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.