chasm

And the comedy assumes magnified proportion, so much so that the noises outside get a physical presence - suffocating and soiled.

While some long lost music plays in the background, you only try not to fall into the well of crust nostalgia, faded to inglorious paleness.

The birds chirp in the early morning sky, sitting on the stairs leading to the terrace, talking of faraway lands you realise you can never visit while the concrete present and everyday life suck you inside a whirlpool - inescapable, deep and ceaseless.

Where are you stuck?

The pied-piper left way back.

Method Madness

(Or Why I Return?)
Another Day Arrives,
I know I'm late,
No, I'm not that late

A night
With all its ramifications
Wide never-ending
Opening all its doors.
Remembering Alice, down the hole;
The doors and the constant confusion surrounding it.

The ultra moments stumbled at unexpected quarters,
Though temporal
Temporal, only,
And
incomplete.

I believe a lot real life is imitator of the best fiction or may be the best fiction is based on someone’s real episodes.
Life is unreal.
The eternal question of existence, to be left altogether to a different shore.
So, for the few who wonder what happened to the stories here (fact, fiction, every genre), no, no one gets a review of the past three months.
What you’ll have is: An obituary. A letter. A reunion. A discovery (ies). A de ja vu of-sorts.
Numerous scattered uncategorised episodes.

An Obit
I went home. Four months later, to find things not too different from the way I left them. The table was untouched, so was the book shelf. After a really tiring journey, I finally reach home, I find my ailing Grandpapa (Pupu), being spoon-fed by my mother. Frail, so unlike the way I left him. As if an entire century had slipped in between. But I knew he was glad to see me. A nod.
Pupu loved cigarettes, women, music, his wife and gardening. Simple man he was. Blessed with more than a whiff of craziness. So full of exciting tales. A Mahabharata reader who could quote the Gita like a poem.
I never remembered him like the regular nonagenarian. He was so utterly independent that we were scared, at times. A strong tall man of 93 who, this time, was completely bed-ridden, awaiting me. I had only a quiet hello to convey.
One morning, during my stay, we discover that he was no longer breathing, silent forever. He died a simple death, a quiet one, without a hush. I still do not have much to say.
I remember his concern, his overly repeated tales and of numerous summer nights spent under the mango tree in my front yard, listening to them; I also remember the days he made me feel embarrassed with his random eccentricities in public. I remember the jokes he used to crack. The samosas he used to bring every afternoon, the songs he used to sing, and make me singalong The talks, he so much wanted to talk. His desire for constant company. It was because of him that I did not miss my Grandma (Bobok), it’s from him that I learned about her. She had left us 14 years back. I still miss her.
It is so easy just to be quiet. The cinematic moments in life.



Just when Papa was about to burn the pyre, birds (of a kind I don’t know), thronged all across the skies as if to pay their last respect. The Grand old man finally left for the other shore, or some place else.

A LETTER (to no one)
Life is going on.
Not that bad at all. So, goes the day, the everyday imperfect ways. There is a new job, new people and working environment. The only thing common is the terrace. How I miss the terrace triad. A pet also accompanies this time. Her name is very unimaginatively called Billi. I am kept very busy and tied-up.
I’m not yet homesick. Everything is fine.
Films are keeping me busy. I’m reading books on war these days. Like Asne Seierstad's With Their Backs to the World.
I really enjoyed Nolan’s Memento. Rene Touzet was quite a discovery. I’ve learnt no new Spanish phrases, but.
Take care till I’m back,.
There is always a next time.

A Discovery
One always updates a playlist.
Though, sometimes, it is just too hard to delete some of the old songs.
Some moments, some moments get completely imprinted in the memory. You remember everything; you let it play so much in your head that you are scared that the memory reel might just devolve. Well, there was no such reel in the first place, anyways. Thus the fear of the memory never being able to be repeated follows. It might simply never repeat. Never occur, becoming one of the many minions of such moments that keeps on growing in and out. I find Chopin haunting.

Memories & Melodies
Am all over in love again with Travis
Paperclips brings forth a new connection of melodies and memories.
They have the same functions: persistent memories are benignly hurtful.
It happens, at certain moments, rare ones, when you know you are the happiest being on the planet, no matter how short-lived the period is, it seems like we can spend the rest of our life living on the borrowed happiness of these memories, repeated over and over and over again.
An uncharted understanding, an unavoidable intimacy, a sense of unreachability, a feel of the emptiness, a sudden revelation that you exactly know why you are here, a displaced moment.
A temporary feeling of having all that you want in one point of time.
The brutal blow arrives when you realise this is not happening for real, even the reality is dubious of its own existence. It’s just there because it is also whiling away the time. Only a second look at it with the perspective it was not supposed to see. You see because you want to see it that way, you don’t want to understand it the other way, a mirage of the fatal sort. Then the things take slowly their real shape. You fail to understand why you keep on imagining things. Demented?As if the imaginary notions take on an active stance.


every day dreams
My eternal wish has been to travel all the obscure corners. May be because that's the least I’ve done. So, it’s not sudden and surprising when suddenly, walking as in a day dream, I am amazed stranded in some foreign quarter of the ordinary places, the meandering lanes.
I enjoy long strolls.
Just looking at the same buildings more closely which otherwise ones swiftly pass by. Observation makes anything interesting.
I discovered many a things about me. Like I hate when all those coffee shops fills you with indiscernible sounds, a bedlam born out of multilogues.
I like to observe people waiting on someone in a restaurant and particularly, the way they while away their time.

Scattered Episodes
Meeting with an old friend after 8 years,
Attending a wedding
A hyperlink cinema co-incidence
Discovering newer music and newer films
Dancing to Zulma Yugar's haunting voice at 1 am (It is absolute fun, I'm telling you)
and more fun when you discover that your room mates have finally decided to no longer be civil to you or your taste for ‘brutal’ music (that's what they think).
I don’t know why I intended to keep the name of the post adhered to madness. I only know that the mind plays trick, and intuition does not exist. Alchemy eavesdrops. One sees things not as they are meant to be seen or felt but rather in a way they want to see it.
I can never seem to get enough of missed moments.

Everyone is settled
All my friends have graduated to the next level,
settled
. the. next. Phase.
I don’t like the things we talk about these days.
Work
The tediousness
Missing life
Routine (and how it needs a major dressing-up)

De ja vu

I’ve to let you all know about a particular day...

Late evening, lying on the bed, with some obscure (read: I don’t know which random music) playing in the background, helping my friend with some petty word doc work. All attention, to the screen in front. Suddenly a strong whiff, stronger even, of wet earth made it way to the hallow nostrils hitting the memories immediately drawing pictures in head, stolen ones, of course, my backyard, reminding me of a rain drenched day, the images immediately took a concrete form. The relentless rain hitting the mehendi leaves, the noise like music blaring. The green, low light day. Just a wisp of wet earth and pouring rain dribbled such powerful images. We ran through our box of a room to see if the smell was for real or just another part of our fragrant imagination, to see only a drizzle blessing the incoming summer in Delhi.
We look up, the yellow street-light shines.

We return.

I love life, because it’s ultimately ordinary.

By the way, has anyone of you read the "Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo"?
I love the title.

P.S: This shelved post, thankfully, finally saw the light of the day.

A Post on Posts

Writing, typing, rewriting and then finally deleting, such has been the fate of my numerous bland posts in this sleepy blog of mine over the course of the last one month (and beyond). At times, I am left completely aghast at the torturous pain I take in being indolent. This tirade will anyways, go on knowing myself well. A lot of activities ‘pseudo activities’ have been whirling on its own. Work (the more of the less of it), sheer sameness, anticipatory existence have been stirred, taking its own sweet time in the formation of some strange brew. No change. Renewing the reading habit was a welcome comeback and getting into the cinema viewing frenzy is always a preferred break. Besides, add to that the usual bout of sulkiness that adds to the aura of the already melancholic winter.

Phase I

When Thoughts go for a Marathon

When things do come your way, it fells like it’s too much too handle, reminds me of the quote adorning the wall of a forgotten corner in my office

“When everything is coming your way, you are on the wrong lane”

I wonder if being introspective is healthy. Reflecting on all the good, the bad and the ugly entities that loiter around the headroom, grabbing your constant attention. It is a tedious job for the fragile senses. When things happen, the best ones, you’re kind of taken aback but then to your dismay, you discover that you are just looking through a few interrupted chinks of happiness, the wheel again sets in motion, the monotony, ordinariness prevails.

Everything is routine.

Phase II

Coming to THE point

Well, I decided to have this post not only to revive this blog in deep slumber, but also to give an insight to all the post that could have been here or about to be here but ultimately could not. My unpublished, ignored posts, gets their due (or almost):

The first one was on Diwali. The title was this:

“Looking at the smoky skies on a glittering Diwali night from the terrace”

It was beautiful. It was crazy. But looking at the smoky (polluted), glittering Diwali night sky while listening to Alanis (Hand in my Pocket) on the radio and then looking at the people celebrating the festival of lights while you are getting an 'overhead' perspective on things, it is wonderful. I mean it can feel wonderful. It rarely matters if one is a part of the humdrum or not.

The second one was “About obscure and absurd dreams”

This one was about an absurd, surreal meaningless collage of images that at some aspect made complete sense and from the other made me shiver. (Salvador Dali!!). The dream just made me realize that things can feel surreally unsure and bleak and futile but the futility itself does not mean anything, it’s rather the anticipation of the obscure ending that does the trick. Trying to get oneself away from all the rush takes its toll, to be away from so much of mental movements is sure to exercise something inside indeed but then again who cares really. The beats will remain rapid and the strings will continue humming a tune too distant and deep. So I guess it’s better if I don’t describe it further, the point is that it did help to wake me up early than usual. I don’t remember most of the dreams that I dream. I remember only fragments from this one.

The former so should have made it here. But the personal appeal was too superfluous. It was a chotti Diwali after all.

Life experience as such is gaining leverage. The new environment is definitely doing some good.

Phase III

A Bunch of Madhatters

I marvel how easy it is to be affected by ideas, thoughts that are the products of immaculate, avid, pure passion..... and it is equally easy to be repelled by utterly unbelievably obnoxious creeps. And one has to face both the extremes.

Human nature do not change, it is funny to think that we repeat the same old mistake, no matter what. No matter how much we would have suffered at the cost of the former. We keep on turning back to the same oft-beaten road, to the same place.

Earth is spherical.

Phase IV

Epilogue

Or

A review of the past three (and more than a half months) on a strange land

The people- place -habits are all so similar in the way they propagate that it is unaffective after a point of time. Stumbling upon things that read more unreal than fiction, and for the better, leaves one deciphering the codes that construct the maze called life.

The company of my thoughts is vital for my existence.

The copy pasted regularity of life. Sometimes, it is out of complete cluelessness as to where I’m that lets the stagnant waters remain still. And the ever frequent question What will the outcome be? rears its uncannily disturbing head.

And I never rest, reflecting on that so much so that the written words never even get a chance to see the light of the day, never, they live an invisible life. But yes, I’ve been rearing, at least the ones that are on the list if not the rest. The new ones are left ashore. Finally, it is the best thing, and it is the worst all at the same time, the ideas that incite the dormant wandering thoughts to life, how the other’s letters and thoughts seem so enticing and wonderful that compels us to believe in a lot of ulterior dreams that, you never even knew existed.

Ambiguous will only become hazier, if not less.

Let the Words Flow...

CURIOUS. FEAR. PAIN. DEAR.

Random rain of words it is

The murky world inside my head is teeming with million of unattended butterflies trying to disrupt the order that I so eagerly and desperately have been trying to reign in. The furious typing at this moment have nothing to do with the drizzle outside. I know I'm not making any sense. But writing is all I want to do and that is why the hardcore typing sound seems to be so easing to the senses. I've started working, actually I've been employed now for almost two weeks. That is why may be the strange paradise (of sorts) seems to be comfortable enough. So much for being enough-independent. The lighting speed of the thoughts that are really crowding in, trigger some other long lost appraisals of the past that were so mundane yet effervescent. There was motion even in the tranquil subduedness. Away from home for the first time ever, away from friends and family have its aftereffects. No, I'm not at all homesick (the definition of home always eluded me, I mean what exactly is a home, its not an entity, its more of an idyllic idea). Leave it. Don't pay attention to everything that I have to say.

At the start of my stay here, I was a bit apprehensive, because when I came (or rather when I decided to change place), it was done erratically, I had idea of what I wanted to be but not how exactly. But sometimes, I guess fate (or then, the lack of it) takes a different route altogether. Ten days later, I find a foothold, almost. A JOB. If, you know what I mean. A meager salary and bountiful existence don't go hand in hand but the utter possibility of unhinged freedom gets you high. Freedom - that elusive sentiment that have got the world enthralled, the revolutions that one witnessed, all to the spirit of freedom. Meanwhile, the world has been behest with all the uproar and furor of what one had to say about another blah blah blah, the revival of the western world from the clutches of the R-WORD. The world lives on, and I personally think mostly of the premises that I had to be in . Selfish gene.

I so miss watching films, the habit of the otherwise recluse. I miss my pets and I miss the eternal whiff of extra-ordinariness that always seem to haunt the world I was stuck in.

I borrowed 'A Blue Hand' from a friend to read. The book chronicles the stay of the BEATS in India. But unlike before, the reading bug has temporarily gone to rest. AWAKE.

And, finally, the bug that has bitten me. The pain that it has infused. Miraculous. Dangerous. Completely incurable.

P.S: The thing that really made me get up from the somewhat sojourn I was thinking of taking was the discovery of this CINE DURBAAR. For all lovers of cinema, it is more than worthy of just a dekko. Hail to cinephiles!!

P.S.S: Excuse my babbles.

TRANSIT

Meet the newest members of my family-- Introducing Jules and Jim.

And they were not the only ones to keep me busy, though. These brats (yes, absolute brats) are getting naughtier by the day. Just to kill your curiosity, no I'm not a cat person at all. I am more of a dog lover and I'm blessed with my Lucky (I named him after that Golden Retriever in the movie My Ghost Dog). He celebrated his tenth birthday this year.

How days just run so real fast. My results were declared, the formalities followed and before I knew, I'd my tickets booked for my journey to the capital, New Delhi. Between movies and music and frequent trips to the nearest city, to filling up countless forms in myriad offices and formats, the days just kept on getting thawed. Many snippets were written and forgotten, paragraphs torn and forlorn.

I'm leaving tomorrow and there are only mixed emotions and feelings. Jules and Jim had been keeping me busy, it is so amazing to see them growing up, playing with each other and their awareness and curiosity which simply gets better and better, may be because of the varied life-cycles, but they grow up and learn faster and better(or so I feel).

A new phase begins and I don't know what is stored for me next. This unpredictability I think, is the one thing that makes life what it is. Till the next part in the sequence of my life kick starts I guess, I'll be more absent here, at least in writing, the reading (of your blogs) will continue though with gaps in between. Leaving home means leaving a lot of things behind but I believe, the biggest discoveries await our next travel back home. Between the somewhat tranquil parts to the city buzz, a milion sweltering changes breed and sometimes, a little un-introspection(or precisely, a post poned introspection) can do one no harm.

I'm ready, ready for it all.

Till then, a hearty time to everyone.

Another Farewell

It has not even been a year since we bade farewell to our seniors and the time for our farewell already came and went. Yesterday marked the official last day at the university.

Two years was a small span of time, but how much we learn, take in, consume, remember within these 2*365 days, how many memories collaborated to form some distinct tales. The not-so-haloed stairs leading to the older department till the sprawling new building, the (developmental) journey was amazing. The two years made all of us grow up, introducing me to varied kind of people and politics, emotions and antics and ultimately helped me in realising the importance of being nostalgic. Yearning for the sepia past, making me see that the bygone days are always so better (something which was, as yet, unknown, unexplored).

Unlike our senior's farewell, there was no breeze and rain. (I got some terrible blisters though, thanks to my two inches high heels and the walk without umbrellas under the cruel sun). So much for being reasonably reasonless.

It was an emotional occasion and in spite of myself, the tears did sneak through. I had all kinds of experience: the good, the bad and the ugly. But you end up remembering the better times: the journey, the endless chat on the balcony, the seat under the mango tree shade, the leaves trailing the entrance, the silent reading room, the jokes (terrible and proper) shared and blasted... these images did manage to create a montage in the crevices of the roving mind of mine.

These two years have helped me in gaining two very different but amazing people whom I can call friends (J&K) and also introduced me to some great 'teacher-friends'. Love you all.

The juniors were such an amazing discovery while some just made me die with laughter virtually, some were too nice to be true. Will miss most of you.

No, I'm not writing it after being overwhelmed with emotions but rather because I'm thankful for the two-year sojourn.

To quote Shakespeare:"All's well that ends well"

This marks a new beginning. The road is long and the journey, no doubt tiresome but who doesn't love newer beginnings...

I do.

NOTHING EXTRAORDINARY ABOUT THIS WEDNESDAY

I started the blog wth the sole aim of giving vent to the writing spirit but with the passing of each day it just wilted, no, not the desire to write but the strenght to type, to sit in front of the computer, to wait for the page while its being downloaded and a slow server only maximises the effort, making it tiring. So, all these while I have been scribbling anecdotes and rhymless verses and losing them all. The problem is- when you have got so much to write that you know your fingers will get sore. Life, if written down, is an epic no one will ever one to re analyse but then its the opinion of an imbecile like me and I'm sure I am wrong. See, once again I'm writing something which has no meaning, not in parts and not even in totality.

The monotony of life has taken its toll. Happiness is ever so welcomed but it is so ephemeral. Letting things go is never easy, still you have to. I just want to sit with my favourite book of poems, enjoy the sinking sun in the orange sky, want to sing beautiful song in tuneless voices with my sister and have a laugh riot over the silliest of jokes... but at present it all seems like a far fetched dream....