It's seems such a long while since i had a holiday. You have to discover anew what a day off means. Well, i was thinking about l'homme de bureau (shall be referred to as such henceforth). My painful encounters with the opposite sex, must they always be as such? I mean there's something wrong in my head. I am waiting to back out given the slightest opportunity, waiting to be assured of the worst that people can think of me. Work, that's in a different league of its won. Now i don't care. When it does, I'll write about it. Right now, I am struggling to hold up my end of it. Little kid S seems to be a relentless relieving factor in this chaos. But everything reaches a plateau, then they change. Something like that will eventually happen, then we'll see where we go. Met P yesterday, was rather a pleasure. She told me about the guy she was going out with.

After such a long time of work (6 days, I don't mean the hours), when you sit down to write, all you want to gratefully handle are daily mundanities, the flow of life. Anything more profound, or structured (copy: trash dished out decently) gets on to stretched mental resources. It's not quite so bad, but a change of mode does one a lot of good, and one day is hardly enough for that. You only begin to gauge the difference from the workday, and the break comes to an end. God knows hoe S works, coming in 7 days a week, how does he recharge, on the run? I want to have some nice hours with K, hours which shall be pleasant for me, without having to be on your toes trying to be presentable, or whatever we are always trying to be in office- perpetually equable, I suppose. He is like that, but he can guard his selfness closely, without letting it be violated in any way. Or so I surmised. I may be wrong, as C says so glibly.
Well, A's sis had reception. A marathon thing, really. By today, I was ready to go back to the normal pace of things. I bought a lip-gloss (what fun!) and A seemed inordinately pleased about it. O is working, C landed up alone at reception today, but msg.ed in the end that he had a nice time. I guess we can't help but make things tolerable, and even interesting for ourselves in the end. I was going to meet another person off Orkut, but think shall not after seeing hideus photograph. Still to scarred by previous experience of hideous ugliness that couldn't stomach. Met some, a lot of kids, as my job entails I do. Anything does: that's how we live these days. For anything better one is too tired to ask.
Crib korteo enthu lagey. Ami to shudhu narrate korchhi...

I have lots to say. Apart from the fact that I am worried/bored about my copies- streetfood story etc etc etc- slogging on, this is work, so make a tedious snail-paced activity of it. Well, also this, C.di shan't be seeing our pages anymore, and that takes away one reason why the place didn't seem like a prison to me. You are sitting in that white buliding, high up, insulated, and it is easy to lose touch with the world outside if you stay cooped in that long. I am a child of moods, and I need that smile, to have your two-bit worth intelligence recognised and responded to. And she is so reassuringly human..not just the inhumanly competent automatic newsgatherer, which she might be, but it still leaves her with time to be human. The person we have now, she is nice and okay, but well, the creature of moods that I am, I take a fancy to things. aajke when I was sending that msg to C.di, amar chokhe jol eshe jachhilo, i felt so bad. And she was kind, repeatedly kind. And her smile lights up my world there. It sound adolescent, infantile to like anyone so much so shortly, but if you do, what can you but let yourself feel it as much as you do?
I worry about dadu too. And what they do there. Ma doesn't seem to realise, the stakes are so much higher now, there's no shelter left anymore. She doesn't seem to get any of it. Oli was talking about A.da's peace, the unshakeable peace that he has within him, that's the kind that makes you feel cool. And I realise all the more strongly how much not-peace I have within me, how I am hankering for it. How I actively go ahead and destroy peace, y'know, that I can't engineer peace, but give in to chaos all the time. And this guy who goes places: I don't like my equilibrium being taken for a gratuitous toss out of the blue. I don't like it. Any equilibrium is hard earned y'know.
And there's more, which shall go into the diary

remember when you were young...You shone like the sun

I was reading Robert Graves' Greek Myths. Apart from the fact that it is so good, I wanna remark on the bit about the birth of Hermaphroditus. The footnotes explain it as a representaion of a transition from matriarchy to patriarchy. Also about the sacred king lying with his daughter Smyrna: the king in a matrilineal society trying to keep his kingdom to himself by marrying the next term Queen. I remembered Oli talking about the peaks, about Hanuman puchh, the MASSIVE Satopanth and the formation of mythologies: ways of seeing, methods of representation. And about Queer, another method of representing. Representing a feeling that is heterogened from a contemporary fashion, way, mode. I love human beings, I don't think I can love men or women. I don't think it does to decide that you are lesbian and like only women. The Greeks had life simple. I know that's like such a sweeping, erroneous statement. But I think life would be easier in so many ways if we were to recognise the fact.
The sun on the way to the auto-stand will be a memory track to remembering that daythat I had decided i wanted a family and a marriage.

'britwa' means gun

Well, I have forgotten what I had meant to write about. So that's how it should be. But one thing that I wanted to mention and remember, I have taken the link of this thing outta orkut. So mercifully, I can stop being absurdly significatory about everybody, call a spade a spade and rest in peace. No imaginory marauders to come here off orkut.
I was thinking about N.ji actually. He lost his wife exactly a month after baba at Vellore. Dadiji had phoned and told me. I was so shocked. That was a strangely (that's just a word) intimate time to know their family. I was grateful for any understanding, and dadiji seemed to know it all. She was so kind to me, me the 22 year old that was leaving that place a waif for life. I touched her feet before I left. I don't touch feet usually. I am so glad you cared. I have not looked for you later, you are my closer tie than N.ji, though his loss was greater, and so I am in touch with him now and all that. He is may be about 4/5 years older than me and he's lost his wife and has a tiny kid whose future he worries about. What does a man do when that happens. I don't know. My loss (it drops quite easily off my tongue now. Perhaps it's the time that's passed, more, it's the job. There's no subtelety here. Everything is either in your face or not there), weel it seems smaller compared to his. When you've made a shelter to last your life in, and then everything goes haywire. It's not smaller, I know.
I was with my pal today. It felt so nice so nice. It's this feeling that goes under your skin, and you feel oooo! so cool. But then I knew that would happen. She makes my world work, I see her and can get things in perspective. Y'know, what happiness I want, the infiniteness of possibilities. I am reading Gabriel's Gift by Hanif Kereishi (C likes the name. Me too). Gabriel reminds me of her. Who are just born sensitive, who knows at 15 that he would like his dad to be around when he is old. I was always so terrified he would'nt be. I always thought I was insecure and so... But may be I would not have lost him if I hadn't been so afraid. I was watching Surya Shikar (the Utpal Dutt play) the other day, and I thought of baba. In the scenes where the character is writhing in pain under torture. And I couldn't bear it, my beautiful baba, he fell so many times, this was like all those other times, he was so prone to falling, and this was just like that. Not only because he had gotten weak, hadn't had any solid food that day because of that bloody bloody test he had had to undergo, clean bowels they wanted for that. So make a sick man guzzle purgative liquids the whole day till he is fit to burst. make him visit the toilet numerous times, when it's so tiresome for him. It's with time that these form from images in your head and come tumbling out. And if You are reading, don't talk about the medical/humanitarian rights and wrongs of it. I don't whisper it to myself ever. I look at my friend's dad. It's illogical but I keep thinking that he came back and he didn't. Like I couldn't bring him back. People blame me. I blame me. There was this popcorn Backstreet Boys song one of whose lines went, "How I wish I could turn back time...", it was called Quit Playing Games with my Heart. I can't wish that. Wish that and ask for what in return? Is there a God? There must be. It is, in my head. And who is there, in this tangible, palpable world? He is only in my head, I was so scared to lose him. I am still so scared, even now when one of the biggest fears has been terminated. I think I LOOK scared all the time. Where did it all begin? Where every smile became overshadowed with this musty quilty kind of thing? I wish things were whole again. The patches just seem to go on appearing. Patchwork quilt.

theoutsider

Gilthoniel A Elbereth!
A Elbereth Gilthoniel
O menel palan-diriel,
Le nallon si dinguruthos!
A tiro nin, Fanuilos!

kissu likhbo na, hooh!

right, since I've dicided to be verbose, let's get along with it. How would I like a blog to be? It's someplace where you can air your views without too many people watching. Well, for me. I wanted the fun of writing online, wanted the fun of writing, actually, and some freedom. No prying eyes, least of all judgements. Last thing I'd care for is something like, Bloggers of Calcutta Unite! Not as if people are falling over themselves reading it here.
But may be it's the job, may be it's how I am, but now, with a job and all, you have to put a lot of yourself away here, talk in weird coded language out of the fear of observers whose existence it's a vanity to presume. So yesterday I had a diary entry like, 3 pages long (usually it's just half a page once in a blue moon when I am feeling too upset to keep it to myself) though I was opening this page to write almost everyday. I even thought of going for another blog.
So here's not the place for my many crushes, fears, frustrations, loneliness (yeah, about that. Too many people who are somewhat like I am situated now are really lonely. It's the same old story- love, friends, places, insomniated nights, parents there but not there- young urban Indian, blah) Why must growing up be so painful. Why must you be royally fucked to cross any bridge? Where's the enjoyment? Oh yeah I am a fanatic cribber, have made a religion out of it.
And there we go again! 'Think will have to quit pretty soon now, this is getting to be the old hackneyed rant again. Oh if it even had the dignity of a rant. Edmund White, Edmund White, where art thou?

Chatwin, Gilmore and a rainy day. ALONE...ah heaven!

I was reading On The Black Hill- Chatwin. It's been a lovely day, I managed to leave myself to myself today.

Chatwin's men are what he called himself in one of his travel books: sterile wanderers. I was thinking about Benjamin, about Utz- transvestism, effeminate homosexuals. And then there are people like Lewis, the usual straight kind, who are prevented from pursuing their proclivities, often straining the fabric of the narrative scheme. And the way the stories end: building up to a tumutuous climax, and then there's this delicate maze- where it's so easy to forget the climax a while after u've read it. It's so all of what Chatwin was- like a supernova, burning itself out. And the world becomes special when viewed through his mild blue eyes- am thinking of the Jerry Bauer phtograph. And I was thinking about the trip that he and Elizabeth had taken , shortly after which they decided to get married- the mercurial nature of it. That that world is there for me to partake of now. But that I'll have to make the magic, it won't come to me of my own accord.
And I was thinking of the way things were going- may be you have to leave familiar surroindings to shake off thr torpor of usuality.
I was reading this gay person's blog whom I knew. And this brilliant insight came to be, that it doesn't matter whether one was what's called gay or straight- I wouldn't be able to take love casually either way. Being queer doesen't make one liberated and one's life full of delightful experiences. Relationships matter, they are not casual. Every person I happen to like, I cannot treat casually, neither treat my feelings for them that way. Can't play around. Hurts too much.
To make of yourself a tabula rasa is an idea I don't care to play with anymore. Life seems to become mundane otherwise. That also brings untold misery. Don't wanna die like Chatwin either. I think of, what's his name- Edmund White, thank god- it's such a balm. There's one love that's absolutely mine. A 'passion' undiluted by opinion. Someday someday I'll do something about it.

And the idea of a date is such bunk!

i smile, and smile

bugger. my blog is not a public forum for people to carry on their adoloscent back-slapping conversation.
what the fuck.
well.

am listening to floyd. fearless, de Meddle.
is it that cool to be a journalist? the facts sure do make it sound rosy. but it's only rarely, for me now, at any rate, that I am also getting a high while doing it, not merely reading about it and feeling cool.
i reach office at about 2, feeling slightly guilty about not doing stuff that needs to be taken care of at home. My supplement is off for this month, so the deal is that we have plenty of storie ready in advance. Which is not something that works really well with me. I work best under threat of time thread being stretched really taut. well, the business with the supplement apart, there's me. And my all-important spiritual well-being. Which, well has gone for the toss for the time being.
I've gotten this theory of late: what is it that turns a girl into a woman? The woman-girl thingy is so corny most of the time. But in most 'females', there is this transition, when they cease to be girls. And the journalist that I am, I report the observation without trying to analyse. Will also report opinions/reactions if get any. See, at some point or other, girls stop hoping that the dreams will come true. The sane ones, most that is, who think that they've gotta survive, that madness is a luxury they can't afford, they become really calm and maternal. Their smiles are sad, resigned. Their happiness is grown up, like they've compromised with life, chosen not to fight in order to live. They've become women. I dunno about guys. They have it as tough as the rest, I guess. Perhaps tougher. There's always an advantage in being the tortured/underprivileged group which is recognised as the suffering/has suffered group.
My friend will come rearing at this sadness theory about women. She'll talk about S.di. And yes, I oh so agree. And the friend thinks differently. It's like what Satyakida said about golamda, 'Golamdake kharap rakha strictly shakto'.

But this stasis, it's getting to me. How much can you learn out of doing something that you are not enjoying? That will be a dead kind of learning.How long will it be this?

And there's the growing up bit. I am becoming different. The JU aura is leaving me. I am getting the skin of the place of the place where I work in. Which is fine, cuz I like the people I work with etc. But there is an inner life, and that is left more and more dissatisfied. Like squeezing out a dry sponge, I keep trying to materialise my dreams for what they are worth, and they refuse to turn into reality. I want constant fun out of my work. Want to be always doing well. Nothing else will give me any peace. And when and if I have that, I shall want more. I am bursting with all the dreams I have dreamt for which I find no outlet at this moment. My demand for supreme love, brilliant success, absolute wildness. Not this stymied, tepid, lukewarm, average thing that I walk through daily.

And yet another time, I did not write what I wanted to. For all that and more, thanksssss.

(uh, interrupting for an antel observation: 'Dogs' bole gaanta pink floyd er . Reba Hore er akta series of crayon sketches dekhechhilam Seagull e: street dogs howling in the night. the song recalls the sketches. Well)

theoutsider

i feel human again. atleast feel my head thawing. bonnie is absolutely out of this world. well, out of this world is probably an overstatement, but he's just so good man. band er gaan and all that stuff begin to make sense only here. the song, in my untutored shotta (well, apart from the 'kring kring kring madhur dhoni, shui tomar agomani' bit)sort of, mon ke shikto kore day. quite apart from the lyrics. the voice, the music, the man. ami khushi, anek khon pore. feel closer to being an human being. less of the futile roshagainst the world for creating creatures like le scum qui j'ai rencontre hier. was feeling terrified even to look at mon homme qui rit comme bete.
now am listening to 'ghare pherar gaan'. i love chandrani's voice. that's all this band has, those lovely, wonderful voices, utterly rich, mellifluous, dripping with vigourousness.
music do me good. god has funny ways, like he's sniggering quietly at my folly. well thanks, thanksssssss.

'akhono shamne path hata bake, chaileo parbe na ditey phaki, nishchoy'- i love you, you bring me back to life. you make me feel young again.

theoutsider

sala baje din. j'ai rencontre un homme aujourd'hui matin. c'etait pas bien, pas bien. ca va mal, ces journees. didi, elle m'a dit que j'apparait 'available'. que'est-ce que je fait. personne comprend, personne comprend. tant de peine. 'ca vaut pas la peine'. je sais pas. comment elle pouvait dire comme ca? elle ne savait pas ca

what the fuck. i am becoming this alien creature that i don't even have the enthu to recognise as myself. i suppose i know on a factual level that it's me, but that's about it.
i am very very upset.

it's a completely different deal: net at home and net at office. now i have forgotten what i meant to write.
but well, oli's not here and i feel really weird, not having spent time away really after the BRC except during vellore, but then i was not the one staying behind.
i met shubhayu offline the other day, also today, actually.
my cd drive has gotten disabled. i feel absolutely shattered about that. well, i guess it's a way of making me shake ass. arr, kichhu hochhe anek i hochhe na. i feel all pent up, like things are really building up, but there's no outlet. somewhere there must be a falling action.

At home. Was reading this uponyash by Shekhar mukhopadhyay (i think) called biboshyoto. don't even know what the word means. reading it, i realised, got a really sharp feel of what not having baba means. for days, even today morning, I was dreaming of some encounter that is so pleasant, so what i seemed to have wanted for a long time. today, it struck home, sort of. It's what makes four year old kid bibashyan break into sobs when he meets his father after three years. it's the memory of love given that exists on a subconscious level. i did not realise it when i had it, and don't remember now it's gone. i do now. even now the feel is alive, like it's happening at this moment. Him, his unconditional love, I called it security. in my dream, it was tenderness. only that, the love, a state of being. and i woke up wanting this so strongly, not quite knowing what it was. the desire to replicate it motivates so many relationships, fledged and unfledged. sometimes i forget. forget what i had been yearning. only the absence, dredged out from memory, niggling, remains.
hahakar kake bole aj janlam.
khub boro shobdo mone hoy.
tumi chole gachho bole ki ar phire ashtey paro na?
it's not fair. to whoever who runs this world, two people should not be turned away thus from each other. my father and i do not deserve it. ami ke bolar. if that is the question, i can tell you i am exactly the person to give an opinion on the matter. and him thati lost.
i am waiting. i am waiting.

theoutsider

in office, and people have had a bout of sudden pujo-end navami(house style) epiphany. there's the bluffmaster title track playing, and everyone seems to be feeling friendly and smiley.
i haven't any work really and am hanging around hoping to go out and eat with my colleagues, with some pandal hopping thrown in for good measure. lets see how all else turns out.

i have a job. i am relieved. i am reading the hitchhiker's guide through the galaxy (or is it to?)and it's not a bad thing at all. my friend insists i should take the net. there's water all around my para. tomorrow i shall go to office. in my blinkered, unable to see beyond the moment way, i quite like the idea of tomorrow. if it doesent work out right, i shall pray really hard that it does the next day. it usually happens on alternate days. good day-bad day-good day.. so on. i dont want the pattern to change. except for good day-good day-good day.. i think one gets the idea.
somewhere across the horizon, there's really unbelievable amounts of happiness

I am not going for the trek. ki kori. wish somebody were to hold me. You take it in your stride, do you? kintu ektu bhalobashi, tar jonye holeo dishehara lagey. never prepared a reaction for what to do if you don't go. I feel bewildered, somewhat criminal. I just want to sit around my friend. Quietly to let it sink in. Around her there is peace. I find orientation.

And there is living after this too. Does baba's death make me so? So tired and slouchy. I need to trek as often as I can just to keep sane. To remember to be happy. Strong. That life is not something you drag along. Without JU, I need it all the more to remember, find focus, perspective. Kake eta bojhabo? That is my honesty about trekking. I don't love, dig it. I find, fodder, if you like. It shows me the way in a grim way. I am never fit the way I should be, and it's so often such a hard deal, and I don't take it well at all. Yet just being there strains it out of me. So I need to trek. I also dream of making my life with someone who will love to trek, will love the mountains and will always take me with him. May be sometime I will take him too. All this I hope for, dream about. These are my stakes. Without this, I feel lost. I will flounder giving names to things and fix meanings, and that kind of life is so tedious, I shall fall sick if I live it for more than a very short time. I am not doing very well now. I drag myself around the city instead of finding my pace. It used to be this way in school. I had forgotten that I used to get tired just going and coming back from school, so womanly, not being able to do vigorous activities. All that I had almost put out of my mind. I have been at home for a few months. Things are not with a lot of colour. It does not do me good. I have to get out. I will fall sick. You cannot live like this. There is no balm in the form of Jadavput either, that all-effacing place that at the end of the day takes you into its heart no matter how it's been. I must leave, God I must leave.

I wanted to write about a couple of things and one more:

It's spring and it's so beautiful that it's difficult to believe. I wish the world remained like this always. (I am talking English like an imbecile. Orkut has this effect among other things.)

David Gilmour gives me this bitter sweet feeling that kinda feels like a crush. (Of all the things to have crushes about)

I am doing some horrific French translations.
I like being at home during spring very much. On second thoughts, I like being outdoors as much. College specifically. I miss JU very very much.

I still haven't a job. It's kinda beginning to worry me now.

I think I shall fall sick for not having gone for the trek. Beginning winter in Calcutta does NOT do me good.
Stupid stupid life, where things don't always work out the way you want it to.

I shall no longer go to college and my English and general way with the world will get worse and worse for not having what they call intellectual nourishment. I shall become stupid.

Oh and I read this blog about a young about to have child person and I am really grossed. I do not want to marry or to have children in a very long time, thank you. What did you think life was for? To tow the line?
I mean not in the way she put it. Putting names to everything: I am a WIFE. What I am in is MARRIAGE. Why do we make nice things into boring and mind numbing patterns. That's what wrong with society. It's dying trying to understand itself by puttingnames to everything. Taking away the fun of writing your own relationships, your own life.

Didya know Kavya Vishwanathan was Amitav Ghosh's student?
Joy Goswami is on Orkut.

Gilmour is ruthless in a very precise way, and no frills to himself. I find it really difficult to imagine him with Polly Samson. I guess it must be good..

Right, so I am on antibiotics now, and after just a day's worth of medicines, I feel much better. Almost okay, that it. Come back to the world and all that. My hair is all matted and curly from not having been washed for days and only now do I remember that mashi had asked me to take a sponge bath today.
There'e still the occasional tummy ache and I still don't feel like eating anything at all, but it's nothing at all like the past few days. I was wondering why I was so intent on starving myself then. When u're sick, you long for some special care at home. Yet, far as I am concerned, illness is a double price you have to pay. So, out of the pure desire to save your own skin, in my house, one had better not fall sick. Cuz you'll have to look out for yourself. And if you aren't in a position to do that, you're gonna get sicker and sicker like I was getting till dadu and mashi intervened.
One of those days, I woke up and there was this massive cold sweating session. I was completely drenched in sweat and had an awful, uncomfortable belly ache that just kept on coming in spasms and all you could do was just pray God please put an end to this. Which He did, pretty soon.
I think it was also in a way, a fallout of all the aniyom I had been doing over the last month with Express. Somewhere you have to pay. But I so hate the absolutely tasteless food at home. Coupled with all things else, there was Michael K. I would be having those cold sweats and wonder whether I was becoming like K too, cursing myself for having read that book.
And then, I am still in two minds regarding my metier. It's true you can do well in anything, and you had better since it's a question of survival. But I would dream about a quiet life somewhere far away, within some distant community, away from here. May be it'll happen some day. May be I'll have my quiet life some day.

My back aches like anything. I really feel like a poor girl today. The thing is, ya know, I have fever. Probably the result of translsting too much French commercial jargon. Did you know that 'vignette'is explained as 'tax disc' in Larousse? I don't know what it means, in French or English, and have used it, like, twenty times.
I am reading Coetzee's 'Life and Times of Michael K' and like it very much indeed. Trouble is, I have not had much in the day and that's not a good idea if u have a cold (mild), fever(fairly hot forehead), sore back, sore throat (okay, that;s just very little). But the back, the bloody back. I am just 23, why should one have back aches at 23? I was remembering baba a lot today, y'know, that it all began with a tickle down the spine. I don't think dying is a good idea now, even if it might cause me to be united with my father again. I thought about it. Death, even with promise of baba, is not nice. And I can't really believe, even when I try, that I'll meet him again.
You kind of, like, go on, you know, shut out things and live. And at some point, you won't have to shut them out either. You can remember even the most frightening things and be serene. Michael K is a lot about all this. And it soothes so much, Coetzee's simplicity, and the love with which he writes.
That's enough for the day, I'd think.

Friend came up with the following er, request:

"do, do make me a paper hare.
but should that be too difficult, a goose will do."

The quirks of the human species. Sigh