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.

lanterns at horniman

lanterns at horniman, originally uploaded by mycrotchetyluv.

Horniman Circle Gardens has always been special to me. The first time I ever went there, I was awed. The gardens are not very big, but they're circular, with four quadrants, and huge trees these large stalks creeping up the sides. I wanted to lie on the grass and stare at the sky, with trees and leaves infringing the frame. We had a performance there. I'd never been to Horniman before, and I was nineteen. But I was - am - bohemian. So, when they were setting up, after we did a dry run (and dry run is correct, seeing as how we were supposed to do the entire play in a tray made of water), and then some of them left to get coffee et al. I elected to stay back, because i decided to draw the trees.

I went back more often then, for the theatre. They held their festival there that year, and me being the youngest and newest volunteer, they pushed me off into the non-troublesome sector. I was supposed to keep an eye on the exhibition, and chill at a bookstore they'd set up there. There were these two boys, who brought us tea from a stall nearby. I remember I read Asterix to them. The bext time ever. Then, we drew what we could, and laughed ourselves silly.

That was two years ago. Last evening, returning from work, I took the outer route walking to the station. Passed the garden, saw the lights. Decided I wanted to go. So there you are.

Inside the closed room they sat, their bodies curled, in the shape of foetuses, knees drawn up, hands together in a prayer, chin halfway down to touching their collarbones. Their eyes open, they look at each other unblinkingly.

Inside her eyes, he sees a wealth of nothing. He wonders if he should touch her. Outside the room, the wind chases away its demons, ripping at everything that was stupid enough to remain standing. Like the trees – the tall, tall coconut trees. The rain knocks repeatedly at the walls and maybe it wants to be let in.

He wonders if he should touch her.

The room is closed. There is no light. Were the windows, or the doors open, there would still be none. The storm has chased away light, the people whispered. The pious held on to their beads. In their own houses, inside their own rooms, behind boarded windows and tightly locked doors.

The boy and the girl are not pious. If you were a fly on the wall, you would see that they were scared. Not pious. They sit on the floor, in that empty room, and listen to the sound that travels in through the walls, and worry that the walls will collapse, or that lightning will burn the ceiling down. The girl, she starts rocking back and forth, but her body still has the foetus like form it seems to have adopted.

The boy worries about the girl. Fear seems to have made her hair flat (albeit soft), and her eyes empty. He wants to tell her there isn’t anything to worry about. But he’s so scared himself. With every sound from outside – it is the only sounds he can here – the winds chasing up and down the roads, the rain knocking, knocking, knocking, trying to trick them out into the open – with every sound, his fear grows more real. He is not a coastal boy. Out in the mainland, the storms are not so mammoth.

Between the boy and the girl, there is a candle. It is the only one they have. She pushed it at him an hour ago. It’s only been an hour. He looks at the melting wax, and wonders if it is melting faster than it should. It’s only been an hour since the candle, and he wonders if he should snuff it. But it seems to be all that is keeping him from crying for his mother. It is all that is keeping her in light.

The boy and girl, they are here in this coastal town on a holiday. They are not very old, and their parents are not sure where they are. The boy and the girl, they have run away. The girl has a great aunt, who gave her the keys to her home in the little town, and they took a train and two buses to get there. The boy has some money. The girl got some from her great aunt. Miles away, in the city where they live, the girl’s parents are raging at the great aunt, quite like the storm outside. This is when the boy lit the candle. They are asking her, and very loudly so, what she was thinking, to have let a couple of kids go off like that. And they want to know what they will say to the boy’s parents when they find out that their relative has given the key. That was an hour ago. An hour has passed since, and the great aunt has passed away. A heart attack – her third, and, as doctors will say, fatal. The girl’s mother will continually remain bitter about the fact that the old woman died smiling, and without answering them. The old woman knew a cat, who lives in the neighbourhood, who stalked into her house, looking for some food, and in the way of cats, some company.

At this moment, the cat is curling up in the lap of the dead old woman, who will be found sitting in her chair, in another five minutes, by the girl’s father. He will walk in, alarm the cat, who will jump up on him, scratching his new suit, and then scramble away, and they will never see her again. Because the man did not look at the cat to notice anything distinguishing, so even if he saw her again, he wouldn’t know it was the same cat who ruined his new suit. But he will, to everyone who asks, tell the story of how some crazy cat tried to claw him dead when he was in shock at finding his aunt dead. Truth is, he will be completely clinical about it, and do his duty as her most able living relative. All his life, his wife will resent that. All his life, his daughter will try and ask him about the cat.

At the precise moment that the old woman died, the boy touched the girl. As a touch, it was as chaste as you could get, in today’s day and age. As a touch between this boy and this girl, it was as monumental as it could get, as the boy has never touched the girl. As the old woman’s breath hitches for the last time, in a hiccup like sound, the boy lifts his hand, and passes it from the right side of the candle, and touches her forearm. The girl says nothing, continues to rock, and her eyes are still empty, and still almost unblinking. As the cat enters the old woman’s house, through the window of her living room, and gingerly steps around all those little trinkets that old women collect as a testament to their years, the boy rests his hand on her forearm, and then grips it, a light and comforting grip. The girl stops rocking back and forth. An almost silence settles in the closed room, and the boy holds his breath. The cat purrs, rubbing herself against the open doorway of that room, where the old woman is dead on her favourite chair that facing the window, her body basking in the evening sun. In the closed room, in the sudden hush, the girl looks at the boy, for the first time since the storm started that morning.

The cat, she finds the old woman, rubs her head against the old woman’s feet, in an uncharacteristic moment, gives her left big toe a little lick, and then lithely jumps into the woman’s lap, curls up, and goes to sleep. In the closed room, the boy, and the girl, they sit, in their foetus-like positions. The girl is still, and looking at the boy. The boy is holding her hand, in candle light.

And the devil has stopped knocking on the rooftop.

Chronology of female love. (for G, the Wiser.)

when i was younger, they said love was easy.
they said love comes to everyone, because there is someone for everyone.

they walked in gaggles of giggles, and they gossiped about the people on tv. no, not the detectives, or the single women fighting battles in men's worlds, but the rich families where everyone slept with everyone else, in the pretext of looking for love. that was when they believed that love was a thing of forever, and sometimes those sluts who looked for love in everyone's bed, or on everyone's couches, or everyone's kitchen tables, saunas, boardrooms or balconies, well, just sometimes, they got in the way of love.

that was also when their hackles went up, and they got so offended, when the pimply faced class hero, touted to be the next, and most successful sports captain, went up to one of their dreamy, pretty selves, loved and adored like rockstars, and proposed his undying love.

at that time, all of us - the class hero, the girl he claimed to love, who sensationally slapped him for his forwardness, her adoring gaggle, and the rest of us who usually watched their antics wide-eyed - we believed him when he said he'd love her forever.

a few years passed, and they all wondered if it was a bit of a war. some of them were still the adoring gaggles, but some others had become the adored, with everyone including the geeks and the sidekicks turning to look as they passed. but the class heroes (yes, there were more'n one, and of course, they were best friends) now no longer got slapped. and their pimples soon disappeared, and they read out poetry they wrote, about their infatuations, for girls they met at the swimming pool. the sidekicks too, got lovesick letters, and there were loudly exclaimed "ewwww's" when the senders were discovered. that was when my uncle, he pulled me aside one family evening, and sternly forbade me from accepting anything shaped like a rose or a heart. i do believe it was the 13th of february, and he considered his advice fair warning.

eventually, we got past the back stabbing, and the boyfriend stealing, and the unanswered questions, and finished school. we all believed then, that now, love would be easy. and love would come to everyone, because it's a big world out there, with more than the 20 boys in class, and more importantly, the 10 acceptable ones.

that was when we lived on wishful thinking, and believed we would be friends forever. eventually we grew up, and stopped talking. eventually, we grew into sheep, or into individuals, and eventually, we had nothing to say to each other over coffee. except reminiscing about who we loved, and how we loved.

no one talked about anything current. except the headgirl of our year who will eventually marry the house prefect she was seeing since back then. it was accepted, and understood, that if you were happy in a relationship then, well, it wasn't going to last, because there really were many many boys in school, and now that you're in the big world, there were only some, because now, more than ever, it applied that there was someone for everyone.

we fell in love, we thought, when we didn't have a choice. we handpicked for ourselves, our personal objects of attraction. we teased, and we taunted, and we turned coy like fucking ingenues. we thought we were so bleeding original. we thought we were the cat's whiskers, until they broke our hearts. or we grew tired of them. there was only so coffee, and hanging in canteens that we could bear before fickleness overtook and our gaze looked elsewhere even as we proclaimed undying love.

then came the rare specimen, and lust hit like a sucker punch in the gut, and we were left all but gagging, at whatever drew us most. soon, the source of attraction shifted base to the mind. there were friends, brothers, who we'd adore - one for his body, the other for his mind. and eventually, we'd put out for the mind. we would want to talk for ages, we would get breathless, with the theories, and the philosophy, and the all out war on capitalist madness, while we still thought us to be silly, and female, and mush-brained in comparison.

we built our worlds around them, those who lured us with their minds, who controlled our thoughts with their words, and only because we let them. we weren't those pea-brained blondes we claimed to be sometimes, but for them, we'd be that. we'd do that. we'd put them on that pedestal, where they could do no harm, and set them up for a fall. we'd think them flawless, incapable of doing any wrong, and they never even asked that of us. we'd let tiny slip-ups pass, covering up for their god-like status, unwilling to disappoint ourselves. we never realised they hadn't asked for us to call them gods. aye, and did we not love them, for having settled their gaze upon flawed creatures such as ourselves? and thus we set us up for another fall, because when they made that one mistake that mattered the most, we could never understand how we could still love those that had fallen from grace.

but we moved on, because most times, we didn't really love them, just worshipped them, for to love, is to see, and understand flaws that exist in most of us.

so we got a little wiser, and we moved on, and we pulled on our armour a little tighter.
for what is love, if not fighting all battles.

sillybabyboy

sillybabyboy, originally uploaded by mycrotchetyluv.

family, it's a strange one. one half's too good for the other, the other halfs too good for the first. in their own heads they make up these demarcations. in leading their own lives they're so pure. my nephew is a few months old, and i hate his name. i whisper in his ear that it's not his name, no his name is something else. sometimes, i whisper his name in his ear, and he gives me his favourite kind of smile. the blubbery smile. other than my cat and my ex-boss's dog and his puppies, this is the first baby i willingly held, and did not whack. be that as it may, the little bugger was playing "whack the lens" with me. come too close, he reaches with stubby baby unco ordinated fingers to grab the lens seeking some kind of focus and kills every intention of focus, mister blubber man.

Ashaadi Ekadashi

People consider the 11th days of each fortnight (approximately) extremely important, in religious fashion. The eleventh day of Ashaad (June-July, according to the Hindu calendar) is given special importance, known as the Mahaekadashi (Maha = big, great). In a small town called Pandharpur, on the banks of the river Bhima, scores of devotees of Vithoba, an avatar of Vishnu, pour in from all over the country (though mostly just Maharashtra), for a great festival celebrating the defeat of the demon Mrudumanya. Mrudumanya, it is said, prayed so long and so well, that Lord Shiva, pleased with his devotion agreed to give him whatever he wanted, even if it was a power to defeat and conquer all gods including the great Shiva himself. Throughout Indian mythology, one sees Shiva empower all sorts of demons, almost as if giving that mythology a raison d'etre. Eventually, of course, the gods created a woman, Shakti, for she alone would kill the demon. Shakti is Ekadashi, and the fast of Ekadashi is in remembrance of the vow that we pledge to her, so she will be enticed to save the world from destruction and evil.

In Pandharpur, on the Ashaadi Ekadashi, Lord Vitthal (Vishnu's avatar) went to visit Pundalik, a sage, who, at that particular moment, was massaging his parents' feet. Pundalik throws a brick, tells Vithoba to wait on the brick, and lo and behold we have a pilgrimage town made out of Pandharpur. This is how they workde on the tourism industry in the before-dark ages.

Now, the fall out of this is, if you can't get yourself to Pandharpur, but you have a city, and more importantly, a railway station, all for your convenience, you work it. Yesterday, about 150 people gathered at the Churchgate station, waving flags, chanting, singing, playing music - all devotional ok? - and of course, asking all and any to make a donation. All in all, fun stuph.

Saffron is commonly known as the colour of Hinduism. Flags ahoy.



Donations welcome.



All in a day's prayer.

lamp study

lamp study, originally uploaded by mycrotchetyluv.

just messing with my cane lamp outside my window, needed to blow off some steam. it's not that every picture actually says something. except that the bulb may possibly just die. very very soon.