TGIF

It had been a particularly difficult week. And the last few hours had simply crawled. No, just refused to move. 

Finally -


Your message has been sent.

I’m done I’m done I’m done.

Click.

Windows is shutting down.

‘Hey, you wanna get a drink?’ a colleague called out.

‘Sorry, I have plans!’ she smiled cheerily as she sprinted out the door. 

She counted the colours in the sky on her way home, humming a song tunelessly.

Two glasses of wine later-

GAME OVER

Damn.

Five glasses of wine later-

GAME OVER

Fuck. Stupid, stupid Pacman.

Suddenly she couldn’t wait for Monday.

I wish You are Here had been an extension of Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan's celebrated blog. Sure the novel does read like an insanely lengthy blog post, but it's not The Compulsive Confessor.
There were some moments in the book which made me sit up and scream, 'Oh my god I know EXACTLY what you mean'. It's Indian chick lit, of course I relate to it. I'm twenty something and single; I live in a big city and earn pennies and I can't really exist without my vodka and sprite. There, I just described the protagonist for you. Sometimes it's interesting to hold up a mirror in the form of a book. You are Here could have been interesting in that sense, but it was too shoddily edited. Cut every other page, and it will make a brilliant urban slice-of-life novella. Good night. 

Things I'm looking forward to this year:

1. Solving that 500-piece jigsaw puzzle that I just bought. 

2. 

I've started being wary of instant friendships. The kind of friendships you sink into after a great first conversation, where you discover that you like the same books and watch the same movies and laugh at the same things. The second conversation is even better because you think you can really TALK to this person and you feel you've known them all your life. By the third conversation, you're absolutely confident that you are going to be best friends forever. Now I don't want to make any sweeping generalisations, so I'm just going to say this is a pattern I've noticed in my own life -- such friendships, more often than not, are short-lived. And you'd be surprised how quickly they fizzle out.

I'm a closet extrovert. I like people, contrary to popular belief. I come across as shy and reserved because I automatically clam up when there are more than three people in the room. Even if I'm with a bunch of friends from school, I'm usually the quietest person. I'm just not good with groups, which means I don't have a huge social circle I can go partying with every weekend, but I do have quite a number of people I'm close to individually. Most of them are people I've become friends with gradually. I've taken my time with them. I probably sound like a grandmother here, but I feel you have to grow into friendships in order to make them last. If you just happen to slip into one, then it's easy to slip out as well.

I happened to meet a person very randomly a couple of years ago. We hit it off instantly. Very soon we were pouring out our life's secrets to each other. I had just graduated, and I wasn't really in a hurry to find a job, so my days were pretty much filled with conversations with the New Friend. Then of course, I found a job. Which didn't change anything, really, because even if I'd had an exhausting day at work, I'd still find time to call or at least, send a text. You don't have to spend four hours on the phone everyday to keep in touch with a friend. And then all of a sudden, our conversations started becoming strained and just ... strange. Messages were curt and terse. At first, I thought I was just being paranoid, but then it became more and more obvious that the Person just wasn't interested anymore. And we're talking about a very, very platonic relationship here. Not being someone who lets go of things very easily, least of all friends, I tried my best to be all 'what's up' and 'heyy, what's been happening' every now and then but eventually I had to give up when all I could hear was the sound of my own voice. That friendship, or whatever it was, at least the good part of it, lasted for three months. That's it. What annoys me is that I still think about it, and there are times when I actually miss what I shared with that person. Though he turned out to be completely horrible.

So the moral of today's story is that all worldly ties are evil, and one is better off meditating in the Himalayas. Yes. 

(It's the middle of the night, how else do you expect me to conclude this absolutely cringe-worthy post?)

The Rushdie Affair (Yes, apparently the world is not done talking about it yet)

Oh for the love of god.

It has been over twenty years. Twenty. Years. People want to kill someone because he wrote some rubbish twenty years ago. Not that I'm calling The Satanic Verses rubbish. I haven't read the book. I tried, but I couldn't get past the second page. Only because I was in the middle of a dissertation and had other things that demanded urgent reading. And also because it was ... erm, slightly dull. Ish. It was a little disappointing, okay? I love Rushdie otherwise. 

Anyhoo. We're not here to discuss my opinion. My opinion doesn't matter. And neither does anybody else's. Rushdie's opinion of Islam does not matter. People don't judge a certain religion based on what one person wrote once upon a time. Do you know when they do judge it? When half the world cries for the author's blood.      And are you telling me that all these people who are ready to chop the infidel into pieces have actually read the book and are offended? 

Please. The world doesn't have so many readers. And we're talking about a Booker nominee here. 

But you know, I don't understand why I'm so surprised by the twenty years thing. We, as a nation, have never been able to let things go. We are stuck in history. Which is why Babri happened, and why we let 2000 year-old religions rule our politics today. It's why we still have a caste system, and why my mum would prefer me marrying a Mallu Christian even if I find that I get along better with a Bengali Hindu. No doubt, I'm mixing up things here. What I'm trying to say (badly) here, is that we should learn to let things go. 

Also, somebody should honestly ask the Indian government to look up secularism in the dictionary. 

One part of me is heartily sick of Bangalore and its lack of whatever other cities seem to have in plenty. And the other just wants to curl up in its cosy familiarity forever. #conflict

I think the problem is that I tend to write blog posts in my head all the time, so I have nothing left to say here. (It's also why I don't talk much. It's terribly dull to repeat the conversations you've already had in your head). 

We've drifted apart- Writing and I. And to think we used to be such great friends. (Have you noticed that it's only great friends who drift apart? Wait, does everyone know this already?)

But I have carefully avoided making any new year resolutions pertaining to writing on This Blog. So I might just end up writing again after all. The mind works in weird ways. 

the wind is teething
soon, bite marks will cover skin
winter is coming

Private Concert

Six strings

of a guitar

and your voice, low and deep-

a philharmonic orchestra

for me.

nose against cold glass
joys on display, locked inside-
a window shopper.

Love Story

Someday I will write our love story. The one that never happened. 


I will write about the letters we never wrote to each other, and the cards we never sent. About the songs you never sang for me, and the dress I never wore for you. I will write about all the times we didn't dance under the moonlight, and the times we didn't hold hands at the movies.
I will translate all your silences into the words you never whispered, and put a tune to the sonnets I never wrote. 


I will write about the day we didn't kiss in the rain, and the night we didn't spend, just talking.


Someday I will construct you and me- with ink and syllables, and flights of fancy, on vast sheets of blank paper. And I will stitch our stories together, with my needle and thread, and my craft. 


Someday I will finally write our love story. The one in which we don't hate each other. 

The Proposal

They always went to open-air restaurants.

She was allergic to cigarette smoke. And he was, well, a chain smoker.


His clothes always stink of cigarettes and…ugh, his teeth are starting to yellow. She frowned at him from across the table.


He was quite oblivious to her scrutiny.


I will never marry a chimney. She wrinkled her nose in annoyance as the fumes passively touched her face.


‘Give me your hand,’ he said, grinning, and wove a delicate smoke ring around her ring finger.


‘Will you marry me?’


She stared at him for a second before deciding.


‘Yes!’ she replied, ecstatic. 

old stuff- a medley

stray thoughts in three lines
of seventeen syllables
sanity intact


---


sugar, cinnamon 
in a sea of milk and rice- 
your words are dessert


---


snowflakes in my hair
pink blossoms under my feet
winter still lingers


---


spirals of pasta
missing carbonara sauce
my life without you

The haiku moment is no less than a tiny flash of that ultimate reality which in fact is just what is under our noses.
—Ken Jones

“Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate
And though I oft have passed them by
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.”

—	J.R.R. Tolkien

The Birthday Post

This day, the year before last-

I didn't expect any presents, so I decided to give myself one. I got my eyebrows done.

Hey, I spent £8. That's an expensive gift.

I bought a cake from the supermarket, thinking I would cut it quietly in my room, singing a miserable 'Happy Birthday....to me'.

I wore a white linen dress, and got wet in the rain. It was beautiful.

I partied on Skype. Eight-people conferences are fun. Especially when they don't get along too well...

My new flatmates made biriyani for me. And sneaked in candles for my cake, risking the abominable fire alarm.

This day, last year-

I found a new friend. Only to lose him after a few months. It was carelessness.

A lizard fell from the ceiling and landed on my bed. A few inches from where I was sitting with my laptop. I temporarily lost the use of my voice, and narrowly escaped a minor cardiac arrest.

I locked myself in my room and cried. Out of boredom.

Today, this year-

I wrote a birthday post after years, renewing an old tradition. About all the things I didn't want to talk about.

Oh hello, twenty-four.

Nice to see you. Not.

Oh good old Blogger. How nice to see you again.

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore.

-- Neil Gaiman

The Goodbye Post

I flew from Kerala. Which means a bunch of relatives (some close, some not-so-close, and some so not-at-all-close I had no idea why they were there) insisted on dropping me off at the Kochi airport and waving frantically at what they thought was my plane. My mother, who cries at the drop of a hat, wept enough to create a small water body that day. For an alarming split second, I wondered if I was making a big mistake by going. Being the strong and silent type, I remained strong and silentish, allowing a tear to escape only when I was in the plane, while my dad tactfully studied his uninteresting in-flight magazine carefully. Needless to say, the excitement crept back again quickly.

Ten hours later we were in London.

First thoughts: I don't think I like Heathrow very much. Too many people, too many signs, too many queues, too many lots of things. I'm woozy and confused. What is going on. Uff.

Seconds thoughts: Uh, how cold is it going to get in December again? Because I’m freezing right now, and it's only September.

Third thoughts: Okay, it’s cold and wet and dark. But it’s London. LONDON. I’m there. I mean, here. YAY.

Also, I'm very glad that my dad decided to come along. I'm such a baby.

We travelled to Leeds only the next day, after spending the night at a family friend's place. My dad helped me unpack, bought me groceries to last me a week, and left.

I’m not an extrovert. Big groups make me uncomfortable. I don’t make friends very quickly, I can’t. But it didn’t seem like a disadvantage in Leeds. Or maybe I’ve changed, a little bit. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I had to share a flat with absolute strangers. Family-less in a foreign land, you start to look for family-ness in the people around you. It’s not easy to live with people. Even with your friends, for that matter. You can get on each other’s nerves after a point. Living together is very, very different from spending time together. Which is why I was thrilled to have people like Gee and Abeer as my flatmates. Even though the three of us were completely different from each other (e.g., Abeer- Civil Engineering student, Gee- International Finance student, me- English Literature student) we got along like a house on fire.

It took me a few days to realize that Ma wasn’t going to bring me a cup of chai the moment I woke up. There wasn’t going to be a plate of hot buttered dosas with steaming sambaar and cold chutney, or upma with sliced bananas or Bombay toast or any of the twenty different breakfasty things she or Veremummy used to make, waiting for me at the dining table while I got geared up for the day. Neither was there going to be a hot lunch (rice, a gravy, fish and something else, usually) all ready for me when I got back home, tired after classes. Nobody to say, It’s-okay-I’ll-do-the-dishes-you-don’t-bother. Oh yes, I took full advantage of my spoilt-only-child-of-doting-parents-and-even-more-doting-grandparents status. Leeds changed all that. Completely.

I'm never going to say, Ma, why did you make this dish again? We just had it day before yesterday, for god's sake ever again.

For the next few months, it was Gee (pouring milk into her bowl of oats or mixing sugar in her coffee) that I saw first thing in the morning as I stumbled into the kitchen rubbing the sleep from my eyes. She would tell me her plans for the day while I toasted bread or fried an egg. (When she didn’t have classes, Abeer would have breakfast at lunchtime).

Abeer was my grocery-shopping partner. We would always come back with more stuff than what we’d planned to buy, our arms aching from the load. We’d make it a point to spend at least fifteen minutes gazing at the dessert section longingly, and another fifteen arguing over which cake, pie or mousse looked more sinful and therefore, was going to come home with us. The dessert would usually be consumed while watching a movie in her room.

I’ve lost track of the number of people I’ve had so many good conversations with in the past year- friends of flatmates, classmates, coursemates, flatmates of friends, building-mates, random people at the bank and other random places…

I don’t remember having too many lonely moments.

I regret not having spent more time with so many people, not making time for them. I wish I could spend more time with the people I’ve already spent a lot of time with. Sometimes, I wish I could go back to the place where Gee and Abeer were only a knock away, and I could see Abha’s room from my window.

I can’t condense all the experiences I’ve had here in a blog post. I want to, though. I want to name every person who’s found their way into my circle of friends. I want to pick out all the moments (consequential or otherwise) I’ve had with those people, with myself in the past year, and put them on a mantelpiece. The camera did its best, but the pictures don't do justice. Sadly, my words don't either.