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.

theoutsider

From an even longer time ago.

right. I've scouted blogosphere quite thoroughly (my purview of it, anyway), I have a deadline to meet by 10a.m. tommorow (an article I haven't thought anything about), amar pithe jhijhi dhore gachhe, so I am just in the mood for a post. Why is it that you get this critical urge to blog just when you should not be doing it?Dunno. Who cares. I spoke to this rather famous bangali shahittik today who turned out to be full of himself. Sigh, a chink in every armour, I guess. No one's perfect. Didn't get through to this other famous director, 'not easily accesible', my superior said. Which translates into "will play song from 'Guide' at you; will then switch off phone just when you've started getting your hopes high that u've tracked down the elusive guy after all. (And all that after you've chewed off your nails in apprehension thinking that you'll forget to ask ethng u meant to ask if he picked up the phn so why call him anyway)
Well, a day, a day. no probs. okey-dokey.
Got to read about 4 lines of chatwin's songlines today. wow, great. if that's how life's gonna be as a scribe, I can forget ever sitting down to read anything ever. All I'll be doing is researching stuff on google for absurdities to shore up my art.s with. I am afraid I'll even forget to miss JU.
Oh JU. I love you so much. Haven for misfits is so right. And it also gives you a kind of pleasure to see all the straitlaced ones who give you such hell in their kind of environments getting to see the other side of the coin. But it's sad really. Coz JU really takes everybody in and makes it a kind of home. All it asks for is a kind of basic honesty to yourself. I didn't give it all of mine. That's the only pity. And quietly, the biggest one. Coz it's just my size.
And another reason to crib. I haven't got anti-spam thng. on my comp. So keep getting these 'Crazy Girls' adverts. i am sick to death of seeing immense boobs. Really.
Have an interview where, a friend tells me, I'll be asked strange ques.s.

From a long time ago.

I have now become greatly a part of the consumerist horde. I watched hours of television today, will go and buy clothes a few days later, having bought clothes a few days back.
I also watched Khela, like every self-respecting bangali worth his aantel soul. It was very good, by the way. It was a film about a film shoot, right, and for the first time, probably, I wished I could do something like that, be a part of a shoot, I mean, it was a glimpse into a world, like, and I liked it. The vivacity, fluidity, etc etc. I would be glad if I could work in some capacity on this director’s set. Just wishing, mane who knows, he might be a gorgon, for all I know.
And I also wanted to say that I like this song: Ha rehum, I think, from the film Aamir. They were showing it on television today. I dislike the hero’s voice, and I didn’t care to watch the film. It might be good, etc, but I am not obligated to watch it, am I? I did watch Hum Tum, parts of it, hee hee, and liked bits. Very overstressed, and Rani Mukherjee wears hideous make up ALL the time, and looks like a martyr, but there’s this Punjabi MC version of the Hum Tum song I always liked. Well, this is all about popular culture and I am getting a humongous dose of that for now. I also think Akshay Kumar is a good actor, by the way, and that Bhool Bhulaiya is a fine film in parts. Saw Road to Perdition too, which I didn’t like. I had forgotten it was by Sam Mendes, a pointless film it was. And I liked the kid Mike so much too. But then, oh whatever.


The real reason for writing here after such a long while:
I was watching a piece on Nat Geo about this area in ?? where the brown bear lives. It is a cousin of the short faced bear that went extinct when temperatures started cooling. These bears thrive on the shorteye salmon (the salmon is the life blood of the entire ecosystem of the area). These salmon (and we’ve heard this story before) travel upto 60,000 miles in their lifetime. They are born in the river in this area, and soon after, head out to sea. They travel up to?? And then swim back to return where they were born,to breed. They travel upstream, in the face of really fast currents, and they are so frenzied by then, they can’t even stop to eat. It is during this return journey that the bears lie in wait for them, snapping them up as the fish launch themselves against the current. By the time they arrive, they are completely sapped of energy. The silver green salmon turn a bright red. They lay their eggs, fertilized by the male fish, and then they die.
Nature generally has it figured right, don’t you think? I think of the Aborigines, who go walkabout, and well, Chatwin who spoke of the instinctive need for mobility which, under the urge to be settled, you ignore. The fish have it figured, don’t they? They are born, and as soon as they are able, they set out. They travel the world, and then they return, home. There is a sense of rootedness, it is so beautiful, so beautiful. I wish I were like the salmon, that thought were given over to instinct, always correct, always homing to where you wanted to be, without even knowing.
To turn red like the salmon, and to die…. I think I love the world so much…

I don't like my phone, that is the truth.


Chosen very carefully for its utility: 5 megapixel camera and high battery life, I think it's graphics are ugly, as is true of so many Samsung phones. I love the gift, but the looks are, eugh!
On another note: make-up! Don't buy! I!

Oli's (original post here: http://www.arcche.blogspot.com/2011/09/normal-0-false-false-false-en-gb-x-none.html)

Prayer for travelling people

If it is evening when they set out,

collect them into the last light

and make it dawn for them.

If someone kissed them

goodbye, let them both remember.

Give them fewer waits at airports

or train stations or bus stops

or rickshaw-stands. Mostly,

give them breath to walk

far and wide and with

clouds catching their eyes.

Keep them warm.

Give them silence if they

are happy. Give them

conversation if they are

in themselves alone

and thinking not just of

passing from place to

place but of passing the

very world by.

Bring to them the

kindness of strangers.

Fill their eyes.

Let there be someone,

when they arrive, to

bring them home.

Is marriage bred out of tiredness? I saw Little Children today and it touched and built up to a crescendo in the end and I longed for a similar plenitude of drama in my life. And the music in the end was beautiful, quite. And I read the last part of the Eragon trilogy a few days ago and I’ve been meaning to write about it, because it struck me so hard in the way pleasure, fun, enjoyment becomes more and more rarefied until it is completely banished from the psychological landscape of the book. Eragon, along with all the major characters in the book, except Roran, follow the path of duty, without any sense of doubt or beyond a longing for what they leave behind. It struck me as so very curious, in that it’s written by a guy who’s barely out of his 20s himself and he’s writing fantasy, right, which is, after all, wish fulfilment. And though I found it very disturbing when I read it, I recognise it as the same satisfaction one gets when I work when I want to do fun things, because it means not having the sick feeling one gets when the weekend is at an end and there’s tonnes of work to finish.

I am considering making this a private blog.

The plumber told me on the naked terrace yesterday, while I looked around for the first time at the crumbling concrete vista below, that marriage, money and something else only comes to those who are fated to have them. Going by how people marry here in the same way that bunnies mate (no idea if they do, really. The bunnies, i.e. The people definitely marry voraciously), you would think it would need a hand of fate to not marry. But it's something to think about. Very scary, the thought of spending the long, long years alone, or making them a blur that does not matter. What if, though? I thought while returning home today that it would be comfortable to be married. To sign a document and that would guarantee extra closeness and fewer questions asked. But that doesn't really happen. And I would be happy to marry, but not to stay in Calcutta for it. Right now, I'm getting the feeling that I am done with Delhi. I would like to go live in Bombay. But that would be another upheaval, perhaps a furthur moving away from the boy. Maybe the money won't be enough to support two people and a dog as comfortably as I can now. It would be so nice if he and I could go live in Bombay, but that I suppose is not to be. Nothing else but living till eternity in the city of my birth can be accomplished with ease.

Meanwhile, the real winter is happening, finally. Gah!

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.