Easily Nostalgic

Hello,
Yellow.
or were they dirty brown?
She thought with a frown
And found in this thought
Carefully wrought
By three forehead wrinkles
Were several crystal sprinkles
Of memories
That at once sieze
the foolishly classic,
Easily nostalgic.

Infinite Loop

Did I ever mention that I hate loud noises? It freaks me out and sets off a small scream inside me, which freaks me out and sets off a small scream inside me, which freaks me out and sets off a small scream inside me...

You get the drift.

Fifteen minutes of

Close your eyes, and read:

And I sat
in an atrium
Underwater
Surrounded by floating apples
Hazy. Midnight psychadelic
Colours seep through the walls. Slow.
And now feet everywhere
Trying to touch
And in the fleeting instant
Of that one touch
Fusing into each other
Feet upside down
Turn,
Into the ugly jaw
Of a boar. Close up.
A wolf running behind
Red Muslin,
Heavy tires
Carefully tread
Over red flowers.
Silk lapping up the petals
Taking their form in print.
Hands in close-up can look
Distorted. All these lines, I tell you.
Pour warm purple liquid
Over the lens
And wipe it off to reveal
Tulips.
Green strawberries
Suspended in hot pink
melting into one and then
Bouncing away as four.
Under water, sunlight
Filters through the pest-holes
In green leaves.
Wreckage after rain
Little feet
Go Splat. Gold piping on Pajamas.
Squishing ripe mangoes
Stepping over apples
And feet float
Clasped by ribbons
And apples float
And the boar moves slowly ahead...
It begins again, slowly and in close up.

*
And outside -
Lettuces blossoming through snow on the sidewalk, and large plastic bags filled with marshmallows dumped in the trash.

Let's talk about

Lost blackberries. Dripping Christmas lights. The wedding at Cana. A solitary glove. Hot chocolate with chantilly. Bohemia. U Zlate Studne. Soft cold white snow. Hot red wine for 3 euros. Revolutionising poster art. George Gershwin and others in a mirror chapel. Alice's adoloscence and how it turned into a weird sexual drama. Jacuzzi. A castle. 19th century art. A very intoxicating green liquid. Flames before my eyes, flames in my head. A lost wallet. Freely flowing tears. A heart-breakingly beautiful city. My wonderful friend with liquid eyes. Talking. Talking some more. Skipping Wagamama. Cobbled streets in the night-time. Hearty eating. Water-liles and ponds as seen through the eyes of an eighty year old man. Let's talk about the many, many artists who swarmed to that nectar-laden city. Montmartre sans the cigarettes. A sacred heart and some shaken pictures. Laduree. Talking to sleep. Opulence. Gardens as far as the eyes can see. Installations. Reading to sleep. Walking. Peeling wallpapers. Rooibos tea. An explosion. Then another. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Psychadelic Eiffel. Diamonds and rubies as seen from the sky. Ineffective airline staff. And let's not talk at all about the city I call home.

They swirl and they twirl....

The colours in my head, baby blue pastel red.
That's Rubbish! said he, Superficiality.
And proceeded thence to crush me (Bang bang, he shot me down).
A spirit now replaced by a hollow carved by sharp words (Bang bang I hit the ground)
And now, my love, my love is as all-seeing as yours (Bang bang, my baby shot me down).

No, I didn't mean the blogging :)

Stop

Just....... Stop.

Memories

Blast from the past A scene of much suspense on the big screen I grip the clammy hand firmly The white light fills the cinema hall for a brief moment with visions of 19 year olds breezing in a tottling autorickshaw at Bandra singing asynchronistically and feeding a sunscreen lotion sandwich to a yellow-eyed boy

Have you forgotten me sooner than the ink could dry on our tragic love story It has after all been only 4 years And don't you know that your reply is anticipated with as much bated breath as the highly climatic end of this great movie I watched today Sigh What I need to tell myself is that pushing the refresh button on my inbox several times does not send telepathic correspondence urges to you

Siddhartha P told me you were a virus and must be deleted from the system Siddhartha P be very wise

In the midst of angst

...Un samaiyal arayil naan uppa sakkaraiya...

...Nee padikkum araiyil naan kangala pusthakama...

...Nee viralkal endral naan nagama modirama...

...Nee idalkal endral naan muthama punnakaiya...

...Nee azhagu endral naan kaviya oviyana...

...Naan vekkam endral, nee sivappa kannankala...

...Naan theendal endral nee virala sparsangala...

...Nee kuzhanthai endral naan thotilla thalattha...

...Nee thookam endral naan madiya thalaiyana...

...Naan idhayam endral nee uyira thuditudipaaa.

...Nee vithaikal endral naan veyra vilainilava...

...Nee virunthu endral naan pasiya, rusiya...

...Nee kaidi endral naan siraiya thandanaiya...

...Nee mozhigal endral naan tamila osaigala...

...Nee puthumai endral naan Bharathiya Bharathithasana...Nee!

Nee thanimai endral naan thunaiya doorathila - Nee thunai thaan enral naan pesava yosikkava.

Nee thirumbi nindral naan nikkava poyvidava - Nee pokirai endral naan azhaikava azhuthidava?

Nee kadhal enral naan seriya, thavara?

[Seri, Seri, yeppodhumey seri. :) ]

Well I'll be damned...

...if there ever comes a day that I can think about you without a heavy heart. Happy Birthday.

Untitled

After an evening of movie wine and great music (the disgruntled bouncer gave me a frowny face hand-stamp), I decided to take the subway back home. So I left for the subway station, a little dampened - part from the roof-rain, part from the bag-keeping at the crowded bar.

I got into the surprisingly crowded train (for 1:30 AM, that is) and settled down. That's when this guy walked up to the train doors that hadn't closed yet. He stayed on the platform, and went, " Ooh, you girl, you make me excited. Ooh, Ooooh, you Indian or somethin? You make me so hot. Ooooh. Oooooooh." And he started making these obscene gestures which I only dared to glimpse from the corner of my eye, as by now I was trying really hard to keep my eyes fixated on the floor. The doors finally closed, ending a really long minute.

Disgusting. Get a life man, and stop killing my innocence.

[I completed the ride with a frowny face that matched my hand-stamp. When I got out of the subway and started making my way home, there was a guy standing outside, giving away the nearby sushi place handouts and when he saw me he smiled and he said, hello, how are you. I ignored him and walked on :( ]

Social Profile

This is a summary of reasons that people gave when asked "Why would you date M?"

1. cute (2 votes)
2. funny (2 votes)
3. hot (2 votes)
4. personality (1 vote)
5. smart (1 vote)

This is so great for my self esteem.

Daddy

I hate your loud voice and I fight with you over the remote control but don't you EVER die on me.

Countdown

Heart skips a beat, one by one, one for each year of knowing you and one for each year of not.

In Concert

My favourite, favourite singer. I love you to pieces and I love how you hit a C on the third and the fifth octave with the same effortless ease. And I love you although I killed my friend P's song, and made into a song about you and a man you once loved dearly, who was also so good with words and who was also quite the original vagabond.

Ghosts...

You my unforgotten one, are not unforgiven. Because I often dream of you, and you turn into other people in my dreams, just as other people have turned into you in reality. You, who I turned to and laughed with and sang in the hall where voices always echoed.

Cinnamon tea and honey on toast don't taste the same anymore. Happy birthday.

Chasing spirits

#1
Home decoration and stained-glass, slowly losing their idyllic charm. "Come on, honey, don't be silly. You don't need to earn money to be independent". Fumes of five spices mix with the screams of little Jackie and little Tyler as the mirage reappears, in her cooking pot.

#2
Perched on the edge of the diving board, She tries to shake off the hangover from last night. Always at the top. Of things. Of the corporate ladder {nice little corner office}. Of the mountain she trekked last weekend with the blue-eyed boy {her blue-eyed boy too}. Of the metaphorical world as she does a graceful back flip and dives neatly into the ice-cold water {visions of heaven swimming in her head}. Just as well she didn't learn how to swim, to be invincible would be a curse.

My night

My starry night my friend my lindor dark you mean much more than I admit in my silly jokes and my constant avoidance of phone calls

Something died...

...today. Yet another anniversary. I begin to feel I am jinxed, forebearing closure to everything that I have begun. I suppose I should feel excited about the new job. Sigh, alright.

-----------------------------
Each cell in my body, physically, feels heavy. The mouth is dry from too much Pinot Noir and a mouthful of sweet Reisling. Lead fingers type on the cotton keyboard, and numerous typos and meticulous corrections are in order.

-----------------------------
And what can I say about the little one who does so many things. And about the one who calls me "my dear mad one" but has not proposed yet. And of the one who tells me that he can bear at most one coversation with me every quarter.

Choices

All forts. (Never let them tell you that they're all the same)

Flattered. And battered.

Mon Esprit...

...est une maison de chocolat.

In so many flavours.
Rasberry infused,
Butter-champagne-truffled,
Rainbow-sprinkle covered,
A whole roasted almond-centered,
Chilli-coated,
Sometimes just plain.

Games people play

(And I tell you I don't want something when I really do want it because you don't want it as bad as I do and hope that my not wanting it makes you want it more)

Sometimes I think the only way to be really successful is to play along, but that's just wrong, just wrong.

I hate this thing they call the real world. But a bouchon or two usually makes it all better :)

Falling...

The leaf falls, noiselessly like in the painting that beat Seurat's. The boulder fell, a hundred years before my birth with a deafening crash. The angry flames at the campfire, doused with propane, leapt upward in the shape of a maple leaf and fell crackling into the sky. A tree fell, perhaps with a thud, forming a bridge across troubled waters.


Winter crept silently into the tent at night and three dare-devil (albeit cold) babies slept in the colour factory, as a red fox watched on.

Back for good

And pray, why were you away for so long?

We were getting reborn as two different people, one green and one blue, one better and one worse. We were also looking to get employed, playing tetris, spending time with lovely mother, and being reprimanded for inconsistencies.

Resurrection

But not for all of us. A few of us, traditionally the riskier bet, will be safe. And some of us will be completely screwed. And the rest, like me, will lie limply in limbo, waiting for something to happen. Or not.

But I feel slightly better knowing that atleast we are not being wiped off the map forever. However we will be a changed name, new colours, new heads. No more green. And answering the phone will never be the same again. My poetry partner would have disappeared altogether, and so will my lunch-mate.

So long, and thanks for the fish.

Here today, gone tomorrow?

Poof. Just like that.

Seurat, nature just beat you

A sunlit canvas was generously spray painted with green, yellow and that faint hue of orange. The randomly planted long ugly twigs reached all the way to the sky, breaking the view into a few non-parallel parts. And in this backdrop, a maroon leaf fell noiselessly, ever so gently, onto the damp soil.

A jet-black snake, that curved too much and hence couldn't be poisonous but scared me nevertheless because i almost stepped on it. Several close-up shots later, I was glad my brave snake-charmer nature-lover dare-devil friend did not venture too close to try and open the snake's mouth, because we never know and i really like him and would hate to see him die. :)

And then the view from the top. Oh, to feel small and large and modest and powerful at the same time.

Night-time sharpens, heightens each sensation
Darkness stirs and wakes imagination
Silently the senses abandon their defences.

You alone can make my song take flight -
Help me make the music of the night...

A classic outing that should've taken 6 hours but instead took 14. Between moments of restlessness, I loved every minute of it.

Stir

Down down down down
Fourteen thirteen then some more
Down down down down
Finally, until four...

Who knows what will transpire tomorrow. Maybe it will be Sunday, Hank's favorite working day. As of tonight, I am drunk. In a perverse way, I just want something to happen. Anything that will create some drama in our drab lives. But I miss my buddy and want her to stay as long as possible.

It is funny, the ways in which the macro-ecomonic environment can ruin your lunchtime.

Tonique

Three glasses of wine, 3 shots of god-knows-what... and nothing.

More the Curiouser

Why did my Earl Grey Tea (with milk) taste distinctly like a banana this afternoon. And why does Jim Croce's 'Operator' remind me of winter? Why does 'Blowin' in the Wind', in any form, sung by any of the umpteen artists always give me gooseflesh in my head? Why were the boy's eyes yellow and why can't I ever forget him. Why can I not seem to maintain friendships with sunken-faced people.

Why does he look like a polar bear and she like a squirrel and I like a mango-faced grasshopper? What master of paradoxes made seaweed taste like crisp jelly.

What is it that we see through the looking glass?

Come, with me. Down the rabbit hole.

4 Days in London

One of the best romantic comedies I've ever seen :)

Our 'heart-breakingly beautiful city' hesitantly doled out good weather on two of the four days - couldn't ask for more and possibly get it. Morgan M was magical, but a little less so than the last September evening I spent there, a year ago. Too much fine-dining has spoilt us, surely.

In Cambridge we experienced cobbled streets on a Saturday, flamenco guitarists (one male one female), the yearning to go back to school, occasional dry coughs, a stereotypical vegetarian restaurant and a near break-up. (Alifespansmanydaysandadayspanssomanylives)

On a rainy Sunday we felt the early blues of having woken up too late. These disappeared during lunch with the successful brother. The real finds of the day were the little people in the treasure hunt and the free tomato-and-herb scones at Food for Thought. Yumm! Then the half G1 dinner at the place with too many puppets, a date, and a boy with the purple shirt who is wearing his happy face these days.

On Monday I got my way - we ate at Wagamama near the Eye- Number 72 and the tamarind chilli pavlova, though it wasn't the same without Titli. The day was beautiful! Diffused sunlight and music and the smell of old books filled the air. Soon it was time to go, and I left my favourite sweatshirt at the airport security check in all my sorrow and absent-mindedness.

As I sleepily made my way back home in the yellow taxi and the skyline appeared in the distance, I felt the familiar goosebumps greeting me: Welcome back home.

Yes and...

...How many nights does a man have to work,
Before he calls it a night?

Cake: Working until Friday midnight.
Icing: Losing all your work in a matter of seconds and being told there's no way to get it back.


(AARRRRRGH)

Old Friends

Sat on their park bench
Like bookends.

I met little Calvin today. She is a married woman now. Still the same fierce bundle of energy though. I am happy for all that she is, and how she has changed, and how we stumbled over sentences to keep up with all that we had to catch up on. A year is a long time...

*********
Trrring Trrring.
"Hello, I am unavailable, please leave me a message blahtida."
"Hi Butterfly! It's me, from New York. Dying to know how you're-"
(Loud Australian voice)
"If you want to listen to your message, press 1. If you want to record a new voicemail, press 2."
Shrug.

*********
I must really hate my phone. Last night, I spat on it in my sleep.

Dangling Conversations

(...memories from another phase...)

Paul and Art -

It's a still life water color,
Of a now late afternoon,
As the sun shines through the curtained lae
And shadows wash the room.
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference,
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
The borders of our lives.
And you read your Emily Dickinson,
And I my Robert Frost,
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we've lost.
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm,
Couplets out of rhyme,
In syncopated time
And the dangled conversation
And the superficial sighs,
Are the borders of our lives.

Yes, we speak of things that matter,
With words that must be said,
"Can analysis be worthwhile?"
"Is the theater really dead?"
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow,
I cannot feel your hand,
You're a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation.
And the superficial sighs,
In the borders of our lives.


Conversations undangled

As we sit there
And you drink my coffee
Our life turns into a movie
In eastman colour.

Did you hear the waves last night
Lashing against the shore?
I sure did not as I was more
Or less asleep in your arms.

Now the conversation's undangled,
No more words need to be said -
Let's just go straight to bed
And talk of unimportant things.

Like couplets out of rhyme,
We swam a-round and round,
Until in each other we found
the beauty of free verse.

Freedom at Midnight

Today, I was walking home from work at nine minutes past twelve. Suddenly, I felt this urge - I stopped, pinched out my contact lenses and threw them on the road. Little shiny torturous pieces of blue-tinged plastic.

I walked on, half-blind, but able to see clearly.

A Dream in Q106

She with the brown skin and brown eyes

She looked at me fondly

And spoke in a chocolate voice

----------

if i had a way with words like you do

i would have written those lines about you

----------

My lovely Jibb,

You DO.

A story of

Eyelids stuck to each other
And then of a spring in one step
While the other limps along.

The story of spelling my name
In other peoples' names.
Mary Adam David Harry Ursula Robert I for Identity.

The story of my life
Is no longer nine to five.

(This is for you P: because you loved it, and I love you.)

Freedom in Ties

My loyalties lie with no one but myself. That I absent-mindedly continue to be in my job, in relationships even, is part social pressure, part inertia, and partly the fact that I am having a good time. Permanence is not all that comforting to me - irreversibility is scary (Ack!). Unless of course, it brings along with it more variety than I can ever soak up in seven lifetimes.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

I want to be a free bird. If there's a leash, please make it invisible and do not tell me about it. Do not ask me to be an adult. I'm busy thinking about time travel and bonsai babies and talking rabbits.

How do you give me all this freedom, and more? Maybe it is your unmuddled nature of thought. All I have to offer in return are few laughs, and some poetry.

Under the sheer power
Of an industrial grade shower
At a cafe named Mix
An alcohorlix
Has found her home.

Sigh

I told you! It was so simple - all you had to do, was avoid flying over the Atlantic for those two weeks of your life. Simple, ain't it? And yet now, somehow, we will find ourselves just missing each other. C'est la vie, mon ami. Maybe we can wave to each other from the plane. I will look out for a semi-bald guy.

I really will miss you, Mr. Tambourine man.

Paris, Je Te Tres Aime

Christmas Eve at Montmarte. A violent art gallery. A box of blueberries. A pack of cigarettes.

Et tu, Brute?

The mad one has fallen prey. At long, painful, last.