..............................

it is difficult to believe that one cares so much. In the office when one is impersonal, he looks so looming. One longs and longs, the very sight is a pleasure. Yet feel scared to love. One feels marked to be cold, detached, heartless. Compelled to fit the pattern someone else has decided to cast you in. and yet there was love, the heart overflows, his for me. The softness is unwarranted. And then, there is work. Once you begin, the heart lifts up by the prospect of hard work. Out of this darkness that infests the mind, it is a shining hope. I had thought of giving up, on me. I shall not stop working. It is what will keep me going. No relationship is worth the people it costs to live it. I can sit here and say that. When I return home, it is like a dark compulsion to give in to what will cause you pain. Hope that things shall turn out right. Yet it is not that. I do not feel incomplete at all. Just hurt to bits that he could think that of me, decided to typecast me as such. Stamped and typecast and pinned upon the wall, like a fly to others' whims. From here, there can be no solace. I write this while wanting more from him, demanding that he put things to rights. Who knows what will happen? We are best left as islands on a floating, passing sea.
Is this like her, when he knew that it would not work? Waif again? Does anyone know how to bring me in?
Nothing matters at the end of the day, nothing does.

hazy shades of winter

This for only me. This was what Simon and Garfunkel said:
mailprintvotesmallerlarger

Time, time, time, see whats become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around, leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Hear the salvation army band
Down by the riverside, its bound to be a better ride
Than what youve got planned
Carry your cup in your hand
And look around, leaves are brown now
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Hang on to your hopes, my friend
Thats an easy thing to say, but if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend
That you can build them again
Look around, the grass is high
The fields are ripe, its the springtime of my life

Ahhh, seasons change with the scenery
Weaving time in a tapestry
Wont you stop and remember me
At any convenient time
Funny how my memory slips while looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme
Drinking my vodka and lime

But look around, leaves are brown now
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Look around, leaves are brown
Theres a patch of snow on the ground...



And I am back to music. I lost sight, didn’t quite remember what I wanted. Music wets my arid insides, and am listening with deepest feeling to S&G

“And a rock feels no pain
And an island never cries”
Yet that’s not quite what I feel. I feel delirious, to come back to me, to feel no vagueness, to feel the music seeping closely into my pores. I badly need time for myself, not amours, or work. My books, my music, a room. Is what I shall wait a little longer to have. There’s Mrs Robinson playin’ now, and it’s ooooo! so sexy. And I love the curly letters I type, and to know that this trash doesn’t mean much. Nothing does, peut-etre pas meme lui, when it’s me that’s gonna live. I shall not hurt more than my head can hold. Et ce qui m’a touché, c’est qu’il m’a dit la meme chose. J’aime son silence, pas d’absence des mots- il parle assez, la silence de l’esprit, qu’il ne permettra personne a casser, pas qu’il a travaille pour achever cet etat au jourd’hui. Je l’aime beaucoup, tu sais, c’est tellement evident, meme a moi. Ca m’assure, que je peux aimer un homme comme ca, it also makes me delirious a me trouver comme ca.
And now it’s Scarborough Fair, and it melts completely, like fresh caramel. That’s so perfect. Like Seal’s A Kiss from A Rose. “She was once a true love of mine.” Quite quite wonderful. I love you quite, dear God that this is there, now, a ce moment-la. And then there’ll be New Year, and they shall all dance, and I shall be happy. “Remember me, to

You fill me, you make me overflow. And I badly want my Chatwin now, I want lots and lots of comfort. I want just what I want to read. And ruddy convocations shall be done and over with. And I shall get my holiday, and do exactly “Ask me and I will play, all the love I have inside.” What I want. And I shall take my trip. Oh dear God, I shall barf my mind, one can’t live like this. One can’t love like this, one step forward and two back. There is no place for compartments, quiet, holding back, fear even. I want me. I want me I want me I want me I want me. Tepid useless bogus insanity, mossy depression of an organized mind. I shall get a life. Whatever comes my way. And don’t come to my blog, ever. Anyone. Thank you. S&G quite wonderful, quite quite. J’aime tout les deux. Absolument.

Back home. Alone and bossless. I was sitting in the car with the window wound down, and it got colder and colder and by the time it was V.I.P Road, I couldn't breathe. Bring down this lonely fetish for punctuation to the guy, I feel overwrought tonite. My hair was flying wildly, and I don't know what I was trying to do, to bring myself to tears or just spite myself with the cold. Both, I think. And tomorrow you go back and there is a mess again. I hate it, I so hate it, so everyone can tell her when she gets back, they just can't manage without you. The editorial quality gets worse by the day, there's less of matter, it's sketchier, scrappier. What are we sending off to the schools? What do they think when they see this supplement of a paper which is otherwise quite fine. I hate the infamy, ignominy of it: not merely the shame, the guilt that arises from it, I suppose. And these two guys, so frightfully competent, and R.da so kind. I feel very lonely amidst all of this, not to be so competent and fast myself. It's not to mope, je ki holo, so you do a cry. It's something that shouldn't be. And then to return, with the next day not planned at all, and alone. What am I to do?
And then, we recede into silence. And I don't mind. Somewhere, la visage est la, toujours, il me semble, et meme maintenant c'est un confort que j'eatait dans la meme voiture que lui. Que'est-ce qu'il pense? Hier, nous parlions jusqu'a 4 heures au matin. Et je l'aime. Je ne veux pas partir, je veux rester au tour de lui, avec lui. dans sa visage, il y a de la silence, et je l'aime. J'aime tous que je decouvre, comment, donc qu'est-ce qu'on fait. Et donc, est-ce que c'est lui? Je t'aime, tu me manque. It's a cliche, and at the level which it is, I refuse it. Il me manque ou je le veux. Et demain, ca sera un autre jour, tout sers nouveaux. Pas des memoires, pas des rancunes, les nouveaux peurs. C'est de la profession...........

theoutsider

c'est encore comme toujours. a la fin, on pense que c'est mieux si on reste seul. Il n'y aura pas de la peine. que'est-ce qui c'est passe aujourd'hui dans le voiture, tout le part? que'est-ce qui c'est passe? je comprend pas, mais c'est le sens familiale- de desespoir, de la peur, que je cree un interet detache dans les gens qui j'aime- de la curiosite pour cette chose-ci. je sais pas. je veux que tout va bien encore, comment je sais pas, c'est toi qui va faire ca, mon dieu. i feel prickly, insensate. j'ai perdu la capabilite, capacite de communiquer.
ne viens pas ici, toi. get lost.

What have they done with you, kid? Is nothing inviolate?
This I shan't forgive.

And what shall I do? And when shall I begin?
I was rather overwrought today, what with not meeting and wanting very much to meet. Yet, there's also this. I am forgetting to have a life of my own. There's work. There's also this thought that runs through my head ever so often. Well, that's not exactly the reason. It's rather that I have lost the rhythm quite.

Apart from it all. I feel a little scared by my own franticness, by the extent to which I end up investing in an affection. I have very little idea of how he feels, whether he loses sleep over the lack of words, over the daily forgetting, the reforging of connection over mail, over the emptiness otherwise. It is true , you know, to a certain extent that I am lonelier now than before, when I was reading. I feel very bereft now, but I can't seem to come to books. A paranoia, or laziness, fear. Animal reassurance, again and again, that things will be alright. Of a smiling face, of beauty- of finding the eyes as beautiful over and over again. Of even happiness, of a permeating sense of calm that does't threaten to go away. It's frightening that I keep hoping for all of this of a person. That I have dreamt and wanted it already, that I might have to turn back and walk alone again. My desperation, kindness, and more kindness, as Forster put it with such love

the perpetual etranger

Fantastic! I can post after ages! Cookie not disabled anymore!! I feel like Bridget, Calvin!

Well, my life. My head feels wrecked. The animal comfort, only of physical proximity, the closeness of a body next to you. I came back alone today. Good in a way. Was blabbering and in rather a black mood. I sent a lot of Eliot, mijeke ujar kore deoa to put out all you feel for someone you don't even know. There is so much and I feel overwrought. Yet I am already confined to myself. Unable to think beyond immediate reference to myself. My this nature despairs me. I hate to find myself self-centred so repeatedly. A little succour. A touch. Things working out. What that means I dunno, whatever is right, wherever, and yet you fashion your own rights. Miss my own self control. Tonight, I am copletely disoriented

It's seems such a long while since i had a holiday. You have to discover anew what a day off means. Well, i was thinking about l'homme de bureau (shall be referred to as such henceforth). My painful encounters with the opposite sex, must they always be as such? I mean there's something wrong in my head. I am waiting to back out given the slightest opportunity, waiting to be assured of the worst that people can think of me. Work, that's in a different league of its won. Now i don't care. When it does, I'll write about it. Right now, I am struggling to hold up my end of it. Little kid S seems to be a relentless relieving factor in this chaos. But everything reaches a plateau, then they change. Something like that will eventually happen, then we'll see where we go. Met P yesterday, was rather a pleasure. She told me about the guy she was going out with.

After such a long time of work (6 days, I don't mean the hours), when you sit down to write, all you want to gratefully handle are daily mundanities, the flow of life. Anything more profound, or structured (copy: trash dished out decently) gets on to stretched mental resources. It's not quite so bad, but a change of mode does one a lot of good, and one day is hardly enough for that. You only begin to gauge the difference from the workday, and the break comes to an end. God knows hoe S works, coming in 7 days a week, how does he recharge, on the run? I want to have some nice hours with K, hours which shall be pleasant for me, without having to be on your toes trying to be presentable, or whatever we are always trying to be in office- perpetually equable, I suppose. He is like that, but he can guard his selfness closely, without letting it be violated in any way. Or so I surmised. I may be wrong, as C says so glibly.
Well, A's sis had reception. A marathon thing, really. By today, I was ready to go back to the normal pace of things. I bought a lip-gloss (what fun!) and A seemed inordinately pleased about it. O is working, C landed up alone at reception today, but msg.ed in the end that he had a nice time. I guess we can't help but make things tolerable, and even interesting for ourselves in the end. I was going to meet another person off Orkut, but think shall not after seeing hideus photograph. Still to scarred by previous experience of hideous ugliness that couldn't stomach. Met some, a lot of kids, as my job entails I do. Anything does: that's how we live these days. For anything better one is too tired to ask.
Crib korteo enthu lagey. Ami to shudhu narrate korchhi...

I have lots to say. Apart from the fact that I am worried/bored about my copies- streetfood story etc etc etc- slogging on, this is work, so make a tedious snail-paced activity of it. Well, also this, C.di shan't be seeing our pages anymore, and that takes away one reason why the place didn't seem like a prison to me. You are sitting in that white buliding, high up, insulated, and it is easy to lose touch with the world outside if you stay cooped in that long. I am a child of moods, and I need that smile, to have your two-bit worth intelligence recognised and responded to. And she is so reassuringly human..not just the inhumanly competent automatic newsgatherer, which she might be, but it still leaves her with time to be human. The person we have now, she is nice and okay, but well, the creature of moods that I am, I take a fancy to things. aajke when I was sending that msg to C.di, amar chokhe jol eshe jachhilo, i felt so bad. And she was kind, repeatedly kind. And her smile lights up my world there. It sound adolescent, infantile to like anyone so much so shortly, but if you do, what can you but let yourself feel it as much as you do?
I worry about dadu too. And what they do there. Ma doesn't seem to realise, the stakes are so much higher now, there's no shelter left anymore. She doesn't seem to get any of it. Oli was talking about A.da's peace, the unshakeable peace that he has within him, that's the kind that makes you feel cool. And I realise all the more strongly how much not-peace I have within me, how I am hankering for it. How I actively go ahead and destroy peace, y'know, that I can't engineer peace, but give in to chaos all the time. And this guy who goes places: I don't like my equilibrium being taken for a gratuitous toss out of the blue. I don't like it. Any equilibrium is hard earned y'know.
And there's more, which shall go into the diary

remember when you were young...You shone like the sun

I was reading Robert Graves' Greek Myths. Apart from the fact that it is so good, I wanna remark on the bit about the birth of Hermaphroditus. The footnotes explain it as a representaion of a transition from matriarchy to patriarchy. Also about the sacred king lying with his daughter Smyrna: the king in a matrilineal society trying to keep his kingdom to himself by marrying the next term Queen. I remembered Oli talking about the peaks, about Hanuman puchh, the MASSIVE Satopanth and the formation of mythologies: ways of seeing, methods of representation. And about Queer, another method of representing. Representing a feeling that is heterogened from a contemporary fashion, way, mode. I love human beings, I don't think I can love men or women. I don't think it does to decide that you are lesbian and like only women. The Greeks had life simple. I know that's like such a sweeping, erroneous statement. But I think life would be easier in so many ways if we were to recognise the fact.
The sun on the way to the auto-stand will be a memory track to remembering that daythat I had decided i wanted a family and a marriage.

'britwa' means gun

Well, I have forgotten what I had meant to write about. So that's how it should be. But one thing that I wanted to mention and remember, I have taken the link of this thing outta orkut. So mercifully, I can stop being absurdly significatory about everybody, call a spade a spade and rest in peace. No imaginory marauders to come here off orkut.
I was thinking about N.ji actually. He lost his wife exactly a month after baba at Vellore. Dadiji had phoned and told me. I was so shocked. That was a strangely (that's just a word) intimate time to know their family. I was grateful for any understanding, and dadiji seemed to know it all. She was so kind to me, me the 22 year old that was leaving that place a waif for life. I touched her feet before I left. I don't touch feet usually. I am so glad you cared. I have not looked for you later, you are my closer tie than N.ji, though his loss was greater, and so I am in touch with him now and all that. He is may be about 4/5 years older than me and he's lost his wife and has a tiny kid whose future he worries about. What does a man do when that happens. I don't know. My loss (it drops quite easily off my tongue now. Perhaps it's the time that's passed, more, it's the job. There's no subtelety here. Everything is either in your face or not there), weel it seems smaller compared to his. When you've made a shelter to last your life in, and then everything goes haywire. It's not smaller, I know.
I was with my pal today. It felt so nice so nice. It's this feeling that goes under your skin, and you feel oooo! so cool. But then I knew that would happen. She makes my world work, I see her and can get things in perspective. Y'know, what happiness I want, the infiniteness of possibilities. I am reading Gabriel's Gift by Hanif Kereishi (C likes the name. Me too). Gabriel reminds me of her. Who are just born sensitive, who knows at 15 that he would like his dad to be around when he is old. I was always so terrified he would'nt be. I always thought I was insecure and so... But may be I would not have lost him if I hadn't been so afraid. I was watching Surya Shikar (the Utpal Dutt play) the other day, and I thought of baba. In the scenes where the character is writhing in pain under torture. And I couldn't bear it, my beautiful baba, he fell so many times, this was like all those other times, he was so prone to falling, and this was just like that. Not only because he had gotten weak, hadn't had any solid food that day because of that bloody bloody test he had had to undergo, clean bowels they wanted for that. So make a sick man guzzle purgative liquids the whole day till he is fit to burst. make him visit the toilet numerous times, when it's so tiresome for him. It's with time that these form from images in your head and come tumbling out. And if You are reading, don't talk about the medical/humanitarian rights and wrongs of it. I don't whisper it to myself ever. I look at my friend's dad. It's illogical but I keep thinking that he came back and he didn't. Like I couldn't bring him back. People blame me. I blame me. There was this popcorn Backstreet Boys song one of whose lines went, "How I wish I could turn back time...", it was called Quit Playing Games with my Heart. I can't wish that. Wish that and ask for what in return? Is there a God? There must be. It is, in my head. And who is there, in this tangible, palpable world? He is only in my head, I was so scared to lose him. I am still so scared, even now when one of the biggest fears has been terminated. I think I LOOK scared all the time. Where did it all begin? Where every smile became overshadowed with this musty quilty kind of thing? I wish things were whole again. The patches just seem to go on appearing. Patchwork quilt.

theoutsider

Gilthoniel A Elbereth!
A Elbereth Gilthoniel
O menel palan-diriel,
Le nallon si dinguruthos!
A tiro nin, Fanuilos!

kissu likhbo na, hooh!

right, since I've dicided to be verbose, let's get along with it. How would I like a blog to be? It's someplace where you can air your views without too many people watching. Well, for me. I wanted the fun of writing online, wanted the fun of writing, actually, and some freedom. No prying eyes, least of all judgements. Last thing I'd care for is something like, Bloggers of Calcutta Unite! Not as if people are falling over themselves reading it here.
But may be it's the job, may be it's how I am, but now, with a job and all, you have to put a lot of yourself away here, talk in weird coded language out of the fear of observers whose existence it's a vanity to presume. So yesterday I had a diary entry like, 3 pages long (usually it's just half a page once in a blue moon when I am feeling too upset to keep it to myself) though I was opening this page to write almost everyday. I even thought of going for another blog.
So here's not the place for my many crushes, fears, frustrations, loneliness (yeah, about that. Too many people who are somewhat like I am situated now are really lonely. It's the same old story- love, friends, places, insomniated nights, parents there but not there- young urban Indian, blah) Why must growing up be so painful. Why must you be royally fucked to cross any bridge? Where's the enjoyment? Oh yeah I am a fanatic cribber, have made a religion out of it.
And there we go again! 'Think will have to quit pretty soon now, this is getting to be the old hackneyed rant again. Oh if it even had the dignity of a rant. Edmund White, Edmund White, where art thou?

Chatwin, Gilmore and a rainy day. ALONE...ah heaven!

I was reading On The Black Hill- Chatwin. It's been a lovely day, I managed to leave myself to myself today.

Chatwin's men are what he called himself in one of his travel books: sterile wanderers. I was thinking about Benjamin, about Utz- transvestism, effeminate homosexuals. And then there are people like Lewis, the usual straight kind, who are prevented from pursuing their proclivities, often straining the fabric of the narrative scheme. And the way the stories end: building up to a tumutuous climax, and then there's this delicate maze- where it's so easy to forget the climax a while after u've read it. It's so all of what Chatwin was- like a supernova, burning itself out. And the world becomes special when viewed through his mild blue eyes- am thinking of the Jerry Bauer phtograph. And I was thinking about the trip that he and Elizabeth had taken , shortly after which they decided to get married- the mercurial nature of it. That that world is there for me to partake of now. But that I'll have to make the magic, it won't come to me of my own accord.
And I was thinking of the way things were going- may be you have to leave familiar surroindings to shake off thr torpor of usuality.
I was reading this gay person's blog whom I knew. And this brilliant insight came to be, that it doesn't matter whether one was what's called gay or straight- I wouldn't be able to take love casually either way. Being queer doesen't make one liberated and one's life full of delightful experiences. Relationships matter, they are not casual. Every person I happen to like, I cannot treat casually, neither treat my feelings for them that way. Can't play around. Hurts too much.
To make of yourself a tabula rasa is an idea I don't care to play with anymore. Life seems to become mundane otherwise. That also brings untold misery. Don't wanna die like Chatwin either. I think of, what's his name- Edmund White, thank god- it's such a balm. There's one love that's absolutely mine. A 'passion' undiluted by opinion. Someday someday I'll do something about it.

And the idea of a date is such bunk!

i smile, and smile

bugger. my blog is not a public forum for people to carry on their adoloscent back-slapping conversation.
what the fuck.
well.

am listening to floyd. fearless, de Meddle.
is it that cool to be a journalist? the facts sure do make it sound rosy. but it's only rarely, for me now, at any rate, that I am also getting a high while doing it, not merely reading about it and feeling cool.
i reach office at about 2, feeling slightly guilty about not doing stuff that needs to be taken care of at home. My supplement is off for this month, so the deal is that we have plenty of storie ready in advance. Which is not something that works really well with me. I work best under threat of time thread being stretched really taut. well, the business with the supplement apart, there's me. And my all-important spiritual well-being. Which, well has gone for the toss for the time being.
I've gotten this theory of late: what is it that turns a girl into a woman? The woman-girl thingy is so corny most of the time. But in most 'females', there is this transition, when they cease to be girls. And the journalist that I am, I report the observation without trying to analyse. Will also report opinions/reactions if get any. See, at some point or other, girls stop hoping that the dreams will come true. The sane ones, most that is, who think that they've gotta survive, that madness is a luxury they can't afford, they become really calm and maternal. Their smiles are sad, resigned. Their happiness is grown up, like they've compromised with life, chosen not to fight in order to live. They've become women. I dunno about guys. They have it as tough as the rest, I guess. Perhaps tougher. There's always an advantage in being the tortured/underprivileged group which is recognised as the suffering/has suffered group.
My friend will come rearing at this sadness theory about women. She'll talk about S.di. And yes, I oh so agree. And the friend thinks differently. It's like what Satyakida said about golamda, 'Golamdake kharap rakha strictly shakto'.

But this stasis, it's getting to me. How much can you learn out of doing something that you are not enjoying? That will be a dead kind of learning.How long will it be this?

And there's the growing up bit. I am becoming different. The JU aura is leaving me. I am getting the skin of the place of the place where I work in. Which is fine, cuz I like the people I work with etc. But there is an inner life, and that is left more and more dissatisfied. Like squeezing out a dry sponge, I keep trying to materialise my dreams for what they are worth, and they refuse to turn into reality. I want constant fun out of my work. Want to be always doing well. Nothing else will give me any peace. And when and if I have that, I shall want more. I am bursting with all the dreams I have dreamt for which I find no outlet at this moment. My demand for supreme love, brilliant success, absolute wildness. Not this stymied, tepid, lukewarm, average thing that I walk through daily.

And yet another time, I did not write what I wanted to. For all that and more, thanksssss.

(uh, interrupting for an antel observation: 'Dogs' bole gaanta pink floyd er . Reba Hore er akta series of crayon sketches dekhechhilam Seagull e: street dogs howling in the night. the song recalls the sketches. Well)

theoutsider

i feel human again. atleast feel my head thawing. bonnie is absolutely out of this world. well, out of this world is probably an overstatement, but he's just so good man. band er gaan and all that stuff begin to make sense only here. the song, in my untutored shotta (well, apart from the 'kring kring kring madhur dhoni, shui tomar agomani' bit)sort of, mon ke shikto kore day. quite apart from the lyrics. the voice, the music, the man. ami khushi, anek khon pore. feel closer to being an human being. less of the futile roshagainst the world for creating creatures like le scum qui j'ai rencontre hier. was feeling terrified even to look at mon homme qui rit comme bete.
now am listening to 'ghare pherar gaan'. i love chandrani's voice. that's all this band has, those lovely, wonderful voices, utterly rich, mellifluous, dripping with vigourousness.
music do me good. god has funny ways, like he's sniggering quietly at my folly. well thanks, thanksssssss.

'akhono shamne path hata bake, chaileo parbe na ditey phaki, nishchoy'- i love you, you bring me back to life. you make me feel young again.

theoutsider

sala baje din. j'ai rencontre un homme aujourd'hui matin. c'etait pas bien, pas bien. ca va mal, ces journees. didi, elle m'a dit que j'apparait 'available'. que'est-ce que je fait. personne comprend, personne comprend. tant de peine. 'ca vaut pas la peine'. je sais pas. comment elle pouvait dire comme ca? elle ne savait pas ca

what the fuck. i am becoming this alien creature that i don't even have the enthu to recognise as myself. i suppose i know on a factual level that it's me, but that's about it.
i am very very upset.

it's a completely different deal: net at home and net at office. now i have forgotten what i meant to write.
but well, oli's not here and i feel really weird, not having spent time away really after the BRC except during vellore, but then i was not the one staying behind.
i met shubhayu offline the other day, also today, actually.
my cd drive has gotten disabled. i feel absolutely shattered about that. well, i guess it's a way of making me shake ass. arr, kichhu hochhe anek i hochhe na. i feel all pent up, like things are really building up, but there's no outlet. somewhere there must be a falling action.

At home. Was reading this uponyash by Shekhar mukhopadhyay (i think) called biboshyoto. don't even know what the word means. reading it, i realised, got a really sharp feel of what not having baba means. for days, even today morning, I was dreaming of some encounter that is so pleasant, so what i seemed to have wanted for a long time. today, it struck home, sort of. It's what makes four year old kid bibashyan break into sobs when he meets his father after three years. it's the memory of love given that exists on a subconscious level. i did not realise it when i had it, and don't remember now it's gone. i do now. even now the feel is alive, like it's happening at this moment. Him, his unconditional love, I called it security. in my dream, it was tenderness. only that, the love, a state of being. and i woke up wanting this so strongly, not quite knowing what it was. the desire to replicate it motivates so many relationships, fledged and unfledged. sometimes i forget. forget what i had been yearning. only the absence, dredged out from memory, niggling, remains.
hahakar kake bole aj janlam.
khub boro shobdo mone hoy.
tumi chole gachho bole ki ar phire ashtey paro na?
it's not fair. to whoever who runs this world, two people should not be turned away thus from each other. my father and i do not deserve it. ami ke bolar. if that is the question, i can tell you i am exactly the person to give an opinion on the matter. and him thati lost.
i am waiting. i am waiting.

theoutsider

in office, and people have had a bout of sudden pujo-end navami(house style) epiphany. there's the bluffmaster title track playing, and everyone seems to be feeling friendly and smiley.
i haven't any work really and am hanging around hoping to go out and eat with my colleagues, with some pandal hopping thrown in for good measure. lets see how all else turns out.

i have a job. i am relieved. i am reading the hitchhiker's guide through the galaxy (or is it to?)and it's not a bad thing at all. my friend insists i should take the net. there's water all around my para. tomorrow i shall go to office. in my blinkered, unable to see beyond the moment way, i quite like the idea of tomorrow. if it doesent work out right, i shall pray really hard that it does the next day. it usually happens on alternate days. good day-bad day-good day.. so on. i dont want the pattern to change. except for good day-good day-good day.. i think one gets the idea.
somewhere across the horizon, there's really unbelievable amounts of happiness

I am not going for the trek. ki kori. wish somebody were to hold me. You take it in your stride, do you? kintu ektu bhalobashi, tar jonye holeo dishehara lagey. never prepared a reaction for what to do if you don't go. I feel bewildered, somewhat criminal. I just want to sit around my friend. Quietly to let it sink in. Around her there is peace. I find orientation.

And there is living after this too. Does baba's death make me so? So tired and slouchy. I need to trek as often as I can just to keep sane. To remember to be happy. Strong. That life is not something you drag along. Without JU, I need it all the more to remember, find focus, perspective. Kake eta bojhabo? That is my honesty about trekking. I don't love, dig it. I find, fodder, if you like. It shows me the way in a grim way. I am never fit the way I should be, and it's so often such a hard deal, and I don't take it well at all. Yet just being there strains it out of me. So I need to trek. I also dream of making my life with someone who will love to trek, will love the mountains and will always take me with him. May be sometime I will take him too. All this I hope for, dream about. These are my stakes. Without this, I feel lost. I will flounder giving names to things and fix meanings, and that kind of life is so tedious, I shall fall sick if I live it for more than a very short time. I am not doing very well now. I drag myself around the city instead of finding my pace. It used to be this way in school. I had forgotten that I used to get tired just going and coming back from school, so womanly, not being able to do vigorous activities. All that I had almost put out of my mind. I have been at home for a few months. Things are not with a lot of colour. It does not do me good. I have to get out. I will fall sick. You cannot live like this. There is no balm in the form of Jadavput either, that all-effacing place that at the end of the day takes you into its heart no matter how it's been. I must leave, God I must leave.

I wanted to write about a couple of things and one more:

It's spring and it's so beautiful that it's difficult to believe. I wish the world remained like this always. (I am talking English like an imbecile. Orkut has this effect among other things.)

David Gilmour gives me this bitter sweet feeling that kinda feels like a crush. (Of all the things to have crushes about)

I am doing some horrific French translations.
I like being at home during spring very much. On second thoughts, I like being outdoors as much. College specifically. I miss JU very very much.

I still haven't a job. It's kinda beginning to worry me now.

I think I shall fall sick for not having gone for the trek. Beginning winter in Calcutta does NOT do me good.
Stupid stupid life, where things don't always work out the way you want it to.

I shall no longer go to college and my English and general way with the world will get worse and worse for not having what they call intellectual nourishment. I shall become stupid.

Oh and I read this blog about a young about to have child person and I am really grossed. I do not want to marry or to have children in a very long time, thank you. What did you think life was for? To tow the line?
I mean not in the way she put it. Putting names to everything: I am a WIFE. What I am in is MARRIAGE. Why do we make nice things into boring and mind numbing patterns. That's what wrong with society. It's dying trying to understand itself by puttingnames to everything. Taking away the fun of writing your own relationships, your own life.

Didya know Kavya Vishwanathan was Amitav Ghosh's student?
Joy Goswami is on Orkut.

Gilmour is ruthless in a very precise way, and no frills to himself. I find it really difficult to imagine him with Polly Samson. I guess it must be good..

Right, so I am on antibiotics now, and after just a day's worth of medicines, I feel much better. Almost okay, that it. Come back to the world and all that. My hair is all matted and curly from not having been washed for days and only now do I remember that mashi had asked me to take a sponge bath today.
There'e still the occasional tummy ache and I still don't feel like eating anything at all, but it's nothing at all like the past few days. I was wondering why I was so intent on starving myself then. When u're sick, you long for some special care at home. Yet, far as I am concerned, illness is a double price you have to pay. So, out of the pure desire to save your own skin, in my house, one had better not fall sick. Cuz you'll have to look out for yourself. And if you aren't in a position to do that, you're gonna get sicker and sicker like I was getting till dadu and mashi intervened.
One of those days, I woke up and there was this massive cold sweating session. I was completely drenched in sweat and had an awful, uncomfortable belly ache that just kept on coming in spasms and all you could do was just pray God please put an end to this. Which He did, pretty soon.
I think it was also in a way, a fallout of all the aniyom I had been doing over the last month with Express. Somewhere you have to pay. But I so hate the absolutely tasteless food at home. Coupled with all things else, there was Michael K. I would be having those cold sweats and wonder whether I was becoming like K too, cursing myself for having read that book.
And then, I am still in two minds regarding my metier. It's true you can do well in anything, and you had better since it's a question of survival. But I would dream about a quiet life somewhere far away, within some distant community, away from here. May be it'll happen some day. May be I'll have my quiet life some day.

My back aches like anything. I really feel like a poor girl today. The thing is, ya know, I have fever. Probably the result of translsting too much French commercial jargon. Did you know that 'vignette'is explained as 'tax disc' in Larousse? I don't know what it means, in French or English, and have used it, like, twenty times.
I am reading Coetzee's 'Life and Times of Michael K' and like it very much indeed. Trouble is, I have not had much in the day and that's not a good idea if u have a cold (mild), fever(fairly hot forehead), sore back, sore throat (okay, that;s just very little). But the back, the bloody back. I am just 23, why should one have back aches at 23? I was remembering baba a lot today, y'know, that it all began with a tickle down the spine. I don't think dying is a good idea now, even if it might cause me to be united with my father again. I thought about it. Death, even with promise of baba, is not nice. And I can't really believe, even when I try, that I'll meet him again.
You kind of, like, go on, you know, shut out things and live. And at some point, you won't have to shut them out either. You can remember even the most frightening things and be serene. Michael K is a lot about all this. And it soothes so much, Coetzee's simplicity, and the love with which he writes.
That's enough for the day, I'd think.

Friend came up with the following er, request:

"do, do make me a paper hare.
but should that be too difficult, a goose will do."

The quirks of the human species. Sigh

Iam a poor girl. I no longer go to JU.
Presently it is making me feel really teary. I try to think that I am forging a life for myself just like I always wanted, that I am reading books (atleast that isn't being taken away), and I am going to be in the world of letters if not directly associated with University.
Things people feel when JU gets truncated out of their lives. A took up an online poetry membership while at IMI,Delhi to be close to literature. I am coming up with these platitudes.
And I am already forgetting stuff I learnt, the wways of looking at texts which 'so loved. I am just gonna be a dumb 'galper boi portey bhalo lagey' type from now on.
'Course it is also a case of the grass is always greener on the other side. Yet ...

ghochat

friend posted at www.arcche.blogspot.com:

"adventures in quadruplicate. and the triplicate certainly knows.
u see, it is not only that things get done, but that they really do get done, and i have very lovely people around me. leaves me feeling rather good."

In the worst possible way of putting it,
'licking the chops of memory' we are.

Couldn't resist showing off my profound lnowledge of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Have to write article now. Hell waiting to break loose on many fronts.
Serves right for reading 4 Mills and Boon trash

All you need is love...

I have read four Mills and Boon thingies and feel positively yucky. Good side: hints at probability of a time when won't be able to stand the sight of them. In fact, pretty close.
I will never be able to make a coherent story-like post, so here's the fact in a nutshell:

Us 4 had great fun at A's place on the fourteenth. We ate (seems like the best part to me), chatted and watched Friends. I think the possibility of a job brings out the wackiest aspects of me most uninhibitedly.
(I do realise that what i term wacky has a chance of being interpreted as pure pain-in-the-ass by the threesome. But I really liked me that way myself, so whooya cares..
15th August too was so beautiful, man.
I don't mean that all my latent patriotism burst through yesterday. Rather that it was a beautiful day, a lovely day for a holiday (that's what it is), and it THEREFORE seemed a perfect day to remember that c'etait le jour de la liberte.
See, it's the way you shape a day in your mind. I remember, say, Janmashtami, and it creates no impressions in my mind.
15th August's another matter.
I guess it's just that I have nice memories.

Till the end of the fourth standard, I used to live at Rohini. If u've noticed the tall building just as you come off the incline of V.I.P. Road at the beginning of Ultadanga, that's a part of Rohini Complex, where we lived for 3 years till we came to stay at our own flat. It was the only place where I had a kind of normal-ish childhood. Ran around with a pile of friends, played the usual assortment of 'lukochuri' and 'kumirdanga', had wild fun during Holi, sat through lovely summer evenings during vacations with nary a care. It was a very communal thing at Rohini, and Independance Day meant flag hoisting (we had a pedestal kind of thing rounded in by interconnected chains where u could sit if you were less than four feet tall, and swing if you were shorter). Kids all turned out in white and there were sports activities. And the thing I remember especially that one year was this race where you had to run/walk with a spoon in your mouth which had a marble placed on it. Yours truly was as usual too shy/scared/ feeling the outsider, to participate. Anyway, that year, this girl who always used to be kinda the outcast among the gang of grown ups won and I remember she held the stem of the spoon inside her mouth almost to the end of it, and I thought it was so clever. It had been a balmy day just like yesterday morning. And I didn't realise until now that that day had become a happy memory in my mind.
Yesterday at A's place was also so lovely.
Her window faces the phallic building at Southern Avenue. There was this lilting breeze blowing and a sari strung outside one of the balconies of phallic build. was dancing away in this absolutely gay, liberating abandon in the breeze. Just now, it reminds me of American Beauty, where the kid (Wes Bentley, I mean) plays out a video of a plastic bag flying endlessly in the breeze with the autumn leaves swirling around in its wake.
Kailsh Kher's 'deewani' has the same lilting rhythm to it, you know --that things are happening and there's this incredible beauty and you are swept along in its wake and there's nothing to be done about it really save fitting yourself to the rhythm of events. Life is so beautiful.

And somewhere, Baba perhaps is watching me.

I am bored online. No, it's not a joke, just a filler post or something. I have an extremely productive life waiting for me to go and enjoy. Yet I have been online for about half an hour and I am bored.
My new template bores me, the idea of tommorow bores me, and somewhere I am afraid of something and I can't even remember what it is.
I think I am afraid of not having visitors here. I hate writing into vacuum. I am a sucker for attention. I am an attentionomaniac. And I am also really quite young, not so sober that it does not matter to me whether the world looks at me or not. Ideally, I would like to engineer situations such that they censure me very very much indeed, only so I can say "As if I care".
I am really really bored. Um UM unm um umumumumum....................


I think I shall not come here in a really long time.
I also think I severely lack imagination.
I am not blindingly funny.
I do not make for really severe tragedy.
I don't think I pass off very well as an unconventional person.
I think I am thoroughgoingly normal.
And I am mad in a not-so-good way. The kind that makes people really worry about you.

tumdidum
LA-LA-DI-DA....

Oooh, I do love my new template. The blog's, I mean. Feel astounded by own ingenuousness in choosing it. Feel like drooling over it all the time I am online. Ooooh!

You think you could tell...

I meant to crow with relief : je travaille, je travaille and all that. But a friend called. He's this good guy, but he's going through a phase right now. Things haven't yet fallen in place with him as yet. He spoke to the teachers about things in general, but, well, what I am trying to say is, ... God please make things fall in place with him. He's a good guy, and those are rare as it is. He IS rather not so well off. I wish he brings himself back into the groove. No one else can, ever. How can I put it through that it's only he who can do that, not a third person who'll come along and put it right, and also that while one does have time, it's not an eternity. That work, indeed mindless labour can be an antidote to feeling bad about things. If you didn't have the time to think, you wouldn't be feeling bad about yourself.
ei ar ki. Also about the trekking front. Is it possible to engineer a fifteen day holiday less than a month into work. That would indeed be a personal coup. I read a nice blog later in the afternoon today. The guy had gone trekking. It takes you to the other more vital way of looking at things. My friend would say, it's the only way. But I so often forget, what I want, how I want it to be. I look at these people and get this bolt out of the blue everytime: how could I have forgotten. Can one really believe: I forget I know how to get a high?
I think I've named my blog really well..

And to this friend of mine, I wish for you to be good to yourself. Cuz I don't believe you are ill in any way at all. As the friend says, you choose to be not ill.

heggg..

My blog looks absolutely absurd. I feel like I've abandoned a baby and adopted one. I feel absolutely perverse. Indulging my perversion for a protracted period. May be I'll change it back. May be I won't ever get time to look at it again, sso I am having fun while I can. I have read about three utterly depressing blogs, and feel utterly depressed. I am gong to go check out some blogs I like. I think Jadavpur always makes more sense than the rest of the world. In most respects.
There was one blog where the guy is crazy about English August and keeps conning lined off some book whose name I can't remember. This chappie cogs stray pieces off known people. Have you read Adrian Mole?--his compositions? This sounds exactly like that. I feel really pissed. And I was in such a good mood too. Having read Utz and J. D. Salinger and all.
And now I am writing for something I don't even recognise as my own...

I am sulking majorly. Only 71 people have visited my blog so far. and i've been blogging since June. And on dial up. And I post regularly. And I have measly memory. And can't post links. People have been told about this repeatedly and all they have done is tell me about certain mythic chains which refuse to make an appearance on my comp. Have you ever heard of blogging from a cyber cafe? I refuse to stoop to such low-brow addiction.

Its very sad je anarosh khelei jibhe allergy hoy. Especially since I like it so much

I want to have a fish fry and milk.
My mum has left a glass of the latter. Kintu fish fry kothay pai?

Grrrrr

If anybody can help me on this, I will be eternally grateful. (Atleast for a while)

I can't post links to my blog.
I have Windows 98 and measly amounts of memory.
I am also working on Dial Up

JUST SOMEONE BLOODY TELL ME HOW TO POST A LINK.
and i have tried the Help thingy on Blogspot. Doesen't work.
Reason i am especially irritated: there's this great post on Bangalis at http://insearchofthrills.blogspot.com/2005/12/bong-mind-at-work-no-excuses-for-not.html (atleast i hope this will serve as a rudimentary navigator)but i can't link it.

I am mighty pissed.

I also think I am very bad at writing the English language. I am feeling very sorry about that too. (I think there are two errors in the last two lines, one an instance of bad usage if not wrong grammar)

I slept from about 6 in the eve. to about 10:30 today. Would have gone on sleeping if the friend hadn't called up. I am utterly disgusted with myself. And all cause I was too lazy to ask ma if she'd make me some tea, please. Should mention in this regard that she came back from walk really pissed that ami filter e jal bhorini. So was kinda scared to ask. Then out of laziness, kept on sleeping, till it got to be that doomed hour when you can't call up anymore cuz it's way past the decent limits. Sometimes i wonder when my friends get homes of their own, what reason they'll proffer for asking me to keep to mythical hours when calling. Will they act as their own guardians then?

I am almost at the end of A Clockwork Orange. It's always the same, innit? Somewhere with all of your vitality, you still get screwed.
Remembering Rumblefish, Sleepers, Huckleberry Finn....

khnyak khnyak khnyak

Friend of mine scrapped another:

ami bhabchhie kono bhuri wala bangali chap k beeye korey baby make korbo...then one day when i am a little sick of all that i will run away to mayapur and become iskcon.

hmm

war movies

I have watched and enjoyed Catch 22 greatly. I think the guy who plays Yossarian does it very well, Dodds's good, so's Milo, the girl Yossarian falls for, chaplain great too, and Y's roomie just as good as imagined him to be, even better if that's possible. Of course you're making it from a book, so u do pick and choose, but all that's done so well. I think I like Mike Nicholls.Glad of the friend too to've passed it on.

Just think of another adaptation from a book, they make different kinds of hash out of every instalment of Harry Potter. Though admit that's a different game altogether. But the way this movie catches the flavour of the book is really good. And possibly there's also something to do with the fact of having lived through a war yourself. Not necessarily talking of participating in it. Think Oliver Stone's Platoon, for instance. Then again you'll wonder what possessed the director and the cast in the Guns of Navarone. How can a man strut like THAT throughout a film? You'd think Gregory Peck's arse would ache..And to climb a rock face like THAT- and then to suddenly let go of your hold out of the blue and to pretend that your hand slipped..Seriously, you'd wonder if they'd thought their audience to be retarded. Aar boi pore ki keu jante parto Andreas je sharakkhon without reason danth khichoy. I'd thought he was this beautiful man who called Mallory 'my Keith'. There's something about male camaraderie that is so unattaningly beautiful..
Then their's The Rainbow and The Rose by Nevil Shute(?) Haven't met anyone who's read it. When I was in 1st or may be 2nd year, there was this selection of Shute at Landmark saying that he was being reprinted after so-many years (splendidly vague that). I read it in school. Loved it very much indeed, the magic dream-like quality, of Johnny Pascoe, Robert something, of Tasmania, memories of the war, and of love..
Books...

But God how smug I sound passing judgement on people.
And by the way, Martin Sheen (in Catch 22) looked every bit as delicious when he was young as Charlie Sheen did. That's the son, by the way. Who, for ignoramuses comme mon amie, was also there in Platoon. Martin Sheen was also there in Apocalypse Now Redux, which, sadly, I haven't watched. He has a more important role there, I believe.

don't know where i'm going dont know where i'll be

I love the smell of cigarette smoke wafting up to my room from the house below, music in my head and the night a-glimmer outside, and me here writing (on dial up, if I may say)
sidling your fingers across the keyboard, riot of thoughts racing through head.
At peace with self if not with the world.
the happiness of having expressed a thought perfectly in words. The exquisiteness of perfect crafting, ah.

my baby,Themoon, this..

...play on

I am listening to an odd assortment of songs my student gave me. He got it from a friend who seemingly went berserk with the songs he had in hand. So I have a collection that has one track of Bob Marley (Buffalo Soldier: je l'aime), Hotel California, 1 Aerosmith, Ozzy Osbourne, Avril Lavigne, Limp Bizkit and Metallica, Evanescence, something called l'il Kim (i think) etc etc. I think one gets the general picture.

And oh, I am so glad. I just found out that Blogspot wasn't just swallowing up my posts- something I was attributing to the ban thing. It was only being carefully archived, I am happy to say.

akhon More Than Words play korchhe

where to...

pirates of the caribbean, johnny depp
peter pan
huckleberry finn
tom sawyer. why not

lovely day

Having to access through another domain again. Seriously, you'd wish people would grow up.
What hap. in life since last post?
Pirates of the Caribbean, all four of us
brother's (cousin's, to be technically correct) marriage
reading Peter Pan
buying Orhan Pamuk for brother (salivating over books at Landmark, thinking longingly about potential employment)

office er pa maraini for two days.

That's what.

Ain't life JUST great?

Wondering, whether should go ahead and write explicitly about each.

A sentence, I think.

Johnny Depp is unspeakably sexy.
today was the day of brother's marriage when the wife comes to her new home for the first time. Having been the only one among the cousins to've known her when he hadn't spoken about her to the family, I felt rather privileged for a while. She's as nice as she had seemed that day. And again, I was kinda surprised when I saw how nice they were with each other. Not cynical, not jaded. And how kind my brother was with people. Y'know, kind, just humane. I thought he'd changed over the last few years. I still think he has. Yet he was so nice today. And I LOVED it in the end.
He's the first of the next lot to get married. Thakuma saw her grandson getting married. Quite something.
We do bicker in quite disgusting ways that I don't care for, us relatives, I mean. But sometimes it all turns out right. This time, I think it was for the obvious happiness of the people concerned.
Though I wouldn't care for all of that myself. The rituals, I mean. But then, as the friend says, you never quite khow what may happen. I don't mean that like a bolt from the blue I'll develop this unfathomable love for the traditional way of getting married, but that I might come around it in ways I never thought I would.

I am quite elated with the day.

LOL

Found this while trolling the net:

In an office:
AFTER TEA BREAK STAFF SHOULD EMPTY THE TEAPOT AND STAND UPSIDE DOWN ON THE DRAINING BOARD

-In an office:
WOULD THE PERSON WHO TOOK THE STEP LADDER YESTERDAY PLEASE BRING IT BACK OR FURTHER STEPS WILL BE TAKEN

-In an office:
TOILET OUT OF ORDER......PLEASE USE FLOOR BELOW

-In a Laundromat:
AUTOMATIC WASHING MACHINES: PLEASE REMOVE ALL YOUR CLOTHES WHEN THE LIGHT GOES OUT

-In a London department store:
BARGAIN BASEMENT UPSTAIRS

-Outside a secondhand shop:
WE EXCHANGE ANYTHING - BICYCLES, WASHING MACHINES, ETC. WHY NOT BRING YOUR WIFE ALONG AND GET A WONDERFUL BARGAIN?

-Notice in health food shop window:
CLOSED DUE TO ILLNESS

-Spotted in a safari park:
ELEPHANTS PLEASE STAY IN YOUR CAR

-Notice in a farmer's field:
THE FARMER ALLOWS WALKERS TO CROSS THE FIELD FOR FREE ,BUT THE BULL CHARGES.

-On a repair shop door:
WE CAN REPAIR ANYTHING. (PLEASE KNOCK HARD ON THE DOOR - THE BELL DOESN'T WORK)

Singing for the lonely...

Saw Visconti's Death in Venice. Committed the sin of turning up for the movie an hour late. Covering a twenty minute road in forty five, I was thinking once in a while what it would be like if I went out and beat the living daylights out of the people manning the traffic. Then thought that was way too manic even for me. When got to Gorky Sadan finally, there was friend giggling away for some absurd reason. Felt strange: if I'm late, she may be pissed with me, but what pervert giggles when they are angry? Well, it was on Visconti's account
I am an absolute anari regarding cinema but I still say that the movie is weird. Aschenbach was weird, so was Tadziu. At times it seemed like a very sorry melodrama. Visconti must be greatly revered by film-makers but I shall have to watch better stuff of his before I can get close to liking him even rudimentarily.
Feel very lonely now. Went to JU today after, like, a month. Didn't go to the department. But there was an excuse-like thing for that. Had come for library clearance, then got into a hurry to go courier hunting with friend at Hazra. That was a tiny adventure which I think the friend felt more keenly, having left home at 7 in the day.
Anyway, I feel consciously lonely today after what seems like ages. Atodin, days were an endless routine of getting info., filing story. Today, I was at this beloved place, with much-esteemd friend, eating, lolling around, whiling time, like had done for the last five years.
Day's jaunt ended today with more of lolling. We walked from Rabindra Sadan metro station, beyond the momo joints towards this crossing (getting really vague now), turned right. After walking a little, we found this stone seat, slab really and sat there, under this orange street lamp. In front, on the other footpath, there was this building, and we could see inside the flat on the first floor- pink walls, ashbab, lamp-shades on wall, a trinket or two hung up. Quiet. Lots of bustle, but in that patch where we sat, it seemed really comfortable to me. Then some people passed by. They spoke loudly, even across us, but it didn't cut into our chat at all.
I wonder how frequently we shall continue to do this?
We are four of us, tres amies. And all on the brink, just starting out on life. And this tentativeness, poised in between two worlds, is so quiet, so nice. I love it for us, know that we'll make good. Yet there are these things that I have enjoyed so much, and I want to keep them. I fear that me being me, I won't somehow manage to do that.
Today was how I love it. Felt more alive today just hanging out in an environment that agrees with me so utterly, more than any coup I might affect for myself at work. JU one so often takes for granted. While you are there, it seems difficult to conceive a point when it will not be enveloping your existence.
Work's a high. but JU is like the assurance of home.

with this blogspot ban fiasco, i seem to have lost some of my posts. that's bloody disgusting, i tell you.

another day

what a day.
NOTHING HAPPENED!
save CONFUSION, CONFUSION, AND MORE CONFUSION.
Over job thingy.
Saw Visconti's White Nights. Some of it was nice but I am expecting better. There's a retrospective of Visconti on at Gorky Sadan, followed by Rosselini. Hope to catch Death in Venice. Found this good news site www.hardnewsmedia.com. Can we ever be writing like this? Say things for what they are worth instead of trying to paint an evenly painting a placid, toned-down picture of everything?

post

Wanted to put this down:

Chatwin's elusiveness about his sexuality appears to have had an impact on his writing style as well. As The London Sunday Times Books noted, "his polished prose subtly distanced him; yet their blend of intellectual passion and emotional coldness, the postmodern glitter of surface and patchwork, shorn of all authorial judgment, provoked widespread curiosity about his life."
The writer Salman Rushdie, a loyal friend, described Chatwin's complex sexuality as "the creature at the perimeter prowling around. All this fantastic entertainment and language and originality and erudition and display [was] a kind of hedge against not letting out the truth."

One way of looking at things.

Laughter and Forgetting

My friend was using my cell with her sim card, so ended up losing some messages which I'd stored so I could always have them. Since they are no longer there, here's the best place to transfer them.
My fav. fantasy once used to be how it would be if a dear one died. Since baba, I live in fear. Death isn't something you play around in your imagination. I don't get it at all, and if I have to talk about it, I shall do so with respect. Wish it wasn't that, that you mind your way out of fear. Coz the frivolity about death is only a way of dealing with the fear and incomprehension of it, and even grants a more genuine respect than fear ever could. But I'm a little bogged down by what happened. It'll take a bit of time, I guess.

Well for the sms es:

"There's somethung about the continent that's just akin to Bruce"- I sent that one.

"Si si"- that's her, going into paroxysms of approval


It had occurred to me while reading The Songlines. Was reading Utz and looking at Chatwin's pic yesterday. He looked so beautiful, fragile and self-contained. And kinda peeved. Jerry Bauer's photograph. Wonder who he was.
And again you have to wonder why he had to die at 49. There's no logic to explain this. But what am I saying. And it's a totally ruthless platitude to say that his, or baba's or anybody else's for that matter, that there work in this life was done and so they, so to speak, bowed out of life. In my fallen intelligence, this doesen't console. And sure, despite the blah that faith is that which you don't understand. Dear dear A.da

theoutsider

I think that the fact that i have to access themoon through another domain deserves a rant. But I'll pass it up. My point is the same as the others. Who do you think you are fooling if you think you can stop terrorist activities by muzzling public opinion? Do you think people are such fools as to be taken in by this? Anyway.
i had this to blog:

Fragmnents of Latin conned off my friend:

"cum dustro necavit": killed by a (a blow from a )duster.
"semi-vivo relicto" : literally translated, leave somebody half dead, off the good samaritan parable in the bible.

I used to learn Latin once, spurred by the sudden bursts of enthusiasm I keep getting for things that seem really distant to me. Then I left off in the middle (something I don't like doing), somewhere things were not functioning. With studies at an end, Latin once again seems suitably distant for me to want to take it up again. Well, on a more rational note, Latin is one of the things you better do even if u don't feel the immeiate urge for it cuz u're too stupid to realise how glad u'll be later when it actually opens up to you. And anyway if u plan to make your living off words, it'll stand you in good stead.
And regarding the professional update, potential employer has put himself in doubt regarding his own status as a potential employer.

I am lonely on the Net.

theoutsider

Well. I got the dressing down of my life from this extremely peeved gent on the Net. Which brings you to wonder. I hate writing the way I have been doing recently, in a way, it's a desperation to see how much you can get by. Also that often when you write something you really care for, no one else seems to bother about it.
The guy on the net, though, seems to have fun just to let himself go, and I don't care for that. I don't care much for what I have been writing either, but that's another story.You are writing about something that means much to you, but there isn't time to read up on it, and anyone who thinks that Google is a storehouse of information if you are trying to probe anywhere beyong the surface is sadly mistaken.
It's a mad world when you are running a deadline. I wish meeting it did not involve doing such violence to yourself or to others.

theoutsider

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

TWELVE o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,
The street-lamp sputtered,
The street-lamp muttered, 15
The street-lamp said, “Regard that woman
Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand, 20
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin.”

The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.

Half-past two,
The street-lamp said,
“Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter.”
So the hand of the child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.
I could see nothing behind that child’s eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab with barnacles on his back,
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered,
The lamp muttered in the dark.
The lamp hummed:
“Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smooths the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and eau de Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain.”
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars.

The lamp said,
“Four o’clock,
Here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,
The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair.
Mount.
The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.”

The last twist of the knife.

ELIOT, this

le desert

a penny for my thoughts. Anyway, did manage to listen to a lot of pink floyd today. Piper at the Gates of Dawn is really so good.
Some Chatwin that I've been meaning to put up for a while:
"'Alone and amid the nations', masters of the raid, avid for increase yet disgusted by possesions, driven by the fantasy of all travellers to pine for a stable home- no people but the Jews have felt more keenly the moral ambiguities of settlement. Their God is a projection of their perplexity. their Book- the Old Testament and the New- may be read, on one level atleast, as a monumental dialogue between Him and His People in the rights and wrongs of living in the Land."

" Jahweh, in origin, is a God of the Way. His sanctuary is the Mobile Ark, His House a Tent, His Altar a cairn of rough stones. And though he may promise His Children a well-watered land- as blue and green as are a bedouin's favourite colours- He secretly desires for them the Desert."
What is it about the desert that is so mesmerising, or is it the authors? There was Thesiger, who was happiest when he was crossing the Empty Quarter with bin Ghabaisha, and bin Kadina(?). And Ghabaisha was so beautiful. Thesiger must have loved him. Bruce too read Thesiger, not quite sure how he felt about him.
Then there's Ondaatje's English Patient, who personalised Herodotus' Histories(?), keeping the relevant pages and sticking in his own stuff in the others. Also that whole horde of European women, often cross-dressing as men (Vested Interests) who dissapeared into the desert. Many didn't survive. Bruce is a part of this lot. He calls himself 'the sterile wanderer', that post-war despair, looking for answers at cultures that had been subtexted by the West.
That's just by way of remembering facts. Yet I say it cuz I am wondering really at myself. What is it that one loves so much about all of this? can you at all want something that you do not have the potential to achieve? Dream dream dream dream dream- thare's a song that goes this way. and I am thinking all the time how life will shape up to me. When I get my two penny worth of the world's beauty, will I remember to appreciate for what it is worth?
'REGARD THE MOON,
LA LUNE NE GARDE AUCUNE RANCUNE...
THE MOON HAS LOST HER MEMORY.'

To Eliot.

untitled

Met potential employer yesterday. might become an actual employer so that's good. in fact, I quite liked him, now that he has potentially offered me a job. Hope this thing shall work out.

quotes to be remembered

my friend a said "i like my lemons squeezed" or probably "i can squeeze my own lemons"
I said "Will someone hold my banana? I just want to peel off one side."
My friend said, "You both have violent metaphors with fruits."
we stayed over at a's yesterday.

i feel it in my fingers...

I have SENT OFF MY ARTICLE, one hour late, if I may add. now I am going to vindicate my condition by listening to lots of Pink Floyd and trying to open the cd which my friend's written for me. the problem, u see, is that there were two cds in the cover.after she wrote the cd for me, i put it back, without marking it, with the one not written on. Now the cd won't play. my cds usually do after some coaxing. But rite now, I don't even know which one to coax. And it has Jim Croce, Lloyd Webber, Indigo Girls and all those lovely songs from Travis. Also Sisai, which I'd like to get a taste of. So I've reason to be frustrated.I shall try to watch Chamber of Secrets again today. Just some fun. Or else, there's Clockwork Orange waiting for me, or Songlines, and Utz. Hah, I am rich.
More sombrely, will meet potential employer today. Only time will tell where career will go. If only I were sure enough. And that research thingy. Not everyone has something they want to study about. And since I do, can you afford to let it go?

since it's 2a.m...

right. I've scouted blogosphere quite thoroughly (my purview of it, anyway), I have a deadline to meet by 10a.m. tommorow (an article I haven't thought anything about), amar pithe jhijhi dhore gachhe, so I am just in the mood for a post. Why is it that you get this critical urge to blog just when you should not be doing it?Dunno. Who cares. I spoke to this rather famous bangali shahittik today who turned out to be full of himself. Sigh, a chink in every armour, I guess. No one's perfect. Didn't get through to this other famous director, 'not easily accesible', my superior said. Which translates into "will play song from 'Guide' at you& will then switch off phone just when you've started getting your hopes high that u've tracked down the elusive guy after all. (And all that after you've chewed off your nails in apprehension thinking that you'll forget to ask ethng u meant to ask if he picked up the phn so why call him anyway)
Well, a day, a day. no probs. okey-dokey.
Got to read about 4 lines of chatwin's songlines today. wow, great. if that's how life's gonna be as a scribe, I can forget ever sitting down to read anything ever. All I'll be doing is researching stuff on google for absurdities to shore up my art.s with.I am afraid I'll even forget to miss JU.
Oh JU.I love you so much.Haven for misfits is so right. And it also gives you a kind of pleasure to see all the strait-laced ones who give you such hell in their kind of environments getting to see the other side of the coin. But it's sad really. Coz JU really takes everybody in and makes it a kind of home. All it asks for is a kind of basic honesty to yourself.I didn't give it all of mine. That's the only pity. And quietly, the biggest one. Coz it's just my size.
And another reason to crib. I haven't got anti-spam thng. on my comp. So keep getting these 'Crazy Girls' adverts. i am sick to death of seeing immense boobs. Really.
Have an interview where, a friend tells me, I'll be asked strange ques.s.

Shine on, You crazy Diamond

Day ended on a nice note with my three friends calling up to ask(as they do every year, it seems), whether I had remembered to read up Tintern Abbey (that mighty poem of the worthy Wordswoth) on the eve of this July the 13th. Apart from that, visited dadu and stuffed myself on fried rice and chicken prepared by one who loves me a lot.
Haven't yet called potential employer. Will have to set up date for interview with another potential employer by tommorow.
My friend is on a ball, what with teaching French and dear A.da 'loose in the department', as she calls it.
And Syd Barrett died a few days ago. It shocks me to think that David Gilmore too won't be around at some point of time. there are some people whom you can't bear to imagine life without. My friend would say A.da. I agree.

untitled

I have lost a post in cyberspace

shah of blah

Isn't it absurd that you must to connect anew in virtual space with people you speak to everyday? Nope it isn't. we straddle multiple identities, and blogging is another act of self creation. The I which meets A isn't the same I which touches A over the Net. This isn't even the'medium is the message' thing.It's what Sukanta da says in his 2005 intro. to Infirm Glory. Knowledge is of necessity fragmentary. you begin to come even the least bit closer to knowing yourself when you realise that you will often find yourself(& by corollary others)acting in ways you hadn't thought them capable of. latent human possibility and all that. when you can accept that of yourself, that your mind, identity, psyche, is a gypsy thing, you shall probably be at peace with yourself and the world.
These are very precious musings, and at the same time very banal, in that you are actually going into the trouble of voicing inplied things- khanikta nijer monke kochlanor moto. they are ideally better off in a story, or may be as funda for life's fabric.

Blather.

memory and forgetting

Today is the 13th, unsurprisingly, of July. The rituals of grief are necessary, even for people like me to rail against. No one mourned for him that day. We went away one man less than we came as and nobody bothered about it. He was only a body, disposed of after the life was no longer there, not a person who had always been. Now I realize the importance of mourning, why a person should not go away unlamented, why there are social taboos attached to it. Why it was so important to sing for Lysidas, to state ‘Lysidas is dead’, and why it’s so good that it was Milton who sang for him. Baba went away unlamented, unmourned for. The world did not break apart for him. Only in a in a tiny corner of tiny me, he lives. I say it without any pride, any vanity. I wish his memories shone brightly in the hearts of many others, and shone brilliantly in a way it doesen’t in the dark mustiness inside me coz I’ve devoted myself to not being horrorstruck by that time, to ignore if need be, in order to go on. Cuz there I feel the irony and indeed, the kindness of it all. He perhaps came the closest to being the best man he could be as my father. These are solipsistic musings and in his quiet way, he has probably cared for many others about whom it would not occur to him to mention since he wouldn’t have regarded them as in any way out of the day’s job at all. To baba, you have my everything.

sigh

sigh
Well, went to cover the book release today with my friend. As usual, with her around, I had fun. they are such people, my teachers, although I made a crass fool of myself before one (and HE was most understanding, as he usually is). SHE was as lovely as ever and I conversed like a normal human being with my teachers (a rare occasion), without going into convulsions of stupidity induced by a kind of pathological shyness. Really really hope will not make a hash of the art.
Apart from that, another gent I'd written about kept messaging again and again.
Another day passed on a worried note. A potential employer hasn't replied to my mail. Am really quite desperate to get started. preferably with something that I will like doing. If this ain't gonna work out,I'd like to know soon so that I can go aheaf and try to shape some of my other plans.
Am I really such a pathological fool? looking at me, you probably would'nt know. Or may be you will? Which is the really scary thing.

baba

theoutsider
He came back to me today.Baba. Can't say much more. Save that he is not with me. I don't get it. Don't get me. Only that I miss him. Very very much. And 'miss' is too reductive a word.

the rant

ami khubi dukkhito. only time will tell what bloody shall happen. meanwhile, my favourite topic: i don't think we are ever gonna be sexually liberated, or whatever the heck you care to call it, as long as we stick to restrictive labels like 'gay' and 'straight'. If you call yourself straight, can you say that you'll never be attracted to anyone of the same sex as yourself, and vice versa? if you are, will you start calling yourself bisexual? what if you aren't attracted to anyone of the same sex ever again (in case of the so-called straight person)?Will you then call that incident of same sex attraction a one-off, an aberration from your 'normal' orientation?
this obsession with naming, labelling and limiting, fore-determining your sexual destiny, is utterly stifling. i understand we are subjects of a capitalist society which cannot allow for such freedom if it is to survive. Yet, I dunno. I hope there will still remain such a thing as volition,(which will itself still be determined by the economic process), to atleast try and walk against the tide. that you will make mistakes, but that you owe it to yourself to try. This is probably too idealistic, but what else can I say?

theoutsider

theoutsider
hmm. Journalism. Do you give people what they want, pander to the lowest common denominator, or do you make an attempt to shape a reading standard? Is it possible when there is this huge mass of people who want a quick-fix version of everything (including me). if you still hang on to your standards, don't you run the risk of losing your audience altogether, and the whole project backfires? I dunno. I am gonna look for a middle path somewhere.

theoutsider

theoutsider

finally...

Phew. I have it at last. A blog, i.e. No more pussy footing around in orkut i.e. can doodle all I like here. But seriously, I don't think blogging satisfies the exhibitionist fetish much y'know: "Hoo hoo, now everybody can see what I am up to and think I am so wonderfully eccentric". Deep down, I think I am a conventional sod anyway. So what the heck, you are gonna die anyway someday.