If like me, you're learning-averse

through work we can know ourselves

While in sickness, the first thing to suffer

Workaholics bring illness to the desk.

When work seems never-ending I play
a trick upon myself and think of death
But when the toiling is itself the reward
It's a celebration and coping, in the best way

A Not Unraveling

2015-12-15T17:41:00.000+05:30

Let me get to the heart

Of the matter at once;

My deepest darkest secret fear

Is that I will let myself down

And crush those that I love,

Through actions that betray

a pathetic lack of courage.

Not uncommon, I know.

Not even unfounded, it’s true.

But the hole in my stomach -

-the dryness of my mouth -

the derailment of thought;

Confer a unique experience

Each time the penny drops

I realized this some time ago,

And that more out of curiosity

About my own internal process

A wonder at my surrender

At my acceptance of paralysis

Will it always be so easy, so familiar

these patterns of failure

I search for my inner Ivanhoe

propelled by a greater fear, of course;

Of time unaccounted; sunken costs –

Standing still – and yet getting lost.

Will I survive not being constantly gratified?

If I split into two, I might see this through

But I can inhabit the future only when it’s now.

Do Not Deny The Wretchedness

2015-10-16T11:43:00.000+05:30

When I was a little girl – a tween?

And it rained on lazy evenings

I would run outside in my petticoat

And invite my mom along to play

In the puddles with me – 1, 2, 3.

Somehow she rarely ever joined in these

Trying harder instead to entice me

Into returning inside, to promises,

Of food or some such sundry

Entertainment – a bribe essentially.

I hearken back to this old memory

Because suddenly I feel the itch to be

Standing barefoot, soaking the vitality

Of that moment. The mud, the breeze

The unrelenting patter was, to me, almost therapy.

***

Ma. I may need some therapy.

Just come feel the earth loosen under your feet.

Do not deny the wretchedness,

Which we blame upon the drought in our hearts;

We all long to be loved, but we need to be free.

why I rejected your friend request

2015-09-11T19:26:00.000+05:30

This one is for my friends

Who wonder where i’ve been

Hiding – just out of their sight

Or deep in the funkhouse

I measure my worth like I

Measure my days – sometimes

I don’t fully inhabit the person in

the images I show to the world

On such days when it takes a little more,

I turn to tea or toast or poetry

But sometimes I must sit down and

Confront some dizzying questions

I think my face rather ugly then

I look lost and slow and chubby

So my focus shifts to better expression

As soon as I am reminded of this

It is not for me, not, certainly,

In this lifetime, to live up to your ideals

But maybe once I start controlling

My facial expressions - I’ll say hello

Carpe...damn.

2015-09-11T19:20:00.000+05:30

Wake up calls work for

those who are asleep, and not

for us who keep our eyes closed

wilfully explaining away

every lost opportunity

as one that never was found

what does it mean to

stand up for myself

and discount the doubt for a minute

to take a clean confident plunge

into the unknown depths

it could be beautiful

it could mean wishing i’d

done it sooner and better

it could mean learning a lesson

but what i will never know by crawling

back under my own oppression

i will never know at all.

Too many times

2015-09-11T15:46:00.000+05:30

Too many times

It has happened that you overreach

And bring to ruins a carefully

Calibrated reality

It is no longer allowed

to look the other way

As the constant friction remoulds

your differences into opacity

Surely there's more to understand

Perhaps the hour is not now

Perhaps this is all you will have

And other things may begin to matter.

shed your sticky angst

But before you walk away lighter

put down these words in a cool, dry place

a poem is a safekeeper

Carne

2013-10-11T17:26:00.004+05:30

I ate half a bird yesterday

and it (the eating, not the bird)

led me to contemplate,

if poems are gentle, compassionate?

Let me explain, I stake

no claim in kindness banks;

but death is not always,

a matter of unkindness

And we are trapped in

bodies flawed. The goat it

bleats, the cows fidget

And I will never figure out a widget.

Are we vulnerable to precision?

The killing machine is the same for me

and you and all the animals

(do you think they think they're free?)

I've toed the line of agency to

practice the art of the possible.

Still the world has failed to well show me

how bacon can be the smell of evil.

scene

2013-07-21T10:54:00.000+05:30

Trust slipped loose, and the shingles

sprinkled like salt on the open wound.

One by one all day we hear

the faultlines crack and wait, look around;

for the crash that will always take you by surprise.

Outside The Box

2013-06-06T12:31:00.001+05:30

It gets stranger in the night,

a time of cold, suspended sight.

the nub of my wrist in your strong embrace,

and the taste of summer rain.

We burn by the candle's wick,

drown in the swirling intrigue.

You hold me by the nape of my neck

and fear chokes my gullet.

Strangers love like stowaways,

hungry and funny by turns.

Hysterical. The red is from the wine.

Oh, but some of it is mine.

I bear no scars from secret trysts;

I play well known outsider's tricks.

I go where strange friendships are found,

and return like clay, unmade.

Break your own heart and mourn it well;

the love of self is a lesson in hell.

And tortured souls arrive at the place,

none too soon and a little too late.

Words don't count for much, except when they come along like this

2012-04-11T13:02:00.000+05:30

The Crime is Never Perfect, Jean Baudrillard

__________________________________________________________________________________

To contemplate our face would be madness, since we would no longer have a secret for ourselves, and would therefore be wiped out by transparence.

The mirror does not give me my true appearance. I only know myself in reflection, such as inside me I will never be. But it is like this for every object, that only comes to us definitively altered, including upon the screen of our brain. All things thus offer themselves without hope of being anything other than the illusion of themselves. And it's good this way.

Luckily the objects that appear to us have always already disappeared. Happily nothing appears to us in real time, any more than the stars in the night sky. If the speed of light were infinite, all the stars in the universe would behere at once -- in real time -- and the vault of the sky would be of an unbearable incandescence. No more night -- perpetual day. Happily nothing takes place in real time, otherwise we would be subjected, through information, to thelight of all events, and the present would be of an unbearable incandescence. Happily we live in the mode of a vital illusion, in the mode of an absence, of an irreality, a non-immediacy of things. Happily all things, the world and others, come to us definitively altered. Happily nothing is instantaneous, nor simultaneous, nor contemporaneous. Happily reality doesn't take place.Thankfully the crime is never perfect.

The Business of Theatre in the Attention Economy

2011-12-12T20:08:00.003+05:30

Last weekend I watched a Hindi play. Although I’m very interested in theatre activity, my work hours and time management prevent me from watching all the plays I would like to. But last weekend, I watched the same play, twice, Saturday and Sunday.

***

Several years ago, or what feels like it, I could contemplate the world for hours, drifting between incomprehension and acceptance. But it doesn't really bother me that I can hardly sit still without having to resort to using the internet, or a phone to constantly re-engage and connect with other living elements of my world.

***

Somewhere I read, a guy had correctly pointed out that we now live in the attention economy where human attention is a scarce commodity. Our reserves of attention and attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, the further we’re exposed to instant gratification and an assault of data and information every way we turn. So something that holds our attention for really long is what will be prosperous in this economy.

***

So when the internet is where-its-at, when your marriage is validated when you update your facebook status, and most of these public and data-rich activities are performed for the public eye, it behooves one to hold the precious and rare away from the scrutiny of jaded, cynical eyes roving through the cesspit these beholders believe the internet to be.

***

I have been living without a functioning computer at my flat for a few months now, and I find that while I’m sorely missing out on the music I want to listen to, I am getting so many other things done that I would never get the chance to do if I would be glued to my twitter timeline every night, or bouncing off the wikisphere or blogosphere drowning in a flurry of hyperlinks. Cooking, reading, talking to friends on the phone once in a while. Yeah, this is not a bad deal.

***

Perhaps at a time like this, an art form like theatre is the most relevant. For art to exist, for artists to survive and interest in art to sustain, it must adapt. But maybe the inability of an art form like theatre to adapt to this age of easy accessibility, unavailability in a virtual form like an e-book or a music album or a film turned into bits, keeps it real. And pure. Theatre remains something to be experienced, in the moment, and is no less visceral in its approach and execution than it was a thousand years ago on the ancient Grecian podiums.

Salt.

2011-09-09T11:07:00.000+05:30

Taste is a series of sensory information bits we interpret into an experience. By adding salt to activate our salt receptors, we increase the number of information bits considerably, and in so doing create a fuller tasting experience.

What's your Story?

2011-09-06T16:17:00.000+05:30

My friend, Sorjin*, is a guitar player. He loves to play the blues, and can seduce you with a few notes on the slide. He told me once that he decided to go the way of music because it is a free-flowing, real-time expression of you. Who you are, then. Not a distillation, a derivation or a rationalization of what you think your character is. That things like books and movies need a narrative - a beginning and an end. cause and effect. so if you start with one thing, you end up with another. music doesn't rely on that narrative formula, or any kind of rationalization. Take Merzbow. or Lustmorde. What they do is play subliminal 'noise' music, which cannot be brought down to a scale and moves (I think - I don't have it figured out) intuitively, like a mood changing through a landscape.

Music has the ability, as Huxley said, second best to silence, to express the inexpressible. You can never know who you really are, maybe because there is no you; maybe because it is beyond our perception; or an elusive combination of both. But you will find that music - whether listening and appreciating, or singing or playing - can talk to the you inside. In a way that books, paintings and movies never can. And he played me a song the other day, called 'Untitled', in an album that was untitled - maybe to ensure that nothing more than the music itself could be inferred from that piece.

#nowplaying Brian Eno - Taking Tiger Mountain

It's a good lesson for life. We've often thought about the OST for the 'movie of our life', that captures in glitzy cinematic detail the trials and travails of a day in our lives. Even autobiographies that don't tell you how the writer became who she became, are decried for lack of a gripping storyline.

But we don't live our lives like that. There will be days and days together when you don't understand what you're doing, but you know you're doing it because something is making you do it, guiding you in that direction. When/if it ends successfully, people call it motivation, a killer instinct. If it fails - well, it doesn't matter what you call it, nobody's listening.

So for days like that, I think we'd all do well to think about something like this. I'm reproducing a quote below.

You will find that people love their narratives. They need for your life to have meaning; it must provide them a teachable moment, whether cautionary or aspirational. But you will never be who they think you are.

The more you allow their expectations to dictate to you what you should be, the more unfamiliar you’ll become with your own reflection in a mirror.

I found this through my subscription to Andrew Sullivan's the daily beast, by the way. Whattay blog. It's a blessing in these days of mindless diversions.
*name changed. But it would be pretty cool to have a friend called Sorjin.

A Lesson in Star-gazing

2011-08-25T20:27:00.006+05:30

Mother:What do you mean... He's not coming back?

Jim: Oh, no, he'll come back. We all come back, Kate. These private little revolutions always die.

The compromise is always made. In a peculiar way. Frank is right... every man does have a star. The star of one's honesty. And you spend your life groping for it, but once it's out it never lights again.

I don't think he went very far. He probably just wanted to be alone to watch his star go out.

Mother: Just as long as he comes back.

Jim: I wish he wouldn't, Kate. One year I simply took off, went to New Orleans;for two months I lived on bananas and milk, and studied a certain disease. And then she came, and she cried.

And I went back home with her. And now I live in the usual darkness; I can't find myself; it's hard sometimes to remember the kind of man I wanted to be. I'm a good husband; Chris is a good son... He'll come back.

Arthur Miller had something very interesting to say of the pivot of drama. That it is not just a matter of creating the right characters and getting them to make up the story as they went along. The point is in knowing, as intimately as the character, not just why he would do something – but why he cannot abstain from doing it; why he cannot just walk away from it. In the creation of that motivation to act lies the reality of drama.

I keep coming back to this exchange. It’s a depressing play, All My Sons, by Arthur Miller. It doesn’t end very well, either. A man lives in guilt for many years, knowing whether he has actually caused the death of 21 fighter pilots in providing faulty fighter jets, knowing that his friend suffers in jail for it. His nerves are frayed by the guilt, his wit dulled and any joie de vivre diminishing in the ever-present doubt that eats away at him.

One of his sons went missing in the war; the same war for which he was commissioned to assemble 21 fighter jets. This son had a sweetheart, the son of his friend now in jail, and the sweetheart re-enters his life on the arm of our man’s younger son. The wife has been utterly shaken by the war and the loss of her son, although she never believes he is truly dead. The dialogue is hopeful and young – the lovers talk of the days to come, neighbours discuss astrology, husbands and sundry. Until the sweetheart’s brother demands that she break off her engagement with the younger son and return as our man put her father in jail. Drama, more of it, ensues. This particular exchange takes place between the wife (called Mother) and her scientist neighbour, Jim, while anxiously waiting for her younger son, Chris, who has just discovered the damning allegations against his father, to return.

Is it true that once our star goes out, it never comes back? Do we lose all the integrity we may possess, all the truth and purity we have lived by, in a passing moment of bad judgement? I may have, in a bid to preserve one of the longest and most beautiful friendships in my life, lied, wilfully, constantly and almost in disbelief that my eyes do not, in fact, speak the truth when all my tongue can do is roll off unconvincing, plastic words that taste bitter even to me.

Maybe my star went out a long time ago.

Yesterday's Thoughts

2011-07-27T15:11:00.001+05:30

Fuck the night joint. I'm way too sleepy and tired by the time I return home, and somehow defeated, to really let the drug stimulate my thoughts. The morning brings with it a wonderful wave of contemplation, so morning joint it is.

So while staring at the spirals of smoke, and in the many long-drawn minutes after, I was steeped in thought, of varied things.

*****

Going easy on myself has had disastrous results on my money management. I have completely eaten into the savings my grandma painstakingly built for me, and I'm left with 1/5 of a lakh now. It's pathetic. I can't live within my means :( I intend to bring it back to the original amount, if not bring it on par with where it would be if I had let the interest accumulate.

The Flatmate is currently the likeness of a saint. He is finding the strength to always do right by himself and is enduringly pure. He's a real inspiration, if you are looking for it.
The city noises on the cab to work are gratingly present, each and every day. Sometimes, you hear the voices behind the noises, the urgent alarm of the ambulance, the bored persistence of car horns, the buzz of the beautiful rains.

Being a non-vegetarian also changes your personality. The way food is attacked, and the defensive response that one evolves in response to allegations by vegetarians makes one develop a different attitude in life. In other news, Woodside's BeerNBurger festival is great, and Ireland's corned beef burger was amazing. It didn't even taste like meat. Just like a really well-cooked and flavoured patty, with smoked bacon. Mmmm.

I should not smoke so much if I want to sing. It's not good for my voice or my lung power but it won't even let me practice, because getting stoned makes me unable to approach music a little detachedly. But I get so restless just to think of being by myself sober.

Ze Stick will be coming over in a few weeks. I will have to sort out my room and get an internet connection and stuff by then. Where will she stay otherwise!

I can haz gourmand syndrome

2011-07-11T21:23:00.000+05:30

Rule 34 may have to be amended to throw in the word lolcat somewhere.

So I'm in maximum city. And every weekend has been a weekend of fun and frolic, some of it forced. But I've eaten at some fabulous places and have a lot to say of food, drink, ambience and service. In this post (since I don't have a food blog) I shall tell you all about interesting things I have been eating and also, cooking.

Went to this nice Italian place on sunday, called Quattro in Lower Parel. Now I'm not one of those underexposed comfort eaters who rely on potatoes and cheese to give them a global food experience. But I'd like to write about this place because the service was very good. Of course, I also went to Fenix last week and the service there was overwhelmingly good, yada yada, but you really pay through your nose for that kind of attention, y'know? The prices at Quattro are certainly reasonable by Bombay standards.

We ordered a cream of mushroom and leeks soup, siciliano pizza and gnocchi. I didn't have my camera with me, so no photos. The soup came with a few interesting breads and were very subtly and freshly flavoured. (I notice how I've been gravitating towards fresher flavours, even if tossed with stir fried something or a heavier sauce, as an alternative to heavy, spicy, overly rich food.)

So here's a list of the interesting things I've eaten over the last few weeks:

Gado gado salad (Busaba, Lower Parel)
Tuna carpaccio with orange, walnut and vinaigrette dressing. (the abovementioned Fenix, Oberoi)
BLT with cheddar and pesto (Salt Water Cafe, Bandra)
Beef Bulgagi Maki Roll (Busaba, Lower Parel)
Mediterannean Salad & Caesar Salad (Kala Ghoda Cafe)
Gooey Chocolate Cake (Cafe Churchill, Colaba)
Emmenthal and Pesto sandwich and Olive and basil tapenade sandwich (Moshe's Cafe, Colaba)

And oh, I fell in love with Mediterannean food in Himachal. Now, the list of interesting things I've made (I realise this is extremely tedious without pictures):

Quesadillas (spring onions, cheddar etc)
Risotto rice pudding (drenched in mangoes and nutella :-p)
Two varieties of salad with Greek Yoghurt dressing.
Mushrooms on toast.

And the gourmand syndrome? It's for real. I read a story about a snowboarder, Kevin Pearce, who had a near fatal accident, and re-emerged post severe trauma with an inexplicable craving for basil pesto. Now, I wouldn't generally attribute this to syndromes or afflictions, I can completely understand a craving for basil pesto, with its creamy cheese and fresh basil and quirky, crunchy pine nuts, but he was quite indifferent to the food before.

Pesto is, indeed, the best-o.