Thakurma

Finally grieved her today. Can't believe it took five months to get here. Home will always be her. And never the same anymore. No matter how much I'm looking forward to going back, I won't be ever going back to her again. It's surreal.

Brighter Than Sunshine

Glorious. Give me any pick me up, give me this. So. Much. To Learn.

Just a thought. The 9/11 attack probably wouldn't have been a big thing in itself. But the events that followed have made it a landmark in history. In some ways it is reflective of the effect rather than the act itself that decides it's character.

NB: Need to read up more on 9/11.

So un-glamourised.

I have realised, I have none of that wistfulness, or fascination for the word/idea "truth". Its probably Foucault, and a number of other influences that have quietly seeped into my general way of perception, but the idea of "truth" holds no great place in me anymore.

Is it liberalising? Or yet another quiet shackle that's realised too late?

We move on.

When was the last time you finished a book and wanted to kiss it?

“Tamil Nadu for Tamilians?”

Traveling from North to South India, one is acutely aware of the prejudices that exist of “South Indians” (always in general). Priding myself as one unshackled by such inanities, I arrived in Chennai with a vague idea of a language barrier that could be quickly overcome by the usage of English and friendly smiles. Naivety is fresh, but all too often speedily lost.

What I considered an isolated incident was deeply rooted in a tense historical past. Briefly, a couple of friends and I had fixed a fare with an auto and agreed to pay a slightly higher amount just because the auto driver appeared old and careworn. On arrival to three quarters the distance to our destination, he stopped the vehicle in a slightly darkened street corner and demanded his fare. Confused as to the sudden stoppage, we enquired as to where we were. To which he abused us, ordered us out of his auto and demanded full fare, and double the amount if we wanted to reach our destination. Slowly other auto drivers gathered around, each agreeing with the driver and making threatening gestures as the driver poured profanities in Tamil each time we asked to be dropped to our proper destination. A passerby, himself unable to converse in Tamil but frequenting the city, on trying to reason for us almost got beaten up. On being repeatedly physically threatened by the driver, and aware that it was a potentially violent situation, we paid the fare and quickly walked away as the man continued to hurl insults in the language we could not understand. Shaken, we walked the rest of our way, avoiding eye contact and walking towards a more lighted street as quickly as possible.

As I lay in bed that night my mind screamed unfair. What had we done to receive this? Why had he taken advantage of our vulnerability in a new city whose language we couldn’t understand? I vowed to hate Tamil autowalas forever. By the next morning, when the fever of first anger had simmered down, we discussed possible reasons for the incident. And suddenly the erstwhile “bad experience” gained some light.

In North and South India there is a great divide. Where I come from, “South Indians” are mocked a great deal. They are treated as one unified whole, no different despite their language and cultural differences unique to each state, teased for their “strange tongue” and stereotyped as oil-smothered, lungi-wearing dark skinned men keen on Rajnikanth films and a taste for “idli-dosa”.

In South India the story was no different. “North Indians” were crass Hindi-speaking, Bollywood-watching nincompoops, always posing a threat to what they called South India and attempting to take over their culture; a neo-enemy out to dominate them. So why not mock them, loot them and give them a taste of their own medicine before they get a chance to get you? To an outsider like me, Chennai appears like the same bully who, oppressed in the past, and threatened to be crushed, had decided to lash out so that the first blow was always his, in his own territory.

I have found the older the Tamilians I find here, the meaner they get. Was the auto driver a part of the ‘65 protests? Had he lived through the uncertainty of losing his own language and have his Dravidian culture crushed underneath a wave of Hindi-celebration that found him all too-vulnerable in a nation which valued an alien language over his own tongue? I have no answers for these, only conjectures and guesses towards the cause of a situation I will need to be continuously ready for. For the incident is not isolated, and neither is he alone. We must all live with our ugly past, and continue to see its ramifications on a needy present. ‘38, ‘48, ‘52, ‘65--these weren’t incidents of a past that had been ‘dealt with’ and now over. One should take care not to over generalize from these isolated incidents, but they do demonstrate that language conflict on a personal level is very real for Indians who are away from their own regions.

There is something in nature that doesn’t like walls…

Frost comes uncannily to mind at times like these, almost like a haunting melody that seems ridiculously disconnected with the present. We are all living through shadow lines we’ve created for ourselves, some created by our past that we refuse to break away from. We still converse through glass walls, always watching a slightly distorted figure of the other, filling in words to lip sync with the words we cannot hear and thus imagine. Wordsworth insistently forces his words from over a hundred years past, lamenting what man has made of man, as I every day walk through Chennai in hopes of causing some dent in a mental makeup--theirs and mine--that will take a long time to go away.

BRaaaaaaaaarggghhh.

I dont even know what I'm doing.

Do I call it inertia? Its not as pathetic as it sounds. I dont want to do anything. I want to sleep, because I seem to never get enough. And I want to read all the books that I keep accumulating, and they in turn accumulate dust.

Why.

I want to watch movies I've been feverishly collecting for a year now. I want to watch I want to watch and its not even that I am being lazy. There is just no time.

No time for anything I actually want to do and stuck in a circle where I keep doing meaningless things and sideline things I would rather be doing. I would say I dont really want to do those things if I havent done those things yet but its not true! So how did I get myself into this! Cant go back, cant cant cant. So, now what?

2009

A tad bit late, but here nevertheless.


This year is going to be scarier. Scarier than the last few ones anyway.

And my brother gets to eat pizza and fun food everyday at office, whenever he likes. And I dont. Life sucks.

Elfin lafin(e)

Anger.

The kind that boils, twists inside you until you're left with a coldness that refuses warmth.

Unhappiness.

The kind that leaves you thinking of nothing in particular, except a faint feeling of emptiness which is quickly taken over by a wave of frustration at it's meaninglessness.

Reaction.

The kind that makes you want to punish and hurt until they scream. Except whose punishment, whose hurt.

Anger.

It always returns. Washing over like a wave, relentless, unhappy, stifling.

Strange!

I never realised. I like talking to my books. Especially during exams. *glee...*

Men.

Irritating sonavabitches.

I say

1. I would always beat you at hopscotch
2. I would eat your pasta
3. I would probably feed the seagulls to the sharks and then cook the sharks for breakfast
But I like the sleeping part.
And the painting part.
Not to forget the cheese, the you part.

But I like seagulls :( OKay we'll work something out about #2

I want to learn how to play the saxophone. And I wanna read things to you when you're half sleepy. I wanna lie down on top of you and roll around and pull each other's hair. And most of all, I dont want this to go away.

Ring-a-ring-a Roses

Looking into the mirror to admire something you've created. Then watch it shatter into a million pieces while the devil grins maniacally at you, scoffing, mocking, pitying.

Strong daydreams woven into a smooth tango of sorts. Continuous movement with a perfect energy that wraps you and throws you up into the air; a giggling child with the assurance that you will be caught, again and again.

Dizzy, dizzy, dizzy.

And all fall down.

I almost sent this to you instead

But let it remain anonymous.


I want. *gathers up and loves*

I think when I hate everybody, and I would want no one, you'll be still around. To love. Maybe its how disconnected you are. Maybe it would go away if I spend enough time with you. Maybe you are just a construction of who I think you are. Maybe not.

Maybe its only me who feels it. A parallel conversation where we are confessing so much. Maybe it is just my imagination.

Relentless

A special kind of madness. The kind of madness that we hide everyday, in our little homes, in our big cars, in our little hearts.

It envelops us one day. This kind of madness. We cry out, a piercing shriek resonating loud between our ears which we only hear, we suffer, we live with--day after day, month after month, sometimes submerging in the tiny fragile lives we have created on our own and sometimes we are dead.

How many of us keep living in this shrieking world where there is no peace, no quiet, no sanctified part of our life just spent cluttered with nothing.

* * *

And then at times there is this absolute quiet. No more noise, and dead, deathly silence. Does the silence pound into your ears making this momentary respite from--what do they call it--madness a strange sort of a test? Sometimes they plug your ears with ear wool. Sometimes they put you in those things they call asylums. Special cells, where all that screaming is supposed to stop because they strap you in a straitjacket & give you periodic electric shocks your senses are to be numbed to a sense of quiet. You rant and you scream, telling them its not working can we have some milk in here I'm really hungry and no one cares & no one listens and this dense quiet with the relentless screaming envelops you & soon you become quiet, struck dumb by the constant non-respite.

why would you do that. cant the screaming stop. why. who suffers this much. and the tell you its you, its you and you cant believe them because it cant be, it cant be...

Spinning meaningless tales

After attempting a conversation for a while, both of us relapsed into silence. We couldn't find out if the silence was strained, there was no opportunity. People thronged around us as we desperately tried to find words that had always somehow never managed to find their way up the ascending wall of unfamiliarities that we had created for each other and ourselves. Sometimes its the finest thing to be stuck in an over loud, over crowded public function. Atleast it saves you from finding out uncomfortable truths about erstwhile close relationships. Sometimes things left in a closet serves best. Sometimes silence is best.

05/02/08

She smelled of cheap perfume and sweat. The sickly sweet kind, with the sour, decadent odour of real, human sweat. It filled the air around her, causing people to wrinkle their noses as she hurriedly elbowed them out of her way. This was not her time. Her black purse noisily clanged against its metal strap as her heels clattered to the rhythm she walked to. She looked around once, twice, decided something, shook her head and hurried on. She paused by a corner tea shop, glanced at the surprisingly expensive looking watch on her wrist and turned the corner.

****

Can I tell you that I really don't care? That I'm a monster without feelings or do monsters have too many "feelings"? Hide, cover up with a politely enquiring face. I think I'll burst.

Death.

Dying, everything is.

Muted noises, the sound of horns, a sudden wind. People talk. On and on and on. Smile, click click brb. Someone called me Mary Poppins once. I can't believe someone called me Mary Poppins once. It's dying. And for some of it... I think its for the best. Atleast its not a slow fade away. A sharp chop; thats all I always ever needed. Maybe the time is right. And even if it isn't, what of it.

***

And Jimmy said, "They all want to escape from the pain of being alive. And most of all, from love."

Online Petition

On the thick attempt to scrap the English Entrance Test. Pooh!

http://www.dubeat.com/?p=108


Please sign if you agree. And spread the word.