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.