The most beautiful thing
Faye Wong in Chunking Express
Bad English is my birthright
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Winter is coming. It feels as ugly and portentous as the way they say it in Winterfell. The last few days have been a blur, a bit of work and coming back home late with the cold on my back, walking down a rather deserted road to Basat Chowki to take the shared auto home. A fair bit of walking, including the walk home from NH24. I can't understand what to do about the travel thing right now. Post-Nov, maybe it will be clearer. Among other reasons, it is such a relief when the salary comes in at the end of the month, it's like one worry set at rest: without even beginning to think of buying camera and where will the money to travel over a long stretch come from.
Cold is bad because it is mind-congealing; it's hard to hold more than one thought at a time, hard to think beyond getting to office, getting work done, how to keep from getting cold, whether to wear socks, whether to take hoodie or stole, how not to catch cold - getting fed up of trying not to catch cold and saying what-the-hell, bring on the Avil 50 and trip to la-la land. One thought at a time is a welcome thing when you are travelling; it keeps one from getting depressed, but here, in the city, if you can't multitask, you are asking for annihilation. (Professor Shonku invented a weapon called Annihilin). I can't think adventurously in winter; I am barely thinking enough to keep my life up and running: buy medicines, do groceries, remember to buy chocolate, 'should I have cake or sweets or both?' The balcony door is closed to keep out the cold and mosquitoes; আমার মনের জানলাও প্রায় বন্ধ।
The Sharodiyas are here: Sananda and Desh for us, for now. I like what Tilottama Majumdar has written for both. Quite a nice break from the odious writing on 'women's issues' that would keep appearing in the Sharodiyas. বাণী বসু তো ওই করেই ভোগে গেল। And Sunil Ganguli is dead, purveyor of titillation and decadent possibilities, and sometimes, just lovely writing. Also Jaspal Bhatti. The world is changing, changing. My cousin has had himself a daughter, and I am loathe to call and congratulate them and be over the moon on the phone. It's embarrassing, among other things.
During Pujo, I went to listen to a Chandrabindu (Vikram had once spoken of a shoot he had to do with 'those Chandrabindu guys' :)) concert. Puro buk hu hu kara nostalgia. Took me a couple of days to get back on my feet, so to speak, and remember, and remember well, why Kolkata is not a place to live in anymore. But ki sexy, ki unmadona, such allure of youth, and remembrance of a city that is probably only in the mind anymore. This Pujo was my most wholesome in years. I had so wanted to do what everybody does, for such a long time: count down the pandals, offer onjoli, listen to 'function' in the evening, eat at the stalls, and to not leave behind a sad person who wanted but couldn't do it. We did all of that this time: on two days too, and got mighty pooped. I realised again, my limited appetite for this sort of thing. I can't do it dedicatedly and methodically through 5 days, after a point, you want to just go home and relax, and that I loathe onjoli. The utter pointlessness of it, I dunno. But the bhog was yum, even line e dariye bhog neowa. I haven't seen it in Kolkata ever, that anyone can come in and have bhog at any pandal. As was getting dressed and going out, and the Anandamela at CR Park, where I ate patishapta and bad pulipithey (really bad) and gokulpithey and aro ki ki shob. F cried the whole time, I think, the day we went out twice, and I got a call from our downstairs neighbour while we were at the C'bindu concert that she had been howling constantly and could we please come.
Her eye has been watering and closed this whole week, we are taking her to the vet tomorrow. Could be a fungal infection, Mrs Katiyal says.
All of this to hide that he is married or going to marry and I don't understand or know what to do with the hurt and the rage and the praner jala and I feel physically repulsed by R, yet wish I could wrap myself in someone's arms and say 'Fuck you, chutiye.' I wonder if I am stupid in my worldly unwiseness, if I should have married when I had the chance, yet what chance, if someone makes you feel stood apart and lonely, and disappoints you at every turn, you are also waiting and hoping, no, je ekdin amar bhaggeo shikey chhirbe? Jedin shob nodi mitbey shagorey, shob shomoshhar shomadhan hobe, shedin ami tomay biye kore nebo. But people are what they are, and if you can't live them down today, you never will tomorrow. Otoeb, gechhe, apod chukechhe.'
During Pujo, I went to listen to a Chandrabindu (Vikram had once spoken of a shoot he had to do with 'those Chandrabindu guys' :)) concert. Puro buk hu hu kara nostalgia. Took me a couple of days to get back on my feet, so to speak, and remember, and remember well, why Kolkata is not a place to live in anymore. But ki sexy, ki unmadona, such allure of youth, and remembrance of a city that is probably only in the mind anymore. This Pujo was my most wholesome in years. I had so wanted to do what everybody does, for such a long time: count down the pandals, offer onjoli, listen to 'function' in the evening, eat at the stalls, and to not leave behind a sad person who wanted but couldn't do it. We did all of that this time: on two days too, and got mighty pooped. I realised again, my limited appetite for this sort of thing. I can't do it dedicatedly and methodically through 5 days, after a point, you want to just go home and relax, and that I loathe onjoli. The utter pointlessness of it, I dunno. But the bhog was yum, even line e dariye bhog neowa. I haven't seen it in Kolkata ever, that anyone can come in and have bhog at any pandal. As was getting dressed and going out, and the Anandamela at CR Park, where I ate patishapta and bad pulipithey (really bad) and gokulpithey and aro ki ki shob. F cried the whole time, I think, the day we went out twice, and I got a call from our downstairs neighbour while we were at the C'bindu concert that she had been howling constantly and could we please come.
Her eye has been watering and closed this whole week, we are taking her to the vet tomorrow. Could be a fungal infection, Mrs Katiyal says.
All of this to hide that he is married or going to marry and I don't understand or know what to do with the hurt and the rage and the praner jala and I feel physically repulsed by R, yet wish I could wrap myself in someone's arms and say 'Fuck you, chutiye.' I wonder if I am stupid in my worldly unwiseness, if I should have married when I had the chance, yet what chance, if someone makes you feel stood apart and lonely, and disappoints you at every turn, you are also waiting and hoping, no, je ekdin amar bhaggeo shikey chhirbe? Jedin shob nodi mitbey shagorey, shob shomoshhar shomadhan hobe, shedin ami tomay biye kore nebo. But people are what they are, and if you can't live them down today, you never will tomorrow. Otoeb, gechhe, apod chukechhe.'
It just brings you closer to the person you really are. I would probably never have married at 30 anyway. If ever.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Incredibly old songs playing on the radio. It's 11.30 at night. Ma casually mentioned Shamshad Begum was one, while I was marvelling. The house is suddenly filled with music. There is an ease to living that wasn't there when I was growing up. Freed from the strictures of baba, we have both learned to breathe. Now, ma is cooking chilli fish.
I have my very own sari to wear this Pujo. Ma has the lemon yelloe tussar from Kerala and the south cotton purple and green sari.
I ate bad momos, and followed it up with thin crust chicken pizza (small) for dinner and guzzling RC Cola (lemon) to cool off. The grotesqueness of this gluttony appalls me, but tastewise, the pizza was yum! Scorpio Cafe is a wonderful institution. Only if you don't have their chicken club sandwich.
Winter is coming early this year. It's already cool, though I am determined to wear my sleeveless jama kapor one last time before putting them away. In Kolkata, it's still steaming, says C.
F shredded and ate a half-smoked cigarette yesterday and mysteriously developed a watering and droopy right eye. We are a little concerned, after all, dogs aren't supposed to eat cigarettes, though the eye's mostly back to normal.
I am reading Rimi di's City of Love. I rather like it than not, never mind what Adi of words uttered in haste said. I love his blog. He reads like he's high, compulsively, slightly unhealthily. What he reviews is completely different from what I read, though I read very little, but there is a certain pleasure in seeing this evidence of an act of pleasure performed so compulsively. Dunno why it seems this way. I've read other blogs where people read and review as copiously.
These are the tangible things in days that are otherwise floating away aimlessly. There is no point to them, no centre. I go through a dazed struggle to concentrate on something. This is good enough reason to leave, I believe. It's only a matter of time. Not sure how well it will reflect on my career. But 'ah, well' is what I have to say to that. What else is there to say. I could cut through all things important but unnecessary for my present purpose and there would still be a fair bit left to settle, which I shall probably leave as they are. I do so yearn to start travelling. I mean, just the terrific ichhe, not including the planning, on which a lot is yet to be done.
Primary train tickets to book, talk to more people, thrash around the idea of an outer end in the form of a return ticket (no need, I think), draw up a daywise itinerary (I realised today that I would have to by-heart it, imagine the tedium. But I can do such stuff, I've seen, so snigger snigger.), do some bookings or at least talk at the places I plan to stay in in Gujarat (it's going to be full-on tourist season), go out and buy that camera, talk to Sudeb da about a rucksack (wish I could just borrow one and save myself 3k. Or maybe get given one, like the sleeping bag.) I am wondering how I will cart around my giant laptop, and take some kind of a computer I certainly want to. Wondering whether I should buy an external hark disk (prices have come down, for one). Wish, again, that someone would give me a Netbook.
Stupid girl, stupid castles in the air. Oof.
I've decided that my sports shoes serve my needs just fine, the beginnings of a crack in the sole notwithstanding. If they tear irrepaireably, new ones will just have to be bought on the way.
Anyway, today I succeeded just a little in getting stuff done. Sent off several difficult-to-write mails. More of that left. Content work still pending, lots of it, but I've begun engaging with the content and enjoying it. There's a meeting tomorrow and I should have drawn up a P&L for it, but I haven't.
Other tasks I am dreading: speaking to the lawyer (have no strategy for that yet), calculating, taking my share of the money and paying off the joint electricity bill for our and the flat below. It's not even the 20th, and I already keep wondering when next month's salary will be credited, and then immediately think of the rent that will be debited immediately afterward. My bank balance really took a snowdive after that first Ladakh trip. Official costs and kenakata included, I must have spent more than 50k.
I am wondering what they'll give us for Diwali.
So, you would think my life is in a shambles. But then, it's my life. I can't denounce it. I have to look forward or else it'll all come tumbling down.
I have my very own sari to wear this Pujo. Ma has the lemon yelloe tussar from Kerala and the south cotton purple and green sari.
I ate bad momos, and followed it up with thin crust chicken pizza (small) for dinner and guzzling RC Cola (lemon) to cool off. The grotesqueness of this gluttony appalls me, but tastewise, the pizza was yum! Scorpio Cafe is a wonderful institution. Only if you don't have their chicken club sandwich.
Winter is coming early this year. It's already cool, though I am determined to wear my sleeveless jama kapor one last time before putting them away. In Kolkata, it's still steaming, says C.
F shredded and ate a half-smoked cigarette yesterday and mysteriously developed a watering and droopy right eye. We are a little concerned, after all, dogs aren't supposed to eat cigarettes, though the eye's mostly back to normal.
I am reading Rimi di's City of Love. I rather like it than not, never mind what Adi of words uttered in haste said. I love his blog. He reads like he's high, compulsively, slightly unhealthily. What he reviews is completely different from what I read, though I read very little, but there is a certain pleasure in seeing this evidence of an act of pleasure performed so compulsively. Dunno why it seems this way. I've read other blogs where people read and review as copiously.
These are the tangible things in days that are otherwise floating away aimlessly. There is no point to them, no centre. I go through a dazed struggle to concentrate on something. This is good enough reason to leave, I believe. It's only a matter of time. Not sure how well it will reflect on my career. But 'ah, well' is what I have to say to that. What else is there to say. I could cut through all things important but unnecessary for my present purpose and there would still be a fair bit left to settle, which I shall probably leave as they are. I do so yearn to start travelling. I mean, just the terrific ichhe, not including the planning, on which a lot is yet to be done.
Primary train tickets to book, talk to more people, thrash around the idea of an outer end in the form of a return ticket (no need, I think), draw up a daywise itinerary (I realised today that I would have to by-heart it, imagine the tedium. But I can do such stuff, I've seen, so snigger snigger.), do some bookings or at least talk at the places I plan to stay in in Gujarat (it's going to be full-on tourist season), go out and buy that camera, talk to Sudeb da about a rucksack (wish I could just borrow one and save myself 3k. Or maybe get given one, like the sleeping bag.) I am wondering how I will cart around my giant laptop, and take some kind of a computer I certainly want to. Wondering whether I should buy an external hark disk (prices have come down, for one). Wish, again, that someone would give me a Netbook.
Stupid girl, stupid castles in the air. Oof.
I've decided that my sports shoes serve my needs just fine, the beginnings of a crack in the sole notwithstanding. If they tear irrepaireably, new ones will just have to be bought on the way.
Anyway, today I succeeded just a little in getting stuff done. Sent off several difficult-to-write mails. More of that left. Content work still pending, lots of it, but I've begun engaging with the content and enjoying it. There's a meeting tomorrow and I should have drawn up a P&L for it, but I haven't.
Other tasks I am dreading: speaking to the lawyer (have no strategy for that yet), calculating, taking my share of the money and paying off the joint electricity bill for our and the flat below. It's not even the 20th, and I already keep wondering when next month's salary will be credited, and then immediately think of the rent that will be debited immediately afterward. My bank balance really took a snowdive after that first Ladakh trip. Official costs and kenakata included, I must have spent more than 50k.
I am wondering what they'll give us for Diwali.
So, you would think my life is in a shambles. But then, it's my life. I can't denounce it. I have to look forward or else it'll all come tumbling down.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Turns out, you can go to the salt pans of Kutch alone, if you can spend some money for it. Full moon has to be figured out, though. But I am missing the sex occasionally, but also being somewhat revolted at the prospect of the person I want to have it with.
Read a lot on Gujarat this week, because I realised I have stayed totally vague about the details of the proposed trip after deciding broadly on the places. Got a few basic maps off the Net I can print out. Found out about a government guest house and a camp for Little Rann. Devjibhai Dhamecha remains a very real option. But they have to be called and spoken to. And I can't say definitively about the timings yet. The Rajasthan itinerary is starting to sound vague in comparison. Shekhawati seems a glorious idea, now that I've started reading up about it. I wish I could find a travel companion(s), but I am not sure whether I am definitively travelling alone or not. If I did, I would start looking around.
Meanwhile, I am bored out of my mind. Or I am telling myself that this feeling, this torpor of being stuck-in-a-moment-and-can't-get-out is boredom. The work is brain-congealing now that I am back in D, winter is starting to make its presence felt; you sweat and feel chilled at the same time. It is disgusting. Of course, the winter by itself is disgusting too. The zenith would be spending a few mind-barfingly tepid weeks in the winter no man's land of Calcutta. I dread the prospect. I hope not to sink into lyad again, and instead do my work and get the hell out. In Delhi, I suppose I will be so anxious to get out of the cold and loneliness, I won't be able to sink into lyad again. This feeling of dying every moment is so intense now that I have quit worrying about money. I will take what I get my hands on, and stop when panic sets in.
Next week is Pujo. I have decided to don my kasavu sari and fire-red MAC lipstick and check out CR Park with ma. Another day, we will go see the pujos in Mayur Vihar Phase I, and offer anjali. The works, mamah! I wish F could come along too. But how do I make life beyond the normal for her, except by maybe celebrating her birthday, which happened around this time, in the same spirit?
After that is over, hopefully, freedom. In between, I want to slip away to Jaipur for a weekend. Because I want to go somewhere, and also partly to see whether my plan would work, how I feel about things.
There's a rucksack to be bought in Calcutta, money and photos to recover; a camera to be bought in Delhi. Meanwhile, the money keeps flowing out of my hand.
Met a school friend twice over last week. I am, as she put it indelicately with unconscious candour, her 'new best friend', because she is chronically unable to stay alone and her husband has gone off to study and she isn't getting leave for an uncertain while. Ergo, she will hang out with whoever lives in her current part of the city. Earlier, it was other people, now. it's me. I admit that I mind. Despite pleasant hours spent and my reasons being similar, I do want the enjoyment to be genuine and mutual. Yesterday was a little less fun (I do loathe walking around malls and my knees start to hurt real soon) and I wonder when I'll meet her again.
I have been shouting wilfully at ma. I love hanging around F, and wonder how I will get along without her. But not for too long, fo sho'. I am not living here, in the cruel badlands of D, alone.
Read a lot on Gujarat this week, because I realised I have stayed totally vague about the details of the proposed trip after deciding broadly on the places. Got a few basic maps off the Net I can print out. Found out about a government guest house and a camp for Little Rann. Devjibhai Dhamecha remains a very real option. But they have to be called and spoken to. And I can't say definitively about the timings yet. The Rajasthan itinerary is starting to sound vague in comparison. Shekhawati seems a glorious idea, now that I've started reading up about it. I wish I could find a travel companion(s), but I am not sure whether I am definitively travelling alone or not. If I did, I would start looking around.
Meanwhile, I am bored out of my mind. Or I am telling myself that this feeling, this torpor of being stuck-in-a-moment-and-can't-get-out is boredom. The work is brain-congealing now that I am back in D, winter is starting to make its presence felt; you sweat and feel chilled at the same time. It is disgusting. Of course, the winter by itself is disgusting too. The zenith would be spending a few mind-barfingly tepid weeks in the winter no man's land of Calcutta. I dread the prospect. I hope not to sink into lyad again, and instead do my work and get the hell out. In Delhi, I suppose I will be so anxious to get out of the cold and loneliness, I won't be able to sink into lyad again. This feeling of dying every moment is so intense now that I have quit worrying about money. I will take what I get my hands on, and stop when panic sets in.
Next week is Pujo. I have decided to don my kasavu sari and fire-red MAC lipstick and check out CR Park with ma. Another day, we will go see the pujos in Mayur Vihar Phase I, and offer anjali. The works, mamah! I wish F could come along too. But how do I make life beyond the normal for her, except by maybe celebrating her birthday, which happened around this time, in the same spirit?
After that is over, hopefully, freedom. In between, I want to slip away to Jaipur for a weekend. Because I want to go somewhere, and also partly to see whether my plan would work, how I feel about things.
There's a rucksack to be bought in Calcutta, money and photos to recover; a camera to be bought in Delhi. Meanwhile, the money keeps flowing out of my hand.
Met a school friend twice over last week. I am, as she put it indelicately with unconscious candour, her 'new best friend', because she is chronically unable to stay alone and her husband has gone off to study and she isn't getting leave for an uncertain while. Ergo, she will hang out with whoever lives in her current part of the city. Earlier, it was other people, now. it's me. I admit that I mind. Despite pleasant hours spent and my reasons being similar, I do want the enjoyment to be genuine and mutual. Yesterday was a little less fun (I do loathe walking around malls and my knees start to hurt real soon) and I wonder when I'll meet her again.
I have been shouting wilfully at ma. I love hanging around F, and wonder how I will get along without her. But not for too long, fo sho'. I am not living here, in the cruel badlands of D, alone.
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