I am so not houseproud. My house, after I have lived in it for a little over a year, is still no more than utilitarian lodgings: digs is the word. Though I rather like it: the word and my digs. Until now. The walls of the kitchen and the two bathrooms and the passage and the other room have been damp for about a month now, but the kitchen ceiling has now started dripping. The house is a filthy mess, though my mother has been trolling through most of the shit, since I conveniently have quit the kitchen since she came. It's now gotten so messy that even I, who will stay put as long as her one patch of clean ground is undisturbed even while the shit overflows, am thinking that enough is enough. Not to mention the hell that will be when the monsoons come around. I am swinging between shelling out about 9k for another same-sized flat, that would not be on the top floor and would have a separate meter, or a larger flat that I would share were someone interested and suitable to come along, or settling for a smaller top floor room: lesser space to mope around. But the last option is impractical, I already know: I have too much stuff already and on muggy days, if I have to stay cooped up in one tiny room, or perpetually keep a door open, with all the risk that involves... think of, among other things, if a pack of monkeys like the one I saw fighting the other day, were to descend on the terrace and proceeded to create mayhem: I do not want to cower in fear or constantly feel anxious about them making an appearance.
Very likely a two-room set-up like the one I have now is what I will look for in earnest: more money gone, but well, if ma and f chose to come again, I wouldn't worry about space or feel constrained about inconveniencing someone else.

I discovered pooja's blog yesterday. she seems to be living such a bohemian life to my stolid one. I am so old. I am so old.

Also, I have no idea what makes a house look warm and welcoming. My aesthetic landscape is so sparse: I do not feel the need for photos or showpieces. I want them, but don't need them. Clean, bare walls, clean floors and whatever else you need to exist. A big kitchen, like the one I have now, where you can cook and surf the net; clean, slightly spacious loos, mirror, clean washbasins. But while others: both pooja and mamdmomma, whose blog I was reading before I thought of writing this one, would do so much with these raw materials, I am fine with these. There is the simmering discontent, about how bare my life is, but I don't really know what to do. I know I can't stand hurrays, I know I will not travel with random people nor invite them into my home, which leaves my mind and my house kind of bare. Ah well. Maybe there's hope yet.

F is curled up under the lep by my leg. Ma is making dinner. It's as good as it gets.

I go to office on my elephant and have a pet camel. I need the elephant because, as you must know, I have to traverse a tropical jungle to reach work. On weekends, we go out for jaunts on my magic carpet, which I bought from the neighbourhood genie, who belongs to the local snake charmer. Every locality needs one because, you know, the snakes are numerous. And I have Curry for brekkers, lunch and dinner and I am very promiscuous. It's the heat, you know.

My grandparents were quite unusual people for their time, I think. I am not entirely sure, because they were young at a time when a lot of uncommon things were happening and in their milieu, it might have been a fairly usual thing to do.

They met at while studying at one of the premier medical colleges in Calcutta, a decade or so before independence, I suppose. They fell in love, and decided to marry in the face of some family opposition. My grandfather was a penniless idealist. His father had been a railway official in pre-independence Bangladesh, in, my mother says, Akhaura district in Kumilla. They called him kanababu because he was deaf, which deeply hurt my Dadu as a child, but they were poor and his father was a quiet man, I suppose, and so, there was nothing much he could do about it except bottle his rage. He had an elder sister he rather loved and a younger brother, both of whom died. And young Goura was left alone, with, I fancy, his ambitions and his love for his parents, cut by resentment, I suppose, for his authoritarian mother and a father who did not have the resources to provide what he wanted.

My grandfather is a natural storyteller. I always spent a lot of time with my maternal grandparents and his stories of his life, which he would never tire of narrating again and again, are a part of the fabric of my mind. I looked at them differently at different times as I grew up. Unquestioningly, when I was little; with indifference, coupled with resentment, as I discovered Dadu's flaws; and with tedium, when I was grown up: by then, I had heard them so many times that I didn't care anymore. Now, he is in Calcutta, growing older and older, often complaining like a weary Tiresias, asking to be gone. I hardly speak to him anymore. His problems are too many and there is not much I can do without taking charge. And I am a master shirker. I take on as little as I can. But I do love the man he was. His life was an enormous act of self-fashioning, the credit for which is no less for it being so common.

One of the many tales I grew up listening was about the Durga Puja bhog. Goura was a most enthusiastic participant in all village festivals. He wanted to be in the thick of things, he loved running errands and generally, being where the action was. During one Durga Puja, a dada asked him to distribute the pujor bhog among those in the pandal. Now, they (and we, by extension) belonged to the lower castes. And when he went to pick up the bhog er thala, the cantankerous mashima in charge screamed at him: 'Tui chhoto jaater, abar bhog dibi ki! Pala!' The youngster's face reddened with rage and embarrassment and though a kind person asked him to never mind the lady and to go ahead and distribute the bhog, he did not shake off the incident.

This story was often followed by another of his college days. As a poor medical student from a distant village, Dadu could only afford the most basic lodgings. He stayed in the college hostel. As a low caste boy, he said, Dadu was required to eat separately from the other boarders. The thakur would prepare his food separately and keep it aside in a corner, where he had to sit and eat.

That, and perhaps a certain amount of idealism was the reason he believed, still does, so strongly in Mahatma Gandhi. Maybe he, like so many others, at the time, found in Gandhi a kindness, a recognition of basic humanity that others didn't show.

I have a lot of rage for Dadu, a lot of anger for the way he lived his family life, the differential treatment he always did, and still has meted out to his daughters, for my Didu's sadness, for her disappointments. But he also did so much, lived with such courage and such fullness. And as time passes, and those I hold dear grow older and fade away, the heart fills with such emptiness and sorrow that nothing can fill.

I haven't known many men closely. The other two are my father and my boyfriend. Baba's trajectory was much the same, starting out with very little and ending with enough and more. I think part of the reason he died so early was because of a certain nihilism, of believing that nothing mattered beyond a point. He wouldn't fight tooth and nail for himself, maybe for one he loved, but not for him. Which I know Dadu would and did. My boyfriend, I think I chose him because I could recognized the mould. And disappointing and often intolerable as such people are often to live with, it is the only one I can, and probably, wanted to navigate. So, there's him. I find much to admire in him, the grittiness, the tenacity, the hard work, the fearlessness and being able to conceive a state where one has nothing.

I will write more about Dadu. But so many emotions well up when I talk of him, or of any of the other people who have been such ever-present characters in the family tableau that you forget to question their being. My paternal grandfather, who I know far far less of, was also quite a remarkable person. He completed his Masters in jail, he was a freedom fighter. He was not a family man and married at 42 (I think) and had six children. He was one of the founding members of the Socialist Party and a very bad businessman whose chemical factory was in a very bad state and his family was perpetually poor. My father and mejo kaku would have to give part of their monthly scholarship for family expenses. It is remarkable at first thought, but then not, that his family took his achievements for granted. They bore the brunt of his financial unsavviness.

My thakurda was much derided and neglected in his old age and the only person I have found taking any interest in him as a person is my chhoto kaku, a rather strange person himself. I will find out more about my thakurda too, from him.

So, I will write slowly. Maybe I won't, ever. Maybe they will recede to their fixed places again in the picture. But I would like to write. I think they will make fine stories.

Just finished the packet of Gems that was a part of the Diwali gift pack of Cadbury goodies ma got me. Bakigulo agei kheye niyechhie. :-)
I went to Daryaganj today, at the Sunday book market. And I hate you, pretentious Delhiwalla, but I did find the Hardayal Municipal Library which is a place where people come to read newspapers (place subscribes to 25 papers in various languages) and the coin seller too, I dare say. But it was horribly crowded and the kebab platter at Moti Mahal was not half as good as it is notched up to be. But I did buy a butter knife with an embossed Air India logo and a penknife which I quite like. How is it that Delhi still doesn't warm my heart? But it doesn't.
There was a wonderful collection of books today, not the piddling shit I could sift out the last time. One guy was selling a huge collection of Penguin Classics, but too canony and stuff that I don't really read, tai ki korbo, kinte parlam na. And the place is really close to my place, did you know? I took an auto from Laxminagar, it cost me 50 bucks, but the guy had the meter on, which came to only 40 bucks! I spent such a lot of time scouting for a bus to the place, kintu the only bus that passes through my locality goes directly to the book bazar too! Amazing discoveries and wonders never cease. Needless to say, I returned on a bus. And people travelled on public transport more habitually in old Delhi than I have seen people do here anywhere else. It seemed like Calcutta in that way, and very heartening. It has nothing to do with wealth. It makes sense, non? And why should you have to resort to your own conveyance in a bustling metro? Public transport is one of the most basic services.
My haul:
Alexander McCall Smith: The Kalahari Typing School for Men (40 bucks). It seems quite lovely. Ma likes it too. She asked me, 'eta ki Negro der boi?' She also asked me if Kalahari was in Africa and I spent a considerable amount of time trying to convince her it was in New Zealand. She didn't believe me, sadly.
Margaret Atwood: The Year of the Flood (and this very same I had been high falutin about buying at the Penguin discount sale. Got it for 80 bucks and I was cribbing about the high price)
Rimi di's City of Love (50 Rs). A little ashamed for not buying original.
Christopher Paolini: Brisingr (30 Rs). I had read the first two parts from Oli. We all did, I think. That was a couple of years ago, at least. I was waiting for the third part to materialise through a hand of fate. That means not buying the book, but 30 bucks is hand of fate, alright.
Nicholas Flamel: The Alchemyst. Hoping it'll be alright.
Ellis Peters: Monk's Hood. Ditto
William Hart: Culture and Civilization of Bengal (25 Rs). Hardback, with pictures, published by Mahadev Prakashan of Shahdara. I am glad about this one.
Tolkien's The Silmarilion (30 Rs). This, after the guy who sits at the junction of the left and right side of the market and who seems to know about books/ takes advantage of his prime position/ is pricey offered it to me generously for 120 bucks.

I read on the Net that the municipality occasionally conducts drives to get rid of the Sunday market. A classmate today was surprised to hear about my jaunt because apparently such a drive happened recently. I was surprised that he was ok with that. I hope the market is never driven away. Books are peace, a refuge, always, and everyone should have access to them, at whatever level of the financial ladder they are at. Also, those like me, who want to buy great books cheaply, principles be damned.
Also, books are familiar territory. But that lunch sucked, awfully. As did the overly fawning waiters and the horrible loo. Though I suppose I should be glad to have found a serviceable loo in old Delhi at all.
At the market, there was also:
Lots of P. D. James, which the boy says is good.
Salman Rushdies
Spattering of Dickens. And Villette, of all things.
No Ahmed Ali, though.
No Game of Thrones neither. Maybe it hasn't reached these nether regions.

It's Bakri (probably Bakr) Eid tomorrow. But no chhutti in office. Really.


Did I say what I bought from the Penguin sale? For me and others. Mostly for others. Here:
Dalu's books: The White Mughals and City of Djinn's (that was just the 50% discount)
Suketu Mehta's Maximum City and Complete Ruskin Bond (how boring)
Khushwant Singh's Delhi: A Novel. Yuk. Mom reading.
I wanted Chatwin's What Am I Doing Here and boy wanted Finnegans Wake. But you know how they never have the good stuff.

The Delhiwalla is a most pretentious piece of writing. I will have Daily Mail any day. Among other things, it is the same time of the year. Last year, around this time, I was starting things from scratch in this godforsaken piss of a city, working away at setting up house, quite unafraid, really, like chipping away at a massive block of stone, only to see what lies beneath, not worried about the enormity of the task.
Here's a photo from that day, taken on my phone. I was completely alone, then. But it did not seem that what emptiness there was could be filled with random people.

If sex is just sensation, there should be more pleasure in denying it, non? Or maybe I am more straitlaced than I think.
My eyes are popping out with endless work and far more from Castle marathon watching. I am desultory, sulky and depressed. It's Pujo and nobody is really whooping about it in my part of the city. And my potential mother-in-law asked why I didn't do a registry biye the next time I came, and onushthaan could happen later! Oof babare! I said no, I mean, what the! And she was even saying that they wanted grandkids. I feel like gurgling with laughter at the outrage of it. But well, no. They are kind people. Very kind. Much better than a lot of people their age. But I can't meet this demand.
I want to be er, free. I realise it involves just so much loneliness, but I still want to be free. No marriages to make to keep other people happy, no endless khushal mangals to inquire of relatives who do not excite your interest. To live anonymously. I can't see what I am going to do. He is doing so well for himself it makes no sense to even ask him to come and live here. And I don't want to live here forever and when I am ready to go elsewhere, he will probably just be settling in. He gets unsettled if he has to move. I do too, I am even now, but I still want to move.
If I were Beckett, I would have been resolute and told him a long time ago that we don't want the same things from life and let's go our ways. But I have hung on like a limpet and now it's five years and I will be obligated, even want, to marry after two years.
I still hope to have everything. And I am not a kickass person like Oli even. Nowhere near. Yet I hope to have everything.
Miserable Pujo, youalls.
On another note, much love and warmth. I miss Pujo, I miss the pandals, the hubbub, the laughter and the fatigue.

Very tired, so just facts:
Well, the woman who wanted to have the baby is having the baby. And her husband who had said he did not love her anymore (something as heartbreaking and earth shattering as that) and that he couldn't bear to stay with her, is buying her a gift and planning to buy a camera to record the baby's arrival. The typical Indian family, what joy! You will break and be finished, but you will not leave. You will spawn progeny and forever be happy and believe this is your reality, a good reality. Call upon God and believe in him. It is right out of Heart of Darkness. Its unbelievable, unending night. And we are supposedly modern, better than the generation before, with more autonomy. It seems that I am sinking, that there is no way out. Who knows if I will commit such blasphemies myself.

Ma's blood sugar is down.
My boyfriend got me the bag.
I bought two perfumes online today. One for ma.
Pujo ashchhe.
Bhishon gorom.
Ghum peyechhe. Painfully slow download speeds yesterday and day before. I watched both of Satyajit's Felu das. Ate hideous hideous chicken roll.
And strange miracles abound. Like auto appearing almost immediately after I prayed for one in tutiphata morning sun. Happened yesterday too. Jam clearing, bus stopping when it never does. Small things that well, restore faith.

This is not nostalgia

People have left Calcutta in droves. I flew the nest very late at 27. I had been frustrated and had wanted to get out for a very long time. It seemed then that staying in Calcutta was an exercise in futility, waiting for the proverbial cookie to crumble, which, of course, it never did.

But there are so many reasons why one loves home, and none of them are things that make the city absolute as a font of contentment and joy. I was humming Mohiner Ghoraguli r Shaat Tola Bari today and it came back again, as it has for the past few days. Hot summer days, the hint of spring, Jadavpur, such love that it is a physical longing to have those days in my grasp again, friends, the sun on your face in the basketball field on the engineering side, the jheel there, climbing up that windmill like thing, sitting at the foot of a tree, Oli climbing the tree, French classes, BCL, desperate tiredness, bus rides which now seem so pointless, Debasis sir, the world opening up. From the age of 18 to 22, I dare say it was the perfect place to be. Rimi di, Amlan da, Supriya di, so very kind, Queer Studies, a classmate seeking to confirm from the Sappho people very, self-consciously knowledgeably, if the first sexual experience for a homosexual was a defining moment :-)

Babu, all bird-like, even the first year of Telegraph, when so many new things seemed to be opening up, and Floppy plucked out from a heartful of sorrow that were those years.

What will it take to have that love back, the longing for University is such a yearning sometimes, for something that is perhaps not there anymore, because I am not 18.

I miss Calcutta, I wish I could go back to it with an empty page, instead of as a refuge when I am broken, beaten up by Delhi. I wish Calcutta were not such a dump professionally, that I also could take its opportunities for granted like so many in Delhi do.

Ma has 400 pp sugar. Scared.

What would it be like to never be held or made love to. I am desperately lonely and I can't imagine me a scenario where I wasn't. I am scared.

A mosquito bit me on my boob! I'm sure this is all premeditated, or maybe it just found it first, because of the bump.

The Ballad of Jack and Rose

I am quite shattered, paranoid, worried. My boyfriend told me today that he thinks the way Floppy is being brought up bothers him. For instance, that I take her with me to bed. He says he is a light sleeper (he is) and he'd never be able to sleep with her in the bed, and what'd happen when there's a kid. Now, Floppy doesn't jump around in bed once we've lain down to sleep. She stays quietly beside me in the morning until I awaken even if she's woken up herself. My boyfriend doesn't know that. But I think he doesn't want to share a bed with her anyway. I didn't know this. And I am very shocked and worried about how strongly he feels about it, how determined he is about it. I feel like I appear to be someone I know, a woman who wants to have a child even though her marriage is falling apart, because she won't be able to conceive later because of gynaecological problems: a crazy, manic woman. A colleague had recently told me he thought me crazy for attaching so much importance to animals, for thinking more of them than human beings.
I thought my boyfriend understood, I thought he knew. I am too tired to fight over this, over anything after so many years. I wish, well, I wish sometimes, now, that if this is how we are going to be - he said, with great concern, that our relationship might even end over this after we marry - I wish I could go my way, that I would not have to share my life with him.
Floppy is the dearest thing to me, one of the very dearest. She gives me love in a way few do, and I don't want to put any distance between us. I don't think I am crazy and I thought he felt the same way. But he doesn't, and I feel too old to fight.

I watched The Ballad of Jack and Rose today, and it's stayed with me through the day. And I wish, I so wish - to be loved like that, that state of innocence, and that things could always be that way. I know it can't, I don't think I even want to go through the physical living out of it, it was bad enough how dependent I was on baba and how claustrophobic it was. But this world - where you never find one whose soul is like yours and who understands you and there are no compromises to be made - I wish I didn't have to deal with it, I wish I could turn away and live like Indrani, with all my animals and their unquestioned love. And die with them.

And no, I don't want to have a kid. And I don't want to guard the marital home in one city for the rest of my life after I marry. I can't stay in one place, I am sorry. Hard as it is to stay alone, I can't live by another's rules in their house. I don't want to, I can't, I am sorry, I am sorry.

Sacred Games

I am a little in love with Sartaj Singh, much as I was a little in love with a designer in my office, and perhaps will be awhile. It's easy to fall in love with him: he is tall, and an inspector who has a heart. He even makes me like Surds.

Reading Sacred Games is a labour of love. I read through the 945-page book with care, slowly to savour in the details, wishinh I could write on the things I remark, especially the Eng Lit stuff that I have been trained to notice. That makes it such a doubly-pleasurable exercise.

The reviewer Jabberwock calls it Dickensian in the way the author balances such a huge tapestry of plot lines and also the way the city is also a character in the story. I agree.

And I love the book for much more. To sustain the reading of a book this vast needs a certain discipline, constancy, care. It is only the second novel I am reading after The Feast of The Goat, and that was a year ago. It's hard, if you feel high-strung, unhappy, despairing to sustain a read. It needs overcoming the overwhelming sadness, because reading is like adding more to yourself, and if it's a good book, it makes you happy. Which is at odds with the rest of the unhappy you.

I don't really like Ganesh Gaitonde. He is an unreliable narrator of his story because his perception is at odds with the facts narrated by other people disinterested in his fate. But it gets to you after a while, his constant self-inflation and what he things is his understanding of the universe.

I bought the book from Daryaganj. And I found just yesterday that it was missing 32 crucial pages. I was despairing a little, but Dibbo found me a soft copy. I am very happy, because it won't disrupt the thread of continuity, because I can continue this exercise in bringing together the fragments of my mind. O i sound like Ganesh Gaitonde, I know.

After this, I read City of Djinns. I have to procure it from somewhere, I hope it will be good.

Among other things, I saw the precious Koel Purie Rinchet outside the office building yesterday. She is a midget, and she looked like this sulky, surly, small thing, shorter than I thought he was. Gamine, but in a not nice way. And she is starting to look old too.

Ma keeps wanting to go back home. O ma go, ki korbo. Ma, summer ta at least paar koriye diye jao.

A sad year and a smelly dog

There is a certain symmetry to begin the blog with a photo of Bruce Chatwin and to end it with one by him. I am happy with how the blog looks now, none of the hard, definite colours there were earlier. But the vagueness, like how I want to be, and the greyness, which is what the weather makes of the environs and what the state of my mind is.
The smelly dog is F, she hasn't had a bath in a month and smells very dog-like. Kukur kukur gondho, as we say around here.
The year is indubitably sad, but is made happier and bearable by the presence of my mother and dog.
We got the AC installed today, took less time than I thought, more money than I'd hoped and messy as I expected.
Sitting at home, I am wondering whether the year MUST be so sad, whether working elsewhere was such a big thing. After all, this is Delhi, that is why one comes here: because there are options, if nothing else, in numbers that can never match your home town.
God, I do hate this city so.

But then, searching for Chatwin and Edmund White for the blog made me remember stuff I liked, of happier times, of knowing Chatwin for the first time at the BCL library, such a refuge in summers, so many hot, hot afternoons whiled away reading nothings, always things not meant for coursework. Of Oli passing on Chatwin's notebook, or was it that book of photographs off-handedly and I think I did teach myself to like a new thing, and now the picture of that door and that abandoned trailor somewhere in Latin America, or was it the Midwest, from What Am I Doing Here, brings back such warm memories, of myself. And the title, it has always echoed my state of being at so many different points in my life.
The only difference is, this torture is self-inflicted.

Apparently, celebrities are passing off manic depression as bi-polar disorder. Am I manic depressive?
And to think, I was supposed to check out all the birdwatching sites in Delhi. So many things I had meant to do here, and none is happening.

There are moments in my house in Delhi when I get a sense of home: as I walk through the small passage between the living room and the other room in the darkness, and know ma and my dog are asleep nearby.

Living on the top floor has a freedom I have never known. When I lie down on the floor and look out through the windows and see only sky, the glittering moon at night, and the pigeons flocking through at daybreak, I know no one can see me. And I feel free, almost invulnerable. I feel free in Delhi, then.

Watching House gives me strength that I wish would last. He, the people in it, shore me up to face life even when it gets so tough you think the strength is being wrung out of your muscles. I see them survive each day that is as tough as that and it gives me strength. Sadly, I don't see House before I leave for office, so by that time, all the strength has seeped away and I am left with dread at the prospect of another day of being wrung dry.
But the serial has such heart, it speaks so close to what really happens and how incredibly people find the resources to go on.

My boyfriend and I speak of marriage these days. He seems accepting of it, I have more or less accepted it. We are happy.

It has become very hot over the past few days. I will rent an AC. Someone is supposed to come over about it today.

The meat almost went bad and my dog vomited the other day. My mother says it is because of the heat. She also needs a bath, and her rabies shot.
Did I say, I was bitten by a dog right after I returned from home? I met the dog last week and went up to it. But it totally changed demeanour after it sniffed my hand. It began growling and showing its teeth and started to chase after me. I shouted and hit out with my big bag and got away, but I think it meant to have a go at me and it really shook me up.
I felt really scared then, and I felt angry that it should be this way with me, and I wished I could harm it, that it would die. I don't know why it hates me so. Also don't know why dogs here are so very violent with outsiders, considering they are well-fed etc. They aren't this way in Calcutta. I don't think I will be able to take my dog out while I am in Delhi. I dare not think of what might happen.
There is a lot of work for today, my off day. There's fish and milk to be bought, gas to be filled, my kurta brought back from the tailor's. And we also planned to go to a mall and eat out. And I haven't even begun to sleep.

Well, it's kinda long time-no see. Ma and dog are here, have I said. As are lots of mosquitoes. I am afraid it's a situation developing here with the mosquitoes. There are nights we barely sleep thanks to their numbers and coils and repellents seem to make no difference whatsoever.
Apart from that, of course, it is what I do to earn my daily bread. And earn it, I do, by God. I feel the price I pay, the toll it takes and how money is needed to keep the daily bread coming. I sense it when I go to the market twice a week, when I buy chicken for my dog every three days, and I feel it when my mother throws away vegetables that have gone bad after lying too long in the fridge.
But I can't keep doing this. I can't, please. It's too much. Earning a living can't be this bad a thing? And there is no time for anything, and I am always so exhausted, mentally and physically.
I look at people in their houses and I tell myself this is home and hearth for them, this is it, there is nothing beyond. And I feel a little surprised, since Delhi is so intrinsically a place for transit, for me. I can't imagine what it would be if this were it for me. Home is still Calcutta in such an immediate way, maybe more so because I am having such a hard time here and it's hard to want to return to something that holds no pleasant memories.

tmi

I had sex after a very long time. It was so much better than I remembered it. On the downside, no condom, so like, a wee bit worried.
the best part of days so far, ma and F are here. I am so happy, so relieved, to go to bed beside them every night, to find them when I come back home, to see them when I come back from office, to wake up with them. It seems I was getting by like a zombie so far.
And being this way is like, everything I had not meant to be. I mean, how chhaposha I am, to not be able to exist without home, city, boyfriend. In my delirium of relief, I often think I would be happy to give up everything, come home to Calcutta, marry my boyfriend and live with him. Maybe like everything else, this is me coming to what everyone else feels, like, from infancy.

I am home. I am having a bad turn at work. A rather bad one. I feel human after a very long time. And it feels stupid to stay away from here. I have no idea what I will do with my career, but what my present job demands to succeed, I don't think I am up for. I don't want to leave, I want to be able to crack this and then quit, to show myself that I could do this.
And I feel happy here. I like the weather, I like how laid-back it is, I like spotting things on the road that I can keep looking at, that don't make you want to turn your eyes away and shut your ears.
I don't know if this is the influence of my boyfriend, or the nature of the job, or whether I am getting old. I hate change, now as always. But I never expected to be stuck at a dead end in my profession twice in such a short time, I never thought I could not do something, or maybe I am just not putting myself out there because I don't care enough, and that I never did care to excel.
I have often thought of quitting work altogether, something that I would have thought blasphemous earlier. Work was identity, I was always made to understand, subliminally. It let you live, without it, you would be swatted away off this earth.
But work, as I have experienced it of late, holds no allure for me at all. I keep thinking there must be other aspects of my profession that are not as unsavoury, that are easier. Or maybe something is wrong with me, I am not smart enough to crack it. I may sub decently, but I can't come up with ideas at the drop of a hat.

Perhaps all cities are the same, in their alienation, in their devil-may-care way. Maybe no city is innately kinder than the other, but becomes that because of what we find in it. I was watching Dhobi Ghat, and there is no closure, only a sense of loss and the knowledge that something is gained. You are immeasurably sad but have learnt to live with it.

I don't know why K found it so good. I don't think it is very good, especially not once the spell is broken. And probably Aamir Khan is the weakest link. It's hard to like a character if you have to imagine him, if the actor playing it can't convince you to believe in what you see on screen. But he is so House-like in his isolation and self-sufficience. I wish I could live out my life in an open apartment and not need friends either.

Actually, on furthur thought, I find more to fault in the movie. Oi, that the real story goes untold: the suave young man 'exposed' as the rat catcher, his moment of shame. Shai's moment of shame when her friends are buying drugs from Munna's friends, Munna who is also a prostitute on the side, Aamir falling in love with a character once removed from his existence, something mirrored in all the other characters. How they come to terms, even accept the unreachability of their feelings, when Shai admits the moment between her and Munna.

A rich artist living in the heart of the old city, this is felt so fleetingly. In a friends with benefits relationship with Vatsala.

And the city. God, I think I will not take photos of poor people on principle. I will take photos of filthy rich, bogus people and make them fantastic. What is this obsession with poverty? What is poor is real? If you believe that as a given fact, how fatuous is that? "I've done the dhobis, the cobblers, the perfumers, now I will do the rat catchers."

I resist this categorisation, of 'professions of the poor' as much as the idea that if I can walk through the filth and grime one day, or several days, I will know what the "real" city is about. Isn't that a more lived experience, rather than a catalogue to be ticked off?

My schedule in Delhi: home, office, back home, Internet, watching films, sleeping late, cooking, are things you would have done in any city. But I live these days fairly intensely and the city affects them all. It affects my mood, and it's about the sense of inhabiting a city, non, rather than what you see. I could spend a year doing nothing but this and feel that I inhabited the city intensely. And I have done the cataloguing. It doesn't leave you any richer. You have to give time to the city to filter in, years and years, of walking the streets. You remember the taste of the Dilli phuchka, you observe the clothes people wear, turn away in disgust from the fancy cars, shut your ears to the cacophony of people discussing mundanities in a korkosh accent, your own interactions, utterly unspectacular, with the neighbourhood vegetable seller, the autowallah, with the swindling shopowner and know you have inhabited the city. There are no places to tick off, no things to do for that. The places you visit out of curiosity, for pleasure. Anything sieved from those journeys is incidental.

I love living alone. For the most part. Sometimes, at very brief times, I think I could do this forever and not mind it. When I did, I would just quit and go wherever I wanted.

But running low on cash now. Want more cash, and want to go home. Desperately. Please God, engineer something so I can both go to Hyd and go be with mom and F and K.

I am very sad. I had a talk with my boyfriend. It seems this distance will always be there if we are to be together. I wish I was not always held at arm's length. I wish somewhere, the boundaries would be breached.
I wish I could cry a great deal. And that this crying would bring forth a solution: you know, since I expended this much of myself, I demand something back from the cosmos.
And well, it does come down to my being asked to move back. How rich is that!
I am sad, and very very disappointed.

I am not a big fan of the Internet. I don't think it's amazing, I use it as a tool, it's easy, it works, that kind of thing. And it's also really useful, but when was that fun.
The past two days have been very solitary and I have depended on the Internet almost entirely for any sense of the world outside. Usually I talk to my boyfriend everyday, that kind of fills up my mental space.
But here's the thing: I was so totally alone (which I have been before) but it's like, y'know, the contentment lasted for way long than before. Usually, I am trying to bear up with it, and eventually it all goes pouf! and I sink into depression and fall lower and lower till I am close to losing my mind, when I pull myself up and do the next thing that my schedule demands, which always evens things out.
But today, apart from this general feeling of having kept something slightly important at bay, I was very happy. And feeling resentful at the hour I spent talking to someone on the phone yesterday night and about having to meet an old school friend tomorrow morning before going to office.
It's like I feel apathetic to any company that is not perfectly suited to my taste. I can't imagine wanting to be with anyone with whom I have to 'interact', do things with. I just want to be left alone.
It's also a little worrying. Everyone I know here socialises compulsively. I was told yesterday that if I did not get married in the next two years, I will apparently become that way too.
It's as if that is the key to survival. But well, it never was that way, was it? Having people is fun, friends egg you on to do things that left to your own devices, you delay, even fun things, because lazyness is a more delicious option.

Weird week, topped by fight with boyfriend. Maybe we are breaking up? That would completely mess me up. On the flip side, mosquitoes have appeared, I have lost one nos. t-shirt, one nos. nyakra, one undie in the storm, and a panjabi lies on the balcony of the girl below. I cooked mangsho, with ne'er a damn about how it tastes.
I loved Chungking Express, though not the first part. It seems to confirm the disquieting impression that Chinese men go into paroxysms at the slightest provocation, like happiness, arousal. But the girl, oh the girl, she was so beautiful, with her waif-like body and well, the story.
Someone in my class just got married. It has an unreal quality to it, hearing of this marriage, but it is so rigidly rooted in reality there is no way around it. Perhaps that's why he did it, so the act, the coming together of two people could in no way be denied.
But I still can't imagine doing it. Yes, the thought of it is a fond indulgence. And more than anything it fills me with sadness and worry. But it never seems to be a certainty.
Though I do want to come home. Always. And with him, I know it will never be a shutting of doors to hem me in, but then, he won't look if I walk out and never come back.
Is this how it will always be, only as good as this, and as solitary as this?

Last week, I went to Paharganj. It was lovely. The spaghetti bolognese was very nice. And the other day's sushi too.
I have cooked for a dog. I have night tomorrow. I have to iron clothes, I have lost half a bottle of shampoo to a shampoo disaster. I still haven't got leave, have to submit investment documents, get lots of fake medical bills from somewhere.

If my father could have seen me, cooking badhakopi at 3.45 in the morning, he would probably have said in disgust, erom uronchondipona keno? Sometimes, when I am washing dishes at the kitchen sink, I wonder if baba is standing behind me. And I half-believe that since I am thinking it, it must be so. And then I tell myself in despair, there is nothing beyond death. But I don't really believe that. Though it does not help, because I can't reach out beyond life.

The badhakopi refuses to get done, much like the gajorer halua. And I am not eating anything tonight, because it's too much of a hassle, plus all the cooking smells never make me feel like eating what I've just cooked. It would be lovely if I could have a mild, soft, delicious steak with potato mash. What a firingi I am talking like.

And apart from that, bad, bad day at work. Looking ahead to a day just as bad, hoping to be able to get chhuti approved, the very tiring day before yesterday, but shopping. And then a 10-hour sleep.

What would it be like to go home. I have wanted it so much that I am ragged with wanting. It is not even enjoyment, or delicious anticipation. I just want to get home and sink my head on my old, flattened pillow and go to sleep with my dog early one morning. And wake up late in the afternoon and eat lunch and fight with my mother.

One of the good things about life is there is always tomorrow. If time stopped whenever you were having a bad time, life would be very hard indeed.

I just thought of this. And I am too tired and my knees are aching and there's still bloody paneer to cook. Life sucks, I miss my dog. Buuuut, I had salmon sushi last week, veeeery nice. And nice dokra earrings at Utkalika, Orissa emporium and another dul on the street. Then cake from Wenger's. I rather like the emporiums than not, ki bolbo. But wait, Rajasthan, I will the come to you.
Puro O Champs Elysees
And I met a dog lady here. And Friendicos gari does come here. On the flip side, Delhi pet shops do not stock medicines. Tell me what else is stupid about Delhi again??
Also, I discovered all those shops selling jackets at CP that day. Kothay chhili ami jokhon sheet e kapchhilam? Oh well, late discovery. Also, I am wondering whether to bring my dog by train. Ooo First Class, amar baba o choreni, I bet.

And that brings me to baba. I think of him sometimes, like, baba ki bolbe. Ei onko ta kibhabe korte hobe baba janbe, ba, baba ke phone kore jigesh kori gaachh kata r economics ta ki. Never mind that my father and I never had a phone relationship. And definitely not a mobile phone one. My first cellphone was the one my father had bought before coming to Vellore. So ya, I miss him very much now. What I thought would not happen anymore is happening again: I keep reverting to a state of mind where I think he is around, when I am most stressed, I suppose.

At the bus stop near the Metro station nearest my house, people spit gutkha laden gobs of thuthu in great amounts. I wonder sometimes how big their mouths might be to hold that much of oi, whatever, at one go. So, everyday, I remember Ol's pishimoni telling me to never step on spit, to walk around it, never across, or over it. She said this on that day we got our Master's degree, in oi, orange robes and all that hoopla. Oli and I were there, and she took a photo of us on her mobile. I wonder where that photo is.

So well, I have a stocked fridge, except for tomatoes (roshun is 300 rs a kg, mygod, and deem, can you believe, 50 bucks a dozen) and I have hired a maid. So clean house and no clothes to wash. What else could I possibly ask for.

This is a protest post, but before I start: sheki, o ar phirbe na? How can you just bid goodbye to your life in Calcutta?

I'm fed up of this job, I haven't had sex in years, I am so unfamiliar with fun that it takes me by surprise. And for what? For what do I wind myself up so tight? From fear of losing what? Everything, everything. But what do I even have? And what would I be left with if I revolted? Dog, come back to me. In your love and mine for you, there is no distance, no restraint. All other relationships, activity are fraught.

Release me. To be myself, whatever ugliness that means, however tragic it is.

Road trippin' with my two favorite allies
Fully loaded we got snacks and supplies
It's time to leave this town
It's time to steal away
Let's go get lost
Anywhere in the USA

Let's go get lost
Let's go get lost

Blue you sit so pretty
West of the one
Sparkles light with yellow icing
Just a mirror for the sun
Just a mirror for the sun
Just a mirror for the sun

These smiling eyes are just a mirror for

So much as come before those battles lost and won
This life is shining more forever in the sun
Now let us check our heads
And let us check the surf
Staying high and dry's more trouble than it's worth
In the sun

These smiling eyes are just a mirror for

In Big Sur we take some time to linger on
We three hunky dory's got our snakefinger on
Now let us drink the stars
It's time to steal away
Let's go get lost
Right here in the USA

Let's go get lost
Let's go get lost

Blue you sit so pretty
West of the one
Sparkles light with yellow icing
Just a mirror for the sun
Just a mirror for the sun
Just a mirror for the sun

These smiling eyes are just a mirror for

It's very cold in Delhi these days. It's that kind of cold where I no longer register needs like hunger, the need to pee, the need to bathe (which was never very strong, anyway). I concentrate on trying to keep warm and on sleeping. No amount of time seems enough to asleep. I spend about an hour trying to fall asleep, to discover at some point that I had been gritting my teeth against the cold. Feet refuse to get warm. It's like it would be during the trek.
I wake up all warm and toasty and it seems like the biggest injustice to have to leave the bed and get ready for office. That's all I do in the morning, really. Make tea, warm lunch, potty, shovel food down my throat, get ready and run.
I have taken to eating with a spoon and out of the bowl I boil rice in. Hand feels frozen if you eat with it, plus one utensil less.
I bought a jacket from Sarojini market today. I'm wearing it now. I feel like Sajid in East in East. He would always wear a parka, and at the end of the film, he got circumcised.
I saw Persepolis over the last two days. I liked it more than I liked the book, which I also liked. It would probably find an echo with anyone who feels exiled and unable to return. La liberte a un prix, it ends with. Truer words never said, etc.
I was also watching Black Swan, the whole of which I couldn't watch, for faulty download reasons. Trying to see whether the whole film could be seen somehow, I watched one-third of the film thrice. I liked it each time. I loved the music. It's haunting and it mirrors Natalie Portman's character, Nina's thoughts. She acts very well, I think. Or maybe, all lonely women answer a chord these days.
I went to Khan Market today. No one told me that besides housing all kinds of brands, it was also a rather quaint place. And Big Chill, for all the blowsiness it suggests, is like that too. Of course, it's also expensive. I disliked Dilli Haat quite thoroughly and felt very at home at Sarojini market. But that was after I found the jacket, which I was looking a little desperately for. But then I went into this part of the market that sells vegetables and fruits. I like that section. a fruit seller there has made a little space beneath the brick surface he sells his wares from. It's a small space, exactly right for a dog to fit. There's a gunny bag and some straw there. The dog in question was a black one, sitting straight. He was very soft, ami aador korechhi. He also ran away with a tupi someone handed him and the small boys selling stuff there played a game of chase with him. He knew it was a game and he adroitly sidestepped the boys several times. :-)
I felt at home there. I wish I were living in south Delhi.
And company definitely makes venturing out easier.

I wish the boy were here. I miss him on, well, certain days.
There's a flurry of marriages all around. Again. I wish I were settled too, sometime. In every which way. I wish F were with me. I wish my dog were with me. I wish she were with me.
A colleague said while we were coming back a few days ago: 'I had many dreams once, but I want now is to be back home.' He is from another city. He doesn't like delhi either. he's lived here for three years. how can he live with such longing for three years? i blabbered a little. i said, i think at home, i'll be the least unhappy. he agreed. who knows if he was telling me the truth.