I am half-frozen, it's so cold in here, and my head feels as if it's been replaced with a lump of ice. How supremely unoriginal. Well, it was very different today, and I was not really surprised. It's high time.
It's a while later, and I am a bit more alive, and less dazed. Though it's just a lot of work to just get the page off the board. Now all I want to do is to go home and sleep. and I still have two copies to file.
The pages went just now. God, this is horrid. And there's the specs to take care of.

can i come said he- e.e. cummings
may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she
(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she
(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)
may i stay said he
(which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she
may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she
but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she
(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she
(cccome?said he
ummm said she)
you're divine!said he
(you are Mine said she)

I am awfully scared. And lonely. I want to recede.
Est-ce que c'est le fin? De quoi, qui?

"You don't need a hair-do or 'cool' 'rockstar' clothes chains and dark glasses to do music. It's like choosing your deo when you are going to war."

www.urinnersmile.blogspot.com/ He wrote it. I love it.

Went for the health check-up thing today. Was at the hospital for quite a while, and it was like going back to Vellore, the same closeness, intimacy, peace amongst people you don't know at all. It's addictive, engrossing, makes the world bearable.
I was going through a colleague of mine's album today, and I felt, I dunno, awfully sorry for what I saw. Or rather that I had a look into the world the olleague inhabits. The structure I so dislike, and yet I rather like her. And you feel kinda bad that she's stuck in this. Though that's awfully condescending. I might be considered stuck in a structure myself. Blah. You would perhaps knew it if you saw. Y'know, it's that you realise why she migh feel outside her element now, and it sorry if the structure's the reason. Ugh I don't like it.
And I am glad for everything. For what I have been given. A blessing.

Oh it seemed forever stopped today
All the lonely hearts in London Caught a plane and flew away
And all the best women are married
All the handsome men are gay
You feel deprived Yeah are you questioning your size?
Is there a tumour in your humour,
Are there bags under your eyes?
Do you leave dents where you sit,
Are you getting on a bit?
Will you survive
You must survive

When there's no love in town
This new century keeps bringing you down
All the places you have been
Trying to find a love supreme
A love supreme
Oh what are you really looking for?
Another partner in your life to abuse and to adore? I
s it lovey dovey stuff, Do you need a bit of rough?
Get on your knees
Yeah turn down the love songs that you hear
'Cause you can't avoid the sentiment
That echoes in your ear
Saying love will stop the pain
Saying love will kill the fear
Do you believe
You must believe

I spy with my little eye
Something beginning with (ah)
Got my back up
And now she's screaming
So I've got to turn the track up
Sit back and watch the royalties stack up
I know this girl she likes to switch teams
And I'm a fiend but I'm living for a love supreme


I loved Robbie Williams once, and this song's still so good.
And does it ring true?
Am I losing my mind? I feel scared to write here, the constant rage and the hurt, this is surely not normal. And is there anyone who will be patient enough to listen? And you fall in love thinking, y'know what he said, that love will killl the pain, allay the fear, but doesn't really happen. Gets to be a bit of a farce. Should people like me be put away, and if I am quite so bad, why do friends stay? What for?
It's like the girl in Park Avenue who poured hot water in her hand as she cried for a physical outlet for the pain of just being alive. Who knows, maybe it was not that. And you wonder whether it is quite right to take someone else on board when you know this is what you can be. That you might be worse.
There's no one to ask, really.

a blog is for thinking aloud

Such an unfamiliar state of being: copy finished and I am waiting for the car. But then, it is also almost 3 in the morning. Well, the thing is, I finished reading Harry Potter. I loved it, my unequivocal reaction, thank you. And I am awfully sorry that it's gotten over.
I now have an account on Orkut as well as Facebook. It's slightly manic, if you decided to get serious about it. You have to keep tabs on one account after another to check the latest progress. Siphon friends from one network to the other, and so forth.
I have had long gchats with Debasis sir. It's rather very lovely to talk with him once more, and yet he was always just a step away.
I was reading The Viceroy of Ouidah until this Potter frenzy started, with everyone shouting out endings (bloody pilfs, and I do NOT mean A), so you had to get your hands on it, and get it over with. But may I say what a lovely pleasure it was. I efinitely don't think Hogwarts was dark. It was sun and well, magic. The boy has not read the book, but even then, might not like the fluidity that the magic's about. No, I think he will, if he reads it, and knows this is what I am talking about. Not just magic being imagination, that's so just the surface of it, but of will, choice, the post-modernist (or is it post-postmodernist) way of looking at things: you are what you make yourself. Then again, that sounds so like the Renaissance man. Rowling so gets that, although she must drench it in soppy love and we are all good. Y'know, what I am trying to say is that the vehicle is a spot clumsy, but the idea, you cannot but love it. But then, maybe it's cuz I have really hardly read anything. And inarticulate as usual. And then, what's new.

If rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy.

Came upon this for the first time in the Presidency magazine in first year. In office, pretty late. Things are not as out of control as you would like to fancy it to be. I just want to believe they are. Can I say I ache to go back to freer days, freer to move, to imagine, without the trouble of having to translate it into facts. I feel like writing again, to make things whichever way I want it. To lose me in it, if one may say so. The Tale of Genji: make up your face to be what you want it to be. This perfect perfect surface, brittle and seamless as china. Clink it and a chink will appear. Will go away to a rarefied world among clouds, The Aeneid's Elysium, where Aeneas's father Anchises (I remember) would be. What is this clutter, the sadnesses of a rag-tag mind, the rage of a mind (y'know, looking like one of those cancer-marked lungs, markes of tobacco). I really really want to lose myself in, well, the subliminal: get a high, with nothing to hold you back...Jhoom barabar jhoom gives me flight... Wild with all regret/those things that are no more, Koel Poorie doing a turn, with those wild wild eyes that seemed to have lost everything.
There is no one there, I would have wished in another time that he would be, I'll wish tomorrow. But let me go away, go away to my world of books, where the mind can be let to fly. Come with me, come with me. I cannot ever ask, request you to come along repeatedly. I don't want to forget what I have loved. Don't think I can for very long. Please know, please know.

Posting after such a long time, and there's lots od work to do. But yeah, that's very satisfying, of course the quality is another story. Well, about us, I, well, y'know, you can be angry and sulk for the luxury of it, or you can be robust about it, look at the other person's point of view, get over the anger and move on. Yeah, I'll do that, but what can I say. That I am angry, and I don't care two hoots about who might think what. Or rather, that I do, but that that's not the end all. There is the moment, and you can choose to embrace it, or crib about what's not right, and how it might have been perfect if x and y factor were alright. And I just feel angry, at what feels like cussedness, weariness. And I don't want to drag him out if he is going to feel not right, forced, I dunno what about it. I want to do my work. Ami dukkho pelam, na onno keu dukkho pelo, ei niye ami ar bhabte parchhi na.
I had a very good birthday, the happiest I remember in years. Quite usually, it is the ones nearest you that bring the tears to your eyes again and again, who for reasons of circumstance, are not a part of your happiness. And it is perhaps yet a luxury to indulge hurt. I feel angry, and wild. It's like that birthday, when I could only cry, and baba, blast him, sent ma to ask if I wanted to go and eat somewhere. Like hell I would, and be told later how much money got spent eating out, and how we could have saved if we made the same thing at home. I will waste no time for those who can't take things as they are, who hang on to past actions, and count every sin you have supposedly committed. I would rather keep away, though I might love. Keep distance.

There's much to be said for sanity, I think. It's different from doing whatever thrills you at the moment, for the sake of the thrill, without thinking of consequences, what people call irresponsible action, I suppose. It is not as heavy as it sounds. Irresponsibility for the sake of it isn't anything more than very easy fun any longer. It's a different course of life you embark on. It's a different kind of happiness, one I find myself reacting very pleasantly to. The surety of presence, of being anchored, perhaps once again. I blabber, not much sense. Somewhere, I ask my mind to please be considered in what it does.

"A member of the working middle class. A bonafide contributor to the economy and to society as a whole, even. For the first time in my short and largely frittered life, I was going to be productive."
http://positivelylowbrow.blogspot.com/2006/04/lets-face-it.html

That's how I feel. Felt. Stifled. And this too:
"saw no reason to give up everything I held sacred (the right to loaf, the freedom to sleep till two, the liberty to watch television all day until my brain began to atrophy and so on). "
This I would have perhaps continued to do awhile, like Jaydeep continues to perhaps. If I wasn't shit scared of never landing myself a job at all. I miss the footlooseness, I do. Of not having any commitment, or responsibility. It's one of the things you teach yourself, to cultivate patience. For the sake of your own needs. For shelter, calmness. Though ever so often, you wonder if you don't want to hurl it all away, your own good, with a vicious kick (yeah, that's funny), to leave yourself completely bereft, and incapable of wanting. Why people love the desert, eschew lands of plenty, and want the aridness of not having. That dream I'd had once, of a desrt girl, and I was scared by the gleam in my own eyes. Because it didn't care to wait for anybody for what it/she wanted. I wish I could be that to get what I want.
And needless to say, I did not ask for the quoted person's permission to quote him. He goes by the name of Leo, apparently.

Y'know, the people you come together with, after a while their qualitative merits cease to matter. I mean, they are with you regardless of whether they act badly or well, they are a part of you. That is a rather pleasant feeling, the assurance of presence. That apart, there's the job. Egad! people are depressed, and I never did count PR as one of my special skills ever. I can't quite think what's about to happen, and how I'll find meself dealing with it. Well, there's the boy, thank heavens, and the nocturnal parleys. A feeling that seeps into you.

I had a rather nice day yesterday. Went to the Oh Lord! MD'S review, met people there which was rather nice, had a boring lunch, bought underwear, stuff of trauma, really, met Shubhayu, which was really really nice. We sat in this nook, one of the thin golis that lead to courtyards of old apartment mansions. This one was on Park Street, a few houses after T3. There's this rather wide berth there, where you can really stretch your feet and lounge, and we sat there for a while and talked, as cars passed by, people came to dump stuff, people decked up and stepped out of houses, 'lots of activity', he said. The weather was nice, after-drizzle and all that, and we'd met after one really long time. We stepped into T3 after a while, rebutting ichhes of going into Olypub. He smoked and smoked, and had hideous sugacube after sugercube, ugh ugh ugh. But his youth, and his openness to things, his freedom, the master he is of his own time. some of it is cause he's still a student, but it's a lot a state of the mind. And there's a lot to be said for a friendship like this....

well

Reallt tired and desirous to meet the boy. Had two great days, one day of fun with the kids. Got our bags, watched 15, Park Avenue, My Brother Nikhil, met cousin and cousin's wife, and was rather surpised at how happy they seemed. They are really newly married, y'know. It's not mundane. And reality struck home with Park Avenue, and Nikhil was baba all over again. I wanted to tell the boy everything, did too. And I wonder about what O calls post-adolescence. What is it all now? It is rather very different from college, and there seems to be nothing to loving but love, quite unreasonably. Endless pleasure, and happiness, for no reason, apparently, save a person. Well, I forgot what I began with, so..

.

I got very scared today. A dada of ours asked me to smile. Is it so bad? Will I become like many I see in the room? Where do I belong, where should I be?

Barbados is a lovely word

There's someone here who's into blogs, so I can't post save when she ain't here. Well, I've been dying to scream out to the world that I have 'follicular tonsilitis', one manifestation of which is this huge wart in my throat that I can see- it's white with pus: grotesque, completely, hee hee. I certainly hope I will gross out people who read about it. And then, there's antibiotics, which make you feel out of this world, quite literally. All I want to do is to be left to myself and to sleep. Instead of ruddy office. Tobe shei woe niye ar na i bollam. And the boy and I had such a good chat over phone last night that I took so long to get over it that I fell asleep without eating. Now this none save ma know yet.
Ar it's generally not pleasant to feel that there's cotton wool wedged up your throat. And then, intimations of mortality. Bhoy lage, if you have to die. I so don't want to die.
I began reading Love in the Time of Cholera jedin office jai ni over this thing. I think it's rather rather nice. Majhe majhe khub ichhe hoy, jodi anek din pai, to live like the old days: sharadin boi pore katiye ditam, break only to eat, or bathe, fall asleep over the book, wake to read. May be get out for a brief while.
Summer is for receding inside yourself, to find happiness, standing on the verandah deep at night, feel the breeze, be happy. Lightness, freedness. And let me yet say, there is great joy in loving the boy, to be allowed to let be, to call and say I feel vomitty. Oh yeah, it sounds simperingly saccharine. But it's well, all of what I was saying earlier. I am rather happy.

pluperfect

A post for rip:

Well, it is about kindness. Of joking away sadness, panic. What O has done over five years, for me and dare I say, for so many of us. I miss it very much. I don't want others to take life as darkly as I end up doing ever so often, to forget the happiness and believe doomsday to be near. The happiness of space, the unbearable lightness of being. To see a rose and smile in fulfilment.

There is also something to be said about a white shirted fair gent noticing you at the end of his day. Nothing to do with the gent as such, just you.
Well, my back's aching awfully, and I can hardly make sense. I want to go home, though I know I can finish the copy if I push myself enough. I also tramped with that jumble of a knap to a hotail on the bypass, after I had listened to a seminar on IT management at something on Little Russell Street. Souffles suck, chocolate mud pies are brilliant things. As are taxi drivers scared you might turn out to be a gangster or something. At least that's what I imagined, kept asking er por kothay jaben, eta ki apnar guest house, tumi apni, general befuddlement. Amar bhishon pithey byatha korchhe. Period.
The whole post was not for rip.

can't take it anymore. am i losing it? feel at the end of my tether. desperately want a break, to get away. happened quite suddenly on monday. sunday i was fresh and happy & monday, i was somehow dragging on like i hadn't stopped in a long while. and the end of the week is lined with assignments, absolutely snowed under. what can i do?

can't take it anymore. am i losing it? feel at the end of my tether. desperately want a break, to get away. happened quite suddenly on monday. sunday i was fresh and happy & monday, i was somehow dragging on like i hadn't stopped in a long while. and the end of the week is lined with assignments, absolutely snowed under. what can i do?

Day

I got Leonard Cohen. I am not going to Gourbhanga. Should I be methodical and sad?
I filched a NatGeo from O's place. Haven't told her yet. Will I be righteous and depressed?
I took the easy way out again, didn't I.
On other terms, I have to decide much more in advance that I am quite conclusively going to go. The situation didn't suggest itself. N went off for his Advanced Course today. O goes in May. I met a very quiet, niriho French author. I wanted to sit down and talk with him for a long time, the dishevelled man with ash blond hair and perplexed eyes. You were so sweet to me. Such small units of grace, come alive and frame your day.
I'd had a lovely day yesterday, perhaps an aftermath of that: wrote the story in a prolonged leisurely way (for which in trouble), it was that rare rare time when you don't feel someone playing strings with your nerves, and you are free to think, to pick and choose what you shall include and what not and why. Bought food (tasteless biryani from Rahmania), went over to O's feeling guilty for not having bought ma's Poila Baishakh sari that still mean to give. Sat with kaku kakima, sitting around, listening to them planning train tickets for her course, it's home, in dimensions I don't quite know. I was more comfortable between them than I have been for a while. We had chips, we had tea, food, ice-cream, I had golap jamun. The humdrumness is so pleasing. We talked, and that she is rather very much desperation, that she is studying so much in some desperation. And we fell asleep, eventually. I in the other room. The comfort of a bed after a very long time. Cuz I choose the floor now. I woke up in some darkness, the coolness of the room. Went up, smiled, kaku kakima were cooking, came away. It was so pleasant.

coming close

Was leaving the room the same time as K. There are two glass doors on the way. As he walked away in the other direction, there was his outline, through one door, and then the next. Is this how it will be, me looking in front and seeing him, as he walks away?