Ours will be the age of not growing up.
Of being 36 and wondering whether to settle down.

On being asked whether he plans to have a child sometime, Randy Harrison said in a recent interview for his play, Harbour, that he doesn't really know, because living in New York is just too prohibitive. I like how young he is at 36, how he is still undecided how the rest of his life will be.

This is the age of Peter Pan. We will all be self-absorbed and looking for approval, crack silly jokes loudly and write our states of mind in parentheses on Facebook status updates, be horribly confessional to strangers and then recoil, aghast, when that person does not appreciate where we are coming from.  We will have funny haircuts, sport old jeans and faded clothes, live from moment to moment, not own a house. We will have eyebrow piercings at 31, look greedily at beautiful people, take up smoking and drinking in earnest on the other side of 30. We will have nasty break-ups that will leave us floundering, go to work groggy from having stayed up most of the night doing things we don't really remember or care about. We will be queer.

See, that is the wonderful thing. You don't have to grow up, give up your mannerisms, stop being affected. Except of course when life sticks a bamboo up your arse, which will be quite often. So you will do hospital bills and worry about money and fight with your mother, but you will also be very gay and chase the next high, and go from high to high, and wonder where it's all coming to, and whether it might not be better to be dead at 45.

Khora

As I go to office every day, I wonder what the world is coming to, and the world we are leaving behind for those who will come after us. These are big words. On the way from Gazipur to Noida, I pass a huge field of burning garbage that stretches off NH 24, alongside a residential area at the Sai Baba temple vicinity in Indirapuram. Families live right alongside this, children breathe this air. Cows stand around and sit in this unbelievable smoking field of garbage, and you wonder whether they aren’t dying a little faster because of it. I have passed this area five days a week for the past 2 years in shared autos, which lurch through semi-paved streets, seven people to each vehicle, four in the back seat where you struggle to hold your position if you are the last person to get in. Now, I traverse the same stretch in the luxury of a reserved auto, because Noida Sector --, where I work now, does not have a route where these vehicles ply, and I don’t want to change 4 modes of transport to get to office. It is quite expensive, but I have decided to allow myself this luxury, because I won’t get to office with my back hurting from walking long stretches with the laptop bag, my legs hurting from standing too long in a metro compartment where there isn’t space enough to draw breath.

This field of garbage in Indirapuram now has a road that cuts through it which leads to Khora, a lower middle class area, which is also a shortcut into Noida. The air here swirls with dust. The dust is gritty, hard like steel. As it laps my face, I wonder about the poisons I am breathing in, and look at the people who live here, the dogs that sit relaxedly, legs splayed out in the winter sun, amid the endless eddies of dust, and wonder what will happen to us all.
This road through Khora is new. Earlier it was an undulating, stony patch of road through which autowallahs would take their vehicles only when all other roads were jammed. There were small hills from where the ground would slope down sharply and you would wonder what kind of animal the driver was to take his gari through this monster of a stretch and what a miracle it was that the tyres survived. Now, this stretch has been smoothed out. Very soon, it will be paved. I wonder if this is the beginning of the gentrification of Khora.

I write from a rather privileged position, where I can afford to not live beside a smoking field of garbage. It is less privileged than those of many friends and colleagues, who travel in their own vehicles with windows rolled up. I am incredibly grateful when one of them kindly offers me a lift home, or part of the way. On a hot day, it means not walking in the sun while your skin feels like it's burning. It means not breathing in the smell of rotting garbage, or the smell of chickens cooped up in wire cages: the smell of old genjees that have never been washed. 

Madeleine Peyroux sings this cover of the Leonard Cohen song. Another Queer as Folk find.

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove

Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of

Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above

Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn

Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove

Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

O the love.

WHEN MY BOY WALKS DOWN THE STREET - THE MAGNETIC FIELDS

Grand pianos crash together when my boy walks down the street
There are whole new kinds of weather when he walks with his new beat 
Everyone sings hallelujah when my boy walks down the street 
Life just kind of dances through ya from your smile down to your feet
Amazing he's a whole new form of life
Blue eyes blazing and he's going to be my wife
The world does the hula-hula when my boy walks down the street 
Everyone thinks he's Petula so big and yet so petite 
Butterflies turn into people when my boy walks down the street 
Maybe he should be illegal he just makes life too complete... 
Amazing he's a whole new form of life
Blue eyes blazing and he's going to be my wife 
Oh, shadows of echoes of memories 
Oh, things that he brings that he found in the sea 
Oh, shadows of echoes of memories of songs 
Oh, how could he know that it won't be long...
Grand pianos crash together when my boy walks down the street 
There are whole new kinds of weather when he walks with his new beat 
Everyone sings hallelujah when my boy walks down the street 
Life just kind of dances through ya from your smile down to your feet

So.
There was a time.
When life was simpler.
No, it never was.
When parents were meant to take care of you.
While you went and sowed your wild oats.
Now, the tables have turned.
And I find myself
Carrying the unbearable burden of my mother
Who has decided
To
Stop living
In all but drawing of breath.
I cannot do this.
I want to run away.
Forget myself.
Have lots of sex
(For fun)
And die
In welcome oblivion
That it has finally come to an end.

The present is unbearable.
The future unimaginable.
I only have longing, and hate,
And rage.
And boredom
That runs through every moment.
That is, however, a fair package.

When will this end?
When will this end?

So I finally end up writing about Queer as Folk here because I can't find anyone who has written what I want to write. Well, that I don't want to be heteronormative either. I dunno yet what that entails: whether it means being alone for the rest of your life if you don't find someone who is willing to live according to the same terms as you. For me, it means never marrying or having kids. QaF became so maudlin in its last season, and also how Brian was scared out of his mind into wanting to marry Justin. I don't want to do that. But what happens when you get scared out of your mind when you start losing those you love, and find your friends have moved on and have their own lives and can't be counted on to be your support system? You feel lonely and start doing things Rituporno Ghosh did, or abuse yourself, or do anything the fuck that will take you out of your boredom? I dunno, I thought I did these last few weeks. But life has a way of slowing down, and when you struggle to get through the seconds, when you hunt for oblivion, or something that will divert your mind, or something that will interest you beyond the mundane, what is the way ahead? Yet something not self-destructive? It makes you want to cry knowing there is such little alternative, that life won't be a Fire Island or a Babylon. Just look how I am writing of all of this in homosexual terms, because I can't find anything attractive enough in the heterosexual paradigm. Let me please find the courage to put myself out there and never give up, to not settle into maudlin domesticity, but constantly challenge myself (big words) to discover what being alive means to me. Am I what they call hypersexual? Damned if I know. But I wish life were a fantasy, that one could be Peter Pan. And say, fuck the world, I will do exactly what I want.
When F died, when F died, I never really told you what that was all about, did I? Another anchor less, that's what it was. And I wish she were here with me, that I had taken better care of her, that I had been able to care more for her, were more scared about her life. Instead I got bored and turned my attention to other things, the next high. Ladakh, Benaras, here, there and everywhere. One needs anchors, one needs to be moored. Otherwise, one could end up a free radical and jump off a cliff, or be a lonely, sad, fat queen, or a dried up single woman. I understand now why K used to say he would commit suicide at 45. He will never have the balls, of course. And yeah, you gotta be pro-life.
This daily tedium of life. When I go out on the road, I try to channel Brian Kinney, I try to channel all my hate and say fuck you to everything that irritates me: the crowd, the guys who try to shove, even the ugly woman whose face I have to see. I want to allow myself to feel exactly as I want to, and not be apologetic about anything. Yet, when I met my future employers today, I was my best, if slightly manic self, and trying to establish the best terms, and disappointed to not have the approval of the lady who recruited me. I wish I could say in my head, fuck you, I don't care. I will do my work well, and if that doesn't work out, tough luck.
This is all a struggle to find my voice, to find myself. Right now, it's such a pastiche, such a clamour of images of what I want it to be like. Feel it and pretend it's happening. Brian Kinney was so fucking attractive till he decided that he would sell his loft and buy a huze mansion and give dear Justin the family he wanted. Fuck that. He was such a hero before.

Apparently, I have an INFP type personality on the Myers-Briggs scale (first read in Philip K. Dick's Blade Runner (you pretentious beast!)), and some of it is true:

According to Myers-Briggs, INFPs focus much of their energy on an inner world dominated by intense feeling and deeply held ethics. They seek an external life that is in keeping with these values. Loyal to the people and causes important to them, INFPs can quickly spot opportunities to implement their ideals. They are curious to understand those around them, and so are accepting and flexible except when their values are threatened.

According to Keirsey, based on observations of behavior, notable INFPs may include Princess Diana, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Audrey Hepburn, Richard Gere, Albert Schweitzer and Isabel Myers.

The polite, reserved exterior of INFPs can at first make them difficult to get to know. They enjoy conversation, however, taking particular delight in the unusual. When INFPs are in a sociable mood, their humor and charm shine through. Disposed to like people and to avoid conflict, INFPs tend to make pleasant company.

Devoted to those in their inner circle, INFPs guard the emotional well-being of others, consoling those in distress. Guided by their desire for harmony, INFPs prefer to be flexible unless their ethics are violated. Then, they become passionate advocates for their beliefs. They are often able to sway the opinions of others through tact, diplomacy, and an ability to see varying sides of an issue.

INFPs develop these insights through reflection, and they require substantial time alone to ponder and process new information. While they can be quite patient with complex material, they are generally bored by routine. Though not always organized, INFPs are meticulous about things they value. Perfectionists, they may have trouble completing a task because it cannot meet their high standards. They may even go back to a completed project after the deadline so they can improve it.

INFPs are creative types and often have a gift for language. As introverts, they may prefer to express themselves through writing. Their dominant Feeling drives their desire to communicate, while their auxiliary intuition supplies the imagination. Having a talent for symbolism, they enjoy metaphors and similes. They continually seek new ideas and adapt well to change. They prefer working in an environment that values these gifts and allows them to make a positive difference in the world, according to their personal beliefs.

In other news, today is Shasthi, but who the hell cares. I am going to sleep by 7 am today, so hurrah! I was up for 37 hours straight before my last bout of sleep, so this is improvement. Also, no plans for Sashthi, or Pujo, what with Queer as Folks and general lack of interest and disenchantment with the extreme frenzy, a sampler of which I saw yesterday while out on some errands: mikes from two pujas blaring on the street, women dressed in heavy silk saris with complete disregard about the weather and munching on any food they could lay their hands on regardless of whether it was good. 

I am displaying compulsive behaviour, but it's not out of control yet. 

It would be good to have sex before I leave this city.

I was looking at the stats of my blog today. Nobody reads my blog, like no one! I did change my address so that I could moan as much as I wanted without anyone finding out, but a big part of me does like being read, and being told I don't write too bad (!) My readership of two-and-a-half people dwindled to nothing when I decided I needed to hide, and that airing my feelings for public consumption was really not a good idea anymore, and that the whole business of honesty and putting myself out there to face the brickbats and the love, if any - well, all that was BS. I wouldn't change what I write to make it more consummable and not embarrassing to me, because I want to be able to write here about the same stuff, but some of it is rather naked, and I would rather not have people who I know but who aren't close friends, read it. I want lots of complete strangers to read it, though.
I watched a rather lovely movie yesterday. It was today really, cuz I watched it between 4 and 6 am. It's called Your Sister's Sister, and directed by a woman called Lynn Selton, and has a cast of 3 people: Rosemarie Dewitt, Emily Blunt, and my current crush, Mark Duplass. His surname will tell you that he must have at least some French in him, supported further by the fact that he is from New Orleans. He really is rather good looking and he plays a slimeball-ish midwife on The Mindy Project, my Thing to Watch of the moment. As they were saying in this long, lovely promo interview for the film, it has a lot of the actors as they are in reality, in the film.

Anyway, so, I was talking to this guy, a junior, gay, whom I've never met face à face; we've only spoken on chat and Facebook. With this guy, I can indulge all my curiosity (and fantasies) about homosexuality. He seems to live his life with an irresponsibility that I will never be able to muster. It would have been the dream once: fucking many, random people, who always seem to be available, with no emotions to worry about, with no social consequences. But after talking to him yesterday, such a life didn't seem so charming anymore. It seemed pointless, and then, scary. It must be so lonely to live your life with so few anchors. I was listening to this really charming and weird interview of Truman Capote with Robert Frost. (Who was asking him rather puerile questions, which would have passed off as charming and risque because it was 1969, and Capote was also very sportif about it. And I do think Americans enunciated their English better 40 years ago.) Listening to him answer Frost on whether he'd had more friendships or sexual liaisons, I wondered how lonely it must be, to die without a family and partner, or blood relations, when you are old and tired. My friend, this gay guy, he seems to be romping across continents with everyone he is attracted to, but then you imagine what would happen if this guy was sick, and needed people's help, but he's completely fucked himself out of the mainstream, and they wouldn't care if he lived or died.
I fear I was too open with him, and fear consequences, because Tinkerbell that he is, he has no responsibility to keep what I said to himself. He'll go "give somebody some goss" about this random senior who, do you know, said she was open to a homosexual experience, and that she thought everyone was potentially bisexual. Well, I don't suppose I said the last, though I believe so.

Footnote: Somebody on Facebook wrote about their first experience of tasting Golbarir kasha mangsho. I'll tell you my one and only experience of tasting Golbarir kasha mangsho. I used to work in Calcutta, then. On my day off, sad, depressed, because my kind, accommodating fuckwit of a boyfriend never spent enough time with me, and well, because it wasn't his day off, I buoyed myself up resiliently to go experience something I'd heard spoken about a lot. It was winter and I remember being cold, people looking at me strangely for being the only woman eating alone in that cubbyhole of a place in Shyambazar, and that the mutton was tough and very very very oily and the platter came with sweet tamarind pickle, which I think is completely pointless. By itself, going off to try kasha mangsho at Golbari's not such a terrible thing. I've gone to tonnes of places alone (and since realised that I am happier travelling and eating in company and that it need not be with my best friend or the person I am sleeping with). But the experience of Golbari is inflected with the frustration of working in Calcutta at a deadend job, when I wanted to a) go live in another city b) have a job I actually liked, and which I had a reason associated with the quality of the work, to keep. Most importantly, it was frustration for having tied my life with one who could not make me happy and did not care to try, for whom I was making all these compromises that took me further and further away from the person I wanted to be.
It has been a good thing, the break-up. Hugh Laurie's The Oranges, horrible movie though it was, had some moments which rang true. There is this point at the end of the film where Laurie's wife slaps his teenybopper girlfriend and then says, "Someday I'll thank you for this." That's how it's been for me. And though terrible things have followed, it is still a good thing that I am free of him.
Yesterday, I realised I didn't even feel that terrible hate towards him anymore. I think getting in touch with him, taking his help, and on occasion, talking with the old familiarity, has helped me move on from it. Yes, it feels like a bitch when he takes off for his trip to the Him-uh-laa-yas with his parents and wife, when I cried myself hoarse because I wanted to travel with him, but it doesn't occupy my thoughts beyond the occasional moment, and I can say I don't really care what he does.

This was not a footnote at all, and this post is longer than all permissible limits. It's the kind the mad momma writes, those which make me want to hurl the laptop. But then, hardly anyone comes here, and it's sort of my diary, so...

Everyone seems to be having fun, partners to hang with, handsome ones to be attracted to. Only I am sitting in my corner, with mistiris and myriad workmen as my companions, and desperately ignoring a deadline. I stink from not bathing, I don't have cigarettes at home and I haven't slept in 24 hours. And I am listening to Hugh Laurie:

He really is quite lovely, isn't he?

I haven't had sex in such a long time, and last year seems so far away and not so celebratory in hindsight. I don't want to have sex on those terms again. But it would have been nice to have a summer affair while I was here (as if that ever happens), but it's already getting time to leave and I am not ready to leave. I wish I could stay on for many more months.
Does everyone not get enough sex? That is a question I have pondered often. But you can't really ask, can you? It's seems voyeuristic and obscene. I wonder, do all my classmates and acquaintances having babies by the armloads, enjoy the sex? Or is it just to babymake, and enjoyment, if it happens, is a bonus? I am totally divorced from the worldly-wise, so this is something I shall never find out.
I will, however, watch Nobody Walks, which might be an annoyingly pointless movie, as Olivia Thirlby's maudlin acting suggests in the trailer.

I am almost done with getting our flat painted and repairing the myriad things that seem to fall apart continuously. But there is still a lot of work left on my mother's health front. And the dogs, the dogs. Sold off a trunk-full of my father's college notebooks (meticulously compiled, much in demand when he was in college, apparently) and books. The pages were falling apart in some, some had been eaten away. Mita took away a maths book, hoping, I think, it would be useful to her 7-year-old son at some point. Each to their own motibhrom. Sold off my college notes and xeroxes as well, mostly MA stuff. There's still all the BA stuff to sort through. Sold some books in College St as well. After 7 years, it is the time to let go. Another series of losses to begin one's days on a clean slate. To be wiped clean again after more loss and some more years spent cauterising it.
I discovered again this time that if you keep at something without letting up, even with fits of apathy, it gets done. If I were another person, I would have accomplished much in these months, but even so, the sum total isn't too bad. The break didn't happen: but then, you take the direction laid out for you, and this was pretty much an invitation to tie up loose ends. I connected with my ex: I have used as much of his help as I have needed. These are things it's best not to attach emotion to. I shall never forgive, but my present needs take priority over everything else. Who knows if there ever will be a setting right of things. There is no cosmic balance. Some people, too many people, live on the edge because that is the path laid out for them. Maybe there will never be a marriage, maybe it will always be taking care of ma, maybe I'll meet someone many years hence: jar jemon jibon hoy, resist kore labh nei.

The rest, you know. Meeting friends after a long time, spending more time with A than I have in many, many years. As if we were in hiatus from living. I wish this had lasted longer. O's present never seems so unbearable that she would need a hiatus from it. 

I never thought I'd quote from True Blood:

Sookie: To be honest, Alcide, I am not sure I know anything anymore. It's starting to feel like there's no rhyme or reason left in this world.
Alcide: That's what death does, whips the ground right from under your feet, makes you wonder if it was ever there to begin with. But it was, it'll come back.

I used to think, in very juvenile vanity, that I never regret. Because you are the way you are, and if you went back and found yourself in the same situation again, you'd do the same.
No longer. If I had another chance, I would go back and do it differently. But I won't pray, I won't ask for miracles again. There never are, only people, and their effort bearing fruit against the odds.

It's over. I am broken, and done. I will do what life enjoins me to do, I will try my best to take care of ma, but that part of me that hoped for new beginnings, that was grateful to be given the chance to love, I want it to become inert for a long time. I don't want this to happen again. Oh yes, I hope, I want it so much, but I don't want to take a step forward. If, at some point, I am totally alone, I will look for another to love. But never before that.
Life is nasty, brutish and short, as Thomas Hobbes said. If I had nothing left to lose, I would say, ar keno? Ebar toh shesh korlei hoy. I am resigned, for whatever else life chooses to throw at me, and there will be more. There is no point rebelling, you live the best you can, and when it's over -- your life, i.e. -- it is.

And I will never forgive myself, for all their deaths. Don't pretend, don't forget. Elide, perhaps, to survive, but don't let down your guard. Never create that bond again, never have a child, there will be no one to hold you when that one goes, and it will hurt more than a dog, that I can guarantee.

Have a will, create a trust for ma, so that she survives if something happens to you.

I am here to write about Jim Halpert. I meant to the last time, before I got diverted. It bothers me that I like him so much, because he is very similar to my ex. The same mild-natured, fun-loving, etc.
Thirty is so old to have that kind of crush like one did in school, when it just hurt and you didn't know why, and you knew no way of reducing the pain. Of course I can do other things, but one wants to moon, to think of this imaginary character, and wish for, I don't know what: definitely not the same kind of person again, but I dunno, the sweetness, good-lookingness, the fun? I can't imagine wanting to be with a person like him, he doesn't really excite one, yet I suppose, it's a fallout of being drawn to the same prototype. As A said, you look for improvements, but the skeleton remains the same.
I was feeling terrible because he was so similar to my ex, and it felt like a terrible betrayal that such people are ostensibly nice and easy to get along with, that nothing would make it obvious that they have the capacity to hurt you so. Yet, Jim does, doesn't he, in the way he barges in like a bull in a chinashop to declare his affections for Pam, and expects her to reciprocate. There is, of course, a 'normal' way to look at it, but I keep thinking that he was essentially callous.
Then, haha, there is also the crush on Krasinski, who seems of unnaturally buoyant mood and good humour: from his Twitter account, it would seem that nothing can get him down as he walks the straight and hard working path to success. You should watch his performance on Late Night show with Jimmy Fallon to understand what I mean. :D
Meanwhile, I wish I could get over this crush soon. It's destroying my routine.
I am going to AP tomorrow.

What I has been doing: it has all become too much, so it's time to write it in a list.

It's summer again, and today, I cut across the maath at India Gate from National Gallery of Modern Art, tramping down with my Roerichs and those sandals with small heels that still hurt sharply and with an insect bite that feels like someone's hammered a nail on your foot. It was lovely, notwithstanding foot hurting and emerging soreness of my inner thigh thanks to dubious condition of my leggings (don't ask): it was five-ish, the roddur had just stopped blasting through, and there wasn't a soul in sight. It was quite something:being in the heart of Delhi, and not have anyone around. I could probably have squatted and peed.
I was going to Bengali Market to meet my friend, R. I walked halfway, and then took an auto.
Places I went to today:
The Claridges, on Aurangzeb Road, which is very tree-lined and lovely
YWCA Kitchen, by Metro (felt rather nice after a long time), where I sat for two hours and methodically read through two issues of Eye, The Indian Express supplement and ate a rather nice platter of a lamb chop, a thick pork sausage (quite like a penis, if you ask) and a huge chicken patty, rather well-flavoured, and a milky cold coffee. Twenty-seven per cent added to the bill thanks to the legions of taxes with which you will be punished for eating out: it added about Rs 150 to the bill.
Thence, to NGMA, which was closing, so I walked straight, like a philistine, into the souvenir shop, and bought the Roerich prints I had been eyeing for so long. I will laminate and stick them up all around my room, so that I look at them and remember Ladakh. I wish I had time to look around at the photos. I didn't realise they would be so engaging. I just remember Amrita Shergill, Jamini Roy, Company paintings, Raja Ravi Verma and probably some Ramkinkar (such a lovely name) Baij from last time with O, when I slept on the yellow sofa.
Bengali Market turned out surprisingly nice, though Costa Coffee, with its industrial and tasteless peach iced tea and extravagant prices was intensely depressing. R came and ordered more gunk (she likes the gunk, and doesn't consider it to be gunk, obviously).
From there, we went to Pahargunj, which turned out rather nice, even though it had gotten to be desperately sultry by then, ar ami gorom e, amar tights er jalay ar pokar kamore hnaashphaash korchhilam. But, but, we bought shoes! Shoesses, soft ones, which  I never get. And she bought Kolapuri chappals, which she wanted. We walked down the main street to look at bags and clothes and earrings. We ended up The Metropolitan (where else) and she ate a rather tasty dish of chicken breast (always sounds obscene) and I had dubious caesar salad and ickily-sweet iced tea. We chatted for a long time, and then it was back home on a protracted journey where I couldn't wait to reach home and shed my tights.

It was a very full and enjoyable day, and I should really be asleep, but I am not.

This week has been harrowing because of the heat and The Office. I am considering hiring a rickety AC, because the cooler doesn't seem to be making much difference in 45 degrees centigrade. The Office has consumed my nights, even on days I have been very tired, like today. I have been watching John Krasinski's videos like an addlehead obsessive, though it has helped wear out the shine a bit.

In other news, dadu. A.
Are we really cool and special people that we fail to find someone good enough to live with? Are we independent and feisty and unable to compromise, or is it just sad that we haven't found kind, nice, fun people to share our lives with, and can't seem to be able to do with less.
It's annual sex time again, and I haven't found anybody. Hopefully it will be in better circumstances than last time.
I am enjoying living by myself. I was cooking a lot until this week's heat struck. 

This blog is where I have complained without restraint for the last six years. Here's some more.
I am in Hyderabad, have been for the last three days. The days have been a dazed blur. I must have met about 20 people, which is an 'only', and have come back meaning to fall asleep immediately, but keeping awake again till 2am. My job has become a wasteland. Why am I doing this professional harakiri? Why am I catering to the whims of my clueless boss? This is that juncture again. And I spoke to my ex, and result, it feels like I am back in that old place again. That desperate hurt that refuses to go, that bafflement at someone being able to do this with impunity. It's like I have to start it all over again, with a trip to McLeodgunj, ending in a long conversation in darkness, down sharp bends on a mountain road: conversations had again and again, with different people, examining the situation from varied angles, the need to talk, talk, talk it all away. At the end of which had come blessed relief, a scab that no longer hurt, and then there was Ladakh, and X and sex to wash it all away, and blossoming again into life, taking control and standing up, and being proud, so proud. And O and C and A. A being kind, and holding and listening, pulling me into her loving vortex and giving me relief I didn't even know I needed, C listening, listening, on those blistering afternoons when I stood on the balcony, and tried to find a method to the maze that I felt I had been pulled into, O repeating again and again and again, of love and strength and happiness, and hugging me, and bringing me along with her across Delhi: oh that lovely, scorching Delhi 2012 summer, winding through CR Park, Lajpat, old Delhi, kakima, Kutty and ma. And then I went away to Ladakh, and I went away again, and slowly things fell in place.
That was what it took to stand up again. You can't re-run that gamut. I haven't the wish, I don't want to repeat. I want to be able to shed him, shed all the mens who do this. This summer will be hard enough without. There can't be this added masala to the madness.

I was going to begin this with 'Dear Sir', since I write official emails all day. Life seems to be closing in, having caught me in its grasp. The flat requires too too much work, which I don't think I can manage while holding down the responsibilities this job entails. Is suicide an option? Just saying.
Aar parchhi na. An infantile parent, an undisciplined dog, the flat, the job, not enough money, the need for a lot more money, the fear of whether I can do this alone, the longing for someone to share this. What have I done? What am I doing? When will this ever finish? When will I ever be free? I really really really want to be free. I had hoped to leave my job and go away to Ladakh this year. But I can't. I have to stay in Delhi all of this year.
My leave, if I get two weeks' leave, will have to be spent in Kolkata, getting the flat, the myriad payments and investments in order. That travel will have to be timed with court appearances, so that we are in Delhi when we have to be in court. After the initial court work is over (or so the lawyer blithely said), I can take my family back to Kolkata and leave them there.
Yes, people die, people go mad. I still have sanity, I have food, a roof over my head, parent and dog are very well within the bounds of manageability. Kintu, kintu: one will admit this is a lot for one person. A person who does not enjoy responsibility, who does not get her kicks out of solving twenty problems at once, who would rather have mental peace than a fat paycheck.

Summer will pass with Ladakh turning all sunshiny and ethereal again, and I will be here. Maybe winter 2013 for the long trip.

Dear baba,

Seven years to that day. I hope you are happy where you are. We never do anything to remember that day, because till now, your absence was lived by us all the time, in varied ways. If I were alone, though, I would have done something. I would have gotten a nice photo of you framed: my favourite is the one of you laughing. We hardly have any photos of you. And I would have done something: lit a dhoop in the room, remembered you, ki jaani. Like I am remembering you now. A status message about Aminia brought back that afternoon, when I was in school, and ma wasn't with us, when we had gone there for food, a rare treat. We ordered the Aminia Special, which you said was their best dish, which you knew from your college days. But what arrived was a piece of meat in jhol, with a floating onion and tomato alongside, and you lamented how standards had gone bad. And I now think that your visits to Aminia must also have been rare treats, money being as scarce as it was then.
It is hard to construct a father as a person, dear father, when he is no more. And there are only memories to be revisited and reconstructed, examined in different ways at different times in your own life, as you feel more tolerant and greater longing for a man who is no longer there in flesh and blood, with his idiosyncracies, malices, anger, demons. Deaths can never be reconciled. Are the dead benign presences, or do they change into malicious gamechangers? One hopes for the former, one hopes strongly that one's parent remains a benign presence, or often, not even that. 
Life has taken such a turn, dear father, that one can no longer imagine what it would be like to have you around with me at 30. I would have been another person. Now, we concentrate on keeping ma alive, we grow to love her more even as we fight more than ever. We love our dog, or daughter, the star of our lives who brings two women together. This is my family, baba. 
I have thought of you when times were hard, when paths are difficult to tread. I pray for your love, I curse you for leaving me, I think of what you would have said if you had seen me thus. I am sure you would have held me close this time last year, kept the world at bay and condemned those who broke my heart. If you are close by, you must be appalled by the way I have been leading my life these many years, how close to the edge I tread. You would think of why I do this, and you would also know. And you would let me have my way, you would know that each one lives their life, baba. You know, I would accept death the way you accepted death, without thinking of protesting. Like you, I think I accept what life gives me. It feels warm to know we are tied in this, baba. 
Oh baba, the mystery of living. Tumi ki more giye bujhte perechho er mane ki? Shei orangutan tar chhobi dekhechho, je matha dheke agun theke bachte cheshta korechhilo: dekhte thik manusher moton. Ei koshter kothay kon mane achhe, baba? Tobu eta notun noy. As long as there has been life, there has been pain and brutality. Are we a particularly despicable species? Would it help if, like the Poor Priest, one were to spend one's life atoning for the sins of others?

I have taken to smoking, though only up to 3 a day. No reason save that I like it. 
And as I grow older, I hope I will better accept how dire this living this.

Bhalo theko, baba.

So, I must have written here that I am relationship-free now. I am here to say that after reading this blog that I do, I am glad once again that I am, because I too was going to settle for a lifetime of loneliness and far worse things besides. It would have been a shame to give up so much of my space and dreams to live with a piece of shit.

খুব কাশি হচ্ছে। ফ্লপি পাশে শুয়ে আছে। এমন সব সময় মনে হয় কাউকে যদি বলা যেত এই তিনটের সময়, "শোন, আমার কাশতে কাশতে গলায় জালা করছে, গায়ে একটু একটু ব্যথা করছে।" কিন্তু বাবাকে হারানো মানে এই privilege lose করা। আর কৌশিক কে না বলতে পারা হয়ত খারাপ না।
Well, I feel small and rather sorry for myself. If I were F, I would have curled up like her and stuck close to my human.

This was quite a weekend. If all weekends were like this life would be fine, bearable even. On Sunday, I went for the mother of daywalks, through Asola wildlife sanctuary. With Linus. L navigates by googlemaps, and he navigates. Me, I find out about the route, see if it works for me and go alone. I did not find much information on the Net and presumed that L didn't rely on googlemaps alone. So, net net, we were stamping through barely-there tracks, cutting through REALLY thorny branches, with innumerable scratches and thorns in our shoes. I expected - and found that L did too - it to be a 2/3-hour walk at most. I took 600 ml of water, accordingly and munchies. In the event, it turned out to be a daylong thing, with me wondering constantly whether we would be able to get out while there was light. I was thirsty and hadn't pottied, which together I find quite incapacitating. Anyway, it wasn't all that bad, because we walked almost constantly, our longest break must have been 15 minutes long, and though at moments I felt very tired, it didn't come to the point where I did not care, or thought I couldn't go anymore. Must have been close, though. L has done this often at home in Sweden, and he was fairly confident throughout that we would come out at the west. He knew which was west, for one. We found much to chatter on about, and he was a really nice companion, I have no idea how. I can't point out particular aspects of him which make it easy to get along with him, or things which I might have in common with him. Maybe he was just polite. Turned out, we had walked about 7 km, though it felt like 10. The objective was to reach one Bhardwaj Lake, marked on googlemaps, which we didn't - we skirted around it unknowingly - but we did pass one huge lake towards the beginning, before we entered Asola - probably the CITM lake 1- and saw 2 big, but very shallow, drying-up lakes and one biggish, full lake before we left. We started our walk from the opposite of a college on Pali Road, down a track that began with an open garbage dump. About 10 minutes' walking took us to the first CITM lake. Surajkund is close by, apparently. We met people who were coming back, some of whom were appreciative, some condescending, one who joyously called us lovebirds. But once past the first lake, we didn't encounter a soul, except a goat herder in the beginning, and construction workers at the end, near the place which is supposed to be a 'shelter' for monkeys who are picked up from across the city to be dumped here.
Our only companions were cows, and L said we could rely on them, but they might not be in a hurry to go west and get out, like us, right? We found them at 3 points on our way: once, when the path we were on abruptly ended where the land seemed to have sunk a couple of feet and there were cows on the other end. I politely declined the offer to go down on our bums and climb up the other end, though in retrospect, it was as easy as some of the harder stuff we did. The other point was where we were picking our way through rocks and thorny branches, and there was a cow who wanted to pass. We looked at each other for a bit. It waited and then went along, through the thorns as if they were light leaves. I now know cows are thick-skinned. The third was when we were walking through even denser bush and suddenly there were cows leaping alarmedly out of L's way. They were not reassured at all by what he had to say, viz., what's the matter, cow, etc.
The tracks, such as they were, were barely broad enough for a person to pass through, and you had to remove thorny branches out of the way. I acquired a stick - a thorny branch with no thorns at one end, where I held it - to get the branches out of my way, but L used his hands pretty much. By the end of the walk, his hands were completely scarred and very red. For a plump person, he is quite fit and agile. Parts of the way were rocky. We climbed up and down the rocks. There was a spot, towards the end of the way, a shady clearing (and we had almost no shade throughout, which made one very thirsty) with cool, black stones at one end. We just rested our bodies along it. The stones were heavenly. I couldn't have yearned for anything else at that moment. But that was about 10 minutes, and soon I was back to saying which animal I would like to be at that moment (at various points along the route, I had wanted to be a cow, a dog, a monkey and a bird, depending on the terrain and how hot and thirsty I felt). Around this part, there were the remains of an old wall. Perhaps this used to be the earlier border of the sanctuary?
We found several feathers along the way, or rather L did, and I picked them up. I would like to get them identified. We also saw a nilgai, an eagle which I couldn't identify, babblers, I think, and birds which I found later were Oriental Magpie Robins. We heard peacocks too.
L brought cinnamon buns which he had baked. I ate one of that, and my biscuits. No, they weren't cinnamon buns. Something else, but same mix of spices.
The last kilometre or so was on an earth road for vehicles. That's when we started feeling the aches and pains. We came out at Bhatti gaon. They have put up a continuous, huge, green plastic wall to demarcate the sanctuary from the village. It is quite a monstrosity, but people have made holes along the bottom of it. There are also gates. We met several pigs at this end, and man, were they scared when they saw us creeping along through the trees. One adult squealed and ran for its life #stupid peeg. The piglets with their dirty feet merely took us in with beady eyes. And then there was a black dog with a collar, who was very territorial. He wouldn't stop barking because we were there, although we were being quite fleet-footed. He meant business, alright. His mouth looked scary, shattered, like someone had bashed it in at some point.
I was quite glad to be out of this typical Jat village. We had dosas at Naivaidyam in Hauz Khas village and I rapidly called it a day, because I was feeling very odd by then, what with the no water, no sleep and no potty. I would like to go back again.
Long narratives make me fed up.

P.S. I liked Skyfall. It's quite grand, Judi Dench's extreme dodderiness and Ralph Fiennes's constant pottyface notwithstanding. I wonder what it is with Daniel Craig. He is quite charmless, has ears that stick out: he definitely fits the prototype of the East European goon far better. Yet one likes him. Maybe it's the suits, maybe the humane thing gets to people. Skyfall the droughty estate is beautiful.

The most beautiful thing

Faye Wong in Chunking Express