Please, please, can I quit? Please can I give in and embrace the pleasant aftertaste of melancholy? It does not hurt, only induces mild longing for what might have been. A pleasant hate for what was taken away. You can hate in peace, without hurting, having relinquished the imperative to be happy. That you wouldn't have to work so bloody hard to be happy, that you could just let go.
I came upon Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road yesterday. You know what I am saying, don't you? The book is easier than the film, it spells out the despair, the sense of doom, and when death comes, it spells out that too, I suppose. Help me, God. I want to give the boot to my present life and find something new. But I am so scared that I will find I am not special after all, that I have no wings, that I need to be rooted in one place for any amount of sanity, all while I'm dying in misery misery, all-consuming, sense-obliterating misery.

Thirty-four years in thirty-four weeks. God, what a fucking co-incidence. I will perhaps go back to journalisme. Je suis journaliste. Je travaille a ----. Je traverse tout le monde. Je n'ai pas des amis. Je ne mort pas. Oh God, please let me die. Quietly, painlessly, I am fed up of being torn apart, fed up, so fed up. Of the fear, the pain, the ground falling away beneath your feet, repeatedly, repeatedly, no music in your ears, the world like lead on your shoulders. And even then, the longing for one. I don't want to be optimistic, I don't want to relentlessly chase happiness. I want to sulk, I want to hate. And I want someone to pull me out of it, to force me to look at the sunlight even though I turn my face away. I want to be free to hate, to despair, while the world is still there for me with its possibilities. I don't want to court the world, I don't want to court people to bestow favours and kindness on me.

OB Tampons are the most pretentious things. There is only this sad loser of a brand available in Delhi, and they are rather expensive as tampons go. I miss my good ol' local brand, manufactured at Colootola Lane, very much indeed. But haven't been home in a while. In moments of fancy, I imagine asking someone to courier a stashload to me, but then, who to ask. Also, what if it gets wet?

I had sushi with folks last week. I hope to do it again tomorrow. I feel ambivalent about the weekend, glad  to have a couple of days to myself, but then the shit lurks just beneath the surface, and there's more time to make kashundi of it.

I watched Wake up Sid, all at one go, yesterday. Mane, really stupid and crazy on a workday. But it kind of holds you on, you can't let go. Konkona Sen Sharma is this unbelievably zen mohila who takes all sorts of shit with a smile, no rough edges, always holding it together. But despite Ranbir Kapoor's duh-ness, he does convey, and rather well, the immense openness that his character Sid is. Such openness, to embrace the world with all the shit it will give him, and still he would love it. It would be lovely to love such a person, to be young with him. The film has several cliches, but it also channels the wonder of Bombay. I mean, it is how I imagine it to be: a city where you could do anything. And she puts it so precisely when he asks her what she'd come to Bombay for: to be independent. It's why I came to Delhi, not to scale career heights, but so I could live a little: so that both the good and the bad would be mine: I would be responsible for it all, with no one to blame or to be  grateful to. Make your own money and spend it too, and not be answerable to anybody.

I am trying to get That Girl in Yellow Boots and Hugo. I considered Daniel Craig and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but I don't think it's worth the trouble. I do like the Swedish version. And reading Maximum City. Non-fiction has this calming effect, it holds true even when shit's flying around the house. Especially so, I think.

You pretty boy. You pretty, pretty, pretty boy. I am swinging between vellahood and utter despair. O says being this way is normal. That neurosis is fine. But I would like to be more stable, more disciplined in my emotions. I am trying to ignore the matter as if it does not exist. I have done the other things I usually do in the day. And written and messaged her when I could not do it anymore. I just wrote a mail to her. I am horrified by what I think I have done. But I am holding my peace now. I read a blog of a former classmate. Some of it was so beautiful and calming, I remembered the calmness of Eliot's Rhapsodies. This was triggered off by an interview of Laurie where he talks about working with Fry. He was beautiful and I felt so helpless then, because I always related them. So beautiful, so beautiful, and I seem to have tarnished it all. I wondered what nervous breakdown was and stealthily looked it up at work today. And found that as definitions go, I am far from it. Which is good, yes. If I could not laugh and do other things, I don't know what I would do. Why have the years passed, God? Why am I 28? Time was I would write to you in my diary and do sums with baba somewhere in our house, gulping down the inexplicable pain of an unrequited crush. And you helped then. You do, even now. In far greater measure than I ever deserve. Have I made three old people very unhappy? Have I broken the hearts of two of them by my thoughtlessness? But you know it was not all that. You know I felt harrassed, I wanted to escape. I didn't want to say harsh things to their face.
Be kind, dear God, be kind, again and again and again.

The summer is upon us, again. F has grown quite fat, worryingly, and my mother hasn't a clue of what's going on in my head. Yesterday night, gasping in pain and fear, I told F that I couldn't believe what was happening. She stared up at me with round eyes, but stayed by me through most of the night. O says it's good they are here, because one tends to obsess. I guess that is true. I can't give vent to my ugly grief when she is around and I whisper to F in darkness at night and in the morning after I wake up. Eventually, very soon, it subsides, and I start the day. I won't let them go right away now. I can't do this alone. I will go mad. I will take them home when the upheaval has quietened, when a plane has been reached.

I swing wildly between such divergent feelings. I know that technically I am free, but it doesn't seem to bring joy though I know it's a good thing.

Chatwin's photo on the header is very reassuring. And ya, another sad year.

I hope what Angshu said once, so very long ago, remains true. That I can find that energy and optimism of 2007. But such a long time has passed, I am a very different person, is there that me anymore? People do change, don't they? And ultimately, people, men, are always disappointing. And time, time, it do catch up to tell you that dreams are finite, that it's timeover eventually. It's not an infinite time for yellow sunlight filled with hopes. And then there's own crippling character, along with its flaws, to deal with.