hmmm.
i'm also messed up because he's gone.
to barcelona. for 11 days. no big deal. right?
RIGHT. WRONG. MOPE.
the bastard. walking in and out of my existence like that.
i'm going to be very stoic.
to hell with him. with men.
someone asked me out last weekend, and then insisted that i
go with him to his fucking farmhouse in fucking alibag.
and then gill says cos i seem like someone who doesn't care
about the rules. or anything. like i can do whatever. mostly.
but not with some rich fuck at his effing farmhouse in alibag.
i have standards.
and i like being asked.

so he said barcelona on sunday. and i thought
you're leaving me.
of course, of course he said before he told me he did
that he'll go on the 9th, so why did i gasp and think
you're leaving me.
he's not with me to be leaving him.
shitshitshit.
i'm moping. MOPING. in capitals.
why does he have to mess with me?

i'm going to be stoic.
very much so.
and i'll try not to talk about him to
random strangers.
which i did today. oh what a fool i am.

if you're in bangalore, you must go to Koshys.
if i were in barcelona i'd be with him.

que sera.
sera.

shitfuckpiss.

2:59 on the clock. computers are good and easy because you can always tell the time - even if it is the wrong time. if it's the wrong time, it can be philosophically argued if it even matters - because, think about it, you don't know which of the thousands of alternate realities you're living in, at any given moment.

of course, all that's bullshit when you're late for somewhere or something. of course you stop believing in that when you run into the same people in all the realities. shouldn't there be hippies and aliens and elvis at some point? because, in an alternate universe, elvis should be alive, we should all wear tie-and-die and be spreading love and Moulder and Scully should be busy making little alien babies.

The question of Are We Alone should be answered, no? it should be pretty obvious that we are.

the little child running around, playing in the sand. the little child sitting squalling, being buried in a bit of sand. the little kid grinning for the camera, sitting on the horse on the merry-go-round.

looking at the old pictures, i cannot let go. i try to replicate.

but the child is all grown up, and struggling to replicate. the child grins madly, now grown up, with a mind of her own. doing as she pleases. staring strangers in the eye. trying to capture their moments, because they didn't. grinning at thanks offered casually by parents of other strangers, sitting on mini ferris wheels, half scared, half overjoyed.

the grown up child wonders if she wouldn't mind a ferris-wheel ride.

memory

Ronny wakes up to realise it’s a dream.

Flames rose from the ground, consumed everything that he could see. He’s Bengali, and so he thinks, Gelusil. He thinks it’s acidity. There’s nothing in the night to suggest that it could be acidity. Except the acrid taste of smoke that’s set in the back of his throat. He wonders if this is hallucination, but he hasn’t smoked in over twenty four hours, so it could well be a craving. He gets up, and his fingers look behind the books on his shelf. Nothing.

Wonders, he does, whether he finished it all. Suddenly, his throat wonders what the Classic Mild tastes like. He looks again behind the books. He can’t fine the little Goldflake packets. God bless Indian cigarette sellers. He rations cigarettes, our Ronny does. Pulling one out of a little box every time he can’t fight that feeling. Running into the toilet, standing on the commode, his face inches away from the exhaust fan. God forbid they find out. But maybe they did. He can’t find the little box anywhere.

Ronny tries and tries to remember what box it was. If it were the Goldflake box, it’d be small. And if that were the case, maybe he’d look through the bookshelf again. Slipping his bony fingers as far as they could reach behind the volumes of Kafka and Camus. Not that he’s read much of either. He read Metamorphosis, and considered himself the guru on Kafka. He read the Cahiers, and wondered if he was Albert Camus, living on the colonial French sea shore, wondering about the weather and life. It’s summer, and nearly 5 AM. The dogs on the streets are getting restless, and rickshaws and cars pass, puncturing the silence of the night.

Ronny’s bony little fingers, they grope into the depths of his bookshelf. And grope at nothing but air. A little sliver of doubt passes his mind – he passed out drunk. Did his mum get to the books before he did? Mother,when she sets her face with a disapproving frown. Her brother, Prakash, is a drunk. When Ronny visited them three summers ago, him and his cousin emptied the bottle of whiskey halfway, and filled it with water. His uncle, the psychological drunk, got drunker than ever, and laughed at Ronny’s attempts to be invisible the whole time. When Ronny left their house a few days later, it was the end of all cousinly summer vacations.

Wondering if 5 AM panic is justified, Ronny tries to think of something else to ease his mind. He thinks of his cousin Shreya, the one who’s wanking his elder brother. He wonders if he should feel sick, but ends up feeling nothing. He remembers a tented sheet over his brother’s waist, and small, almost inaudible gasps that his cousin makes as his brothers hands do god-knows-what to her. Incest is necessary, Ronny thinks, and laments that he has no younger cousin to help him pass through adolescence or teenage. Then, as if remembering why he woke up at nearly 5 AM, he rummages around one last time behind the bookshelf. Nothing.

He looks under his pillow, inside the pillow cases, under and in-between the mattresses, and through his drawer. And there’s nothing. He tries his best to remember what packet he was smoking out of. He wonders if it’s a pack of Classic Milds or if it’s Classic Milds pretending to be anything from Goldflakes to Davidoff to Marlboro. He can’t remember. All he remembers is his cousin passing him the smallest bottle of Old Monk. 180 litres. Rupees fifty three. And the sound of breaking glass as he threw it out after he finished it. And stumbling into his bed, trying to fall asleep to soft but ecstatic sounds his cousin makes as his brother’s hand does things to her. He looks over at them, but they’re sleeping now. He doubts his brother knows he has been drinking. He’d been talking to his betrothed while Ronny was getting drunk. Ronny blushes a little thinking of the word betrothed. But that’s better than fiancé. He hates fiancé.

He looks around, trying to plot a route over the sleeping bodies of his cousins and his brother. He needs to find his cigarette packet before the 6 AM alarm on his mother’s annoying UFO looking alarmclock rings. The route he plots is circuitous, though he knows he can as good as walk over them, and they won’t budge. Summer vacations are excruciating. He does his little balancing act and reaches his drawers. His hand gropes once again, blind in the darkness. He finds a matchbook. He wonders if he should light a match to help him look, but just then, his other cousin mumbles in his sleep. Something about being James Bond and wanting a strong tea, and he nearly drops the matchbook. The Bond cousin mutters just once more in his sleep and turns to his other side, facing Ronny. And continues muttering. A courier service van passes outside, and Ronny curses the fates under his breath. And matchbook held tightly in his left fist, continues to make his way to the bed, and peers into the darkness under it. He stretches out his right hand, and paws at the floor, as if the accursed cigarette packet will show up if he paws hard enough. Sure as the earth is round, it doesn’t, and Ronny takes it in his stride.

Gingerly, he uprights his body, and shoves his fingers through his slightly overgrown hair. God bless summer vacations – his mother hasn’t mentioned a haircut yet. He retraces his steps to the feet of his sleeping cousins. By now his eyes are accustomed to the dark and they’re looking wildly for the elusive little pack, and now that his brain is awake, he remembers vaguely that his cousin hands him a big-ish box, Classic Milds. Filled with five Classic Milds. And a copy of illegal music downloads. He smoked it at the window. Three out of the five sticks of Milds.

this and that.

"Who she?" I want to ask him, but i hold my tongue, it has a habit of getting ahead of itself. Naturally, in the present place that we are in our relationship, I can't be asking questions. Nor can he. But then, he doesn't. And I'm curious.

He's talking now about Casino Royale. My fault. I said, "do you want to come over later and watch Casino Royale? I've finally decided I like the new Bond." Of course, he said no.

"Poor Bond," he's saying now.

"Why poor?"

"He loses his only love..."

"Hahahaaha. You're feelin' sympathetic, are you?"

"...and then realises she didn't love him at all."

"But she does care for him," I say, wanting to add that, "maybe yours didn't care for you at all," but I don't. Because I dont know if she did. Maybe she did care. Frankly, I'm thinking I want some more chai. The sunlight is making it all seem exceedingly relaxed.

"But she does care for him," I say again.

"Only a little. Her true love is that Algerian guy, who gave her that bracelet, who she was trying to save."

"You gave me a post card, which I saved."

We're sitting at the window. An empty street outside, with a few birds chirping. Yesterday, at this time, it was hot enough to have sweat trailing down your back when you sat under the fan. Today, the sun licks my face with a dry tongue, and the breeze teases my just-washed hair.

"I'm going to make some more chai," I say, and get off the ledge, stride to the kitchen with a sense of purpose that I didn't really feel.


i lock the door behind me and i take a deep breath, and plunge my head into the bucket full of cold water, and i let out the loudest scream i possibly can. it goes on and on and on, and my eyes are open so i can see bubbles forming, fragmenting my scream, taking it to the surface and letting it out of the water. suddenly, as the bubbles hit the surface, suddenly, there's a loud eruption of my voice, strangely distorted, as if hearing it under water makes it heavier, louder, deeper, wider.


Making chai mechanically hasn't ever happened with me because I always forget where the adrak [ginger] is and then spend atleast five minutes looking for it.


I go back to my room, with two mugs of chai. I'm slightly disconcerted to find he is still there. He's sitting in the evening sunlight, pointing his camera outside the window. It occurs to me that there's a temple outside my house, red and yellow, shaded by a beige building built in the same semi-Grecian blockish structures that most builders are so taken by these days. It occurs to me that architects don't really do much these days. I say as much. He looks up at me, and says, "That's a piece of shit."

I place his mug in front of him. The mug has a dog on it. "So tell me a newly constructed building whose architechtural brilliance had you blinded."

"I wasn't talking about the architecture."

"Ah. Do go on then."

"The problem with you is that you can't take things as what they seem to be when they are all they seem to be."

I am silent. The sky is pinkening slightly, and the breeze is rarer. I pick up a cigarette and light it. I like to think doing something not immediately related to him shows refusal to respond. My fifth standard English teacher would have said "I will not dignify that with a response." [In the fifth standard, we scrambled for our dictionaries as soon as we went home, those of us whose questions ere not dignified with a response.]

"The girl did not love Bond. Perhaps she didn't even care for him per se, but rather out of humanitarian beliefs thought of helping him out. Eventually."

"You may not remember, blessed as you are with selective memory among other things, that she died eventually."

"So see, it was all pointless, because the Algerian died too. And she died."

"So what's your point?"

"Tell me what you want from me. Because I'll give it to you."

Looking back, that was probably a line fit for the movies, the beginning of something overwhelming. It would have been a lot more than just this. Sitting in limbo, shooting the breeze. It cold have been a lot less than that, making a man in a bid to save another that you loved.

"Nothing. I don't want anything from you."

"Okay then," he said, in the evening light, through cigarette smoke, and packed up his stuff and left.

car passing, the first sound that registers in a long while. X sits, staring at the screen, thinking up words like she has been doing for the last few weeks. it's a repetitive process - image => words => nothing.

the image is unformed, she says to herself; then she forgets. the image and the words it tries to cough up. there seems to be an ingrained sort of restlessness that threatens to become a constant for the current year. only in the third month, and her feet feel lost if they don't tap. her entire body is still, like that bird that pretends to meditate, or like the crocodile that lays with it's mouth open in the sun, or a cockroach. she hates cockroaches, but she cannot help but think her legs are taking on the role of the cockroachy antennae, her entire body is still but her legs cannot help but tap tap tap. or just kind of play with the air. move. like tapdance, but not hit the ground.

restlessness is the labour of love. it takes a lot in this day and age to not be restless, yet a restlessness of any substance is quite difficult to achieve. a restlessness of more than mediocrity is born perhaps out of a need to do too much but a want to do nothing. there is a degree of laziness involved. a degree of self preservation, and a moment of impatience at one self. and a major deficiency in planning. if one has a need to do something, and no self preservation or that one moment of impatience that makes you want to fuck it all, and can plan, and follow that plan in orderly fashion, well you couldn't possibly be restless even if you tried.

but to have a plan, to feel the need to execute it, to go into it without care, but then eventually not want to do it. that is leavign tons of pent up energy. all in your body, all fired up and ready for... well, nothing. that leaves you like X. sitting in front of the computer screen. taptaptaptapping the keyboard with her fingers, and the swirling the air with her feet. one foot at a time and then both feet. repeat process.

her IM windows have a lot of green. everyone's online. everyones not busy. conversation starters are ready. cat, doll, book, justin timberlake, paki cricket coach, sri lanka v/s bangladesh, possible trip to rome. there is a need to talk, to put all that into words, and possibly stop her feet from exhausting themselves. however. there isn't a want.

Self G

Self G
Originally uploaded by mycrotchetyluv.

Let’s have a party, she says and she twirls on those impossibly high heels with that tattered old summer dress hanging off her skinny shoulders. In the afternoon light, it looks a bit yellowed, as if it’d been buried in someone’s closet for years and years under heaps of newer, shinier, brighter clothing. Which of course it had been.

Out of fondness, and perhaps with the enduring air of a patronising bastard, I ask her, for what? And the dreamer jumps, squeaks as though startled to see me there, to hear my voice. What? she squeaks. Like a mouse nibbling at your ears for a bite to eat. Now I know this analogy may strike you as inspired, but what can I say, I had a mouse once, when I was not more than perhaps six years old.

What party, I repeat. Why do you want one? And the squeak dies out of her eyes and the imagination lifts her lips into a smile, and she says, I want conversation, and wine. Sparkling, resplendent conversation, and sparkling, resplendent wine. And lots and lots and lots of dancing, and she ends with what she assumes is a pirouette. Sometimes when she gets like this, I forget that she is that skinny brat with her rat’s tail of a braid hanging limp and long down her spare shoulders.

And why would you want that conversation and wine and dancing, when you don’t talk well enough, aren’t old enough and can’t dance? You think I’m cruel? That’s quite alright with me, because, my dear interested party, she doesn’t care a whit. Right after what I said, instead of that joy dimming down to a flicker, she comes and squats in front of my chair where I smoke my pipe and watch her through slitted eyes, (excuse me but I like to portray myself as some kind of hero). She squats right down, her silly overlarge flower-patterned summer dress hanging from between her thighs, and grins. In that moment, she looks like the child she is. And through that mile wide grin she bubbles up that she wants to hear the sounds, see the sparkle of jewels – diamonds, rubies, emeralds and crystal wine glasses with almost jewel-like wine tumbling in them… she is old enough to know that at these parties, wine tumbles. Not flows, and nor is it poured. It is tumbled from those elegant bottles into those clear goblets, filling them to the brim until they overflow, something I consider highly tasteless and gaudy. And then,, she giggles that she wants to watch those fat obnoxious mummies dripping in gaudy oversized jewellery, and stuffed into those imported silk-and-fur dresses make fools of themselves as they try and snag a dance with one eligible bachelor after another. How does she know so much? Well, I being the distinguished member of my community that I am, I know, and so, I tell her.

Her teachers tell me I influence her greatly, up unto the extent that she questions their authority over a subject everytime some opinion or other does not concur with mine. They tell me she is difficult, headstrong and quite honestly, largely unaware of her age. Is it true? I don’t know. You tell me. Sometimes, when I’m tending to my flowers in the backyard, and I turn around for some tool or other, I see her playing in the mud, talking to herself, covered in filth from head to toe. Other times, when there is company for dinner, she is Miss Manners herself, sitting like an angel at the table, obliging my guests with smiles at their clever jokes and at some of their not-so-clever ones as well. And still, when I keep her away from chocolates for a day, I have a tantrum awaiting me at night, and she won’t let me in her room, let alone tuck her in. And then, the very next day, if it were a Sunday, she’s up at the crack of dawn, has cooked us a lovely breakfast, and is poring over the Sunday crossword or reading one of the poetry books in that huge chair by the window of our library.

Suffice it to say, I mostly have to surprise her, so I know what mood she is in.

it's shattering to be constantly reminded of your own mediocrity, in a way that's very quiet. the shattering, i mean, is very quiet. it's one of those soundless moments in the movies where you can see something go terribly wrong, and no one is doing a thing about it. or one of those moments in life, where things are spiralling out of hand so fast, and so loud, that all the noise that comes out of it is like white-noise, and while you can see the one way out of it is to turn off something, you're loathe to actually do it, because all that chaos is so soothing. maybe it's because all that noise has a way of dulling that constant reminder.

phone panda

phone panda
Originally uploaded by mycrotchetyluv.

my cousin went to Beijing last month, and froze his ass on the Great Wall of Whatsit. He then went to the zoo, where they threatened to throw him out, because the panda eventually complained about the freak with the cell phone and video camera. so outside the zoo, apparently, he saw these phone jewellery pandas, and brought them along for "all the ladies of the house".

my phone panda now hangs on my phone. and when i'm walking and talking [handsfree and i don't get along], it keeps hitting my ear. constantly.

it's a good reminder of what family is all about. the said cousin is not talking to our uncle currently, because they are having what is known in polite company as a disagreement. i believe my cousin was yelling and shouting and turning purple. normally, such tantrums are quite acceptable, but my cousin's somewhere in his mid-40s. his tantrums are pretty awesome. they end in hospital visits. nothing never happens. but everyone gets worried.

whatever. i'm on uncle's side. i get wi-fi for it.

oh gawd.

i'm so lame.