three coffee beans

Three coffee beans and a white brick wall stare at me as I type this. Awash in the winter sun streaming through the back of my head, I can see my reflection look back at me as I type this. A faint smile appears. I seem to have stumbled into myself today. And happy to announce I liked what I saw. Like an old friend who you know inside out, but pretend the regular niceties before getting to the actual meaty, juicy stuff that binds you both. 

...

In another world, being happy and satisfied in the manner I find myself, is the arch-enemy of writing, is it not? At least for me it is. Conundrum then, is it not? 

Something clicked last night, an epiphany, if you will. I got reminded that I was extraordinary. In a flurry of excitement I sat up and typed this on my phone: 

"Yes. That is what I had forgotten about myself. I was extraordinary. I AM extraordinary!! That’s why I don’t fit. That’s why I feel out of place. It is not because I am any less. It is because I am much more!"

And it felt good. I am going to hold on to it. 

Stuff.

So it is clear. It is in front of the screen that I find my true calling. Fingers on the keyboard or holding a pen, files, papers, paraphernalia strewn about the table, as if completing the picture. No matter the health but I am slowly being brought out of misery. And gee, even writing too. Something that has eluded me mercilessly, knowing fully well how much I needed it. But I smile. It is tantalizing, is it not? As if it is telling me I will have to wait my turn. Longing is not enough.

Kiran Nagarkar ~ Cuckold

Cuckold

I am not a big fan of reading Indian English books, I prefer Indian books in Indian languages. But this one clearly stood out for me. Read this one through my trip to London and Scotland this summer. A fantastic blend of Rajasthani culture, Mewar history and perverse human nature and desire for power. A story of a 'loser' told in a way that you don't want to put it down.

tidings

I find myself in a strange place. Closer to you than I have felt in months. Talk of ill tidings! 

I have so much to say but I don't know if I will be able to write. I want to. I want to. I love you. You're there.

Neha

PS: jab bhi ye dil udaas hota hai, jaane kaun aas paas hota hai

in & out

Here I am. Back again. Presuming that I had left. No I had not. I was making do with the old posts till the time I knew would return that I would again start posting new stuff. I missed you! 

I don't know where I am personally. I am in between houses, life, confusion, pending work, a lot of missing, yeah a lot of missing is also happening. I am also in a constant place where you need counselling. Stuff that one would anyway later ignore, but clarity has always been my thing. I love it, I need it. I recently decoded it about me.

For now, I will go. More later. I crazy crazy love it that you are there.

Neha

Bad Science - Ben Goldacre

Read it on the flight back from Kalimpong. P made me read and I had nothing else to read. A couple of chapters are interesting in an informative way. I hear it is a best seller but the condescending manner it is written made it hard to bear. 

The Sign of Four - Sherlock Holmes

Picked it up from the home stay we stayed at in Kalimpong. Sherlock all the way. Nothing spectacular but you want to have read all of Holmes, no?

Libaas (Screenplay) -Gulazar

Read this on the flight to Kalimpong a week back. A neat one hour read. There was no need for the author to call it Libaas.. found it progressive in some sense but even the progressiveness seemed to be interwoven in a web of patriarchy.

The Difficulty of Being good

This blog is fast becoming a sort of an inventory of books I have read. Adding to the list here is Gurcharan Das's 'The Difficulty of Being Good'. I have enjoyed how it juxtaposes the mythological with the contemporary and the personal. I would not call it new in the philosophical sense, but it reaffirms many things that call for reaffirmation time and again. Too practical for my taste at times when it comes to his personal choices at life, but the author does manage to do justice to the story of Mahabharata and its correlation of contemporary politics. I enjoyed the process of reading it. If you are familiar with the story of Mahabharata you can probably finish the book in one or two sittings.

Nadi Ke Dweep - Agyeya

Agyeya's Nadi Ke Dweep

 हाल ही में यह किताब पढ़ी गयी। बहुत अच्छी लगी। अज्ञेय का लिखा मैं सब पढ़ना चाहती हूँ। 

Write write write!

I'm actually really feeling as if my feet are dipped in sweet honey and my head being gently massaged. My mind engrossed in words and my heart is light and warm. And I have realised that I am really alright when I want to write. Since morning there is a urge in me. To write. To again put word to paper. To scribble. So much so that I made two lists today, as I always do. A list with things to do and another with things done. You would smile as I say this, but every time I would tick something off my to do list, I would jot it down in the things done list. Just to write, actually write. 

And so here I am. Back to you. 

Even in the morning I wrote on way to work. Mostly on the cellphone. Something must be happening right. :)

Today on way to work I did one other thing. I fast read a book. An entire book. Not a super thin one either. I fast read it, employing fair bit of mind to it so much so that I was able to brief P on it. Some parts needed to be used for a case he was to appear in today. 

This brings me to my work. These past few weeks were not as satisfying but today was exceptional. I feel more enthusiasm more optimism more hope breathed into my work and my day. I was able to accomplish much and as usual felt great thereafter. The end of the day was great to when PB handed me over a box of cake. Like a child I beamed. P had a hearty laugh looking at me. 

Nana

Nana ji. I never called him Nana, it was always Nana ji, Nani ji et al. Though I always wondered how it would be having an informal relationship with a grandparent. Same as I often wondered as a kid how it would be to have an informal relationship with my father. Nana ji is no more. And I do have a more informal relationship with Papa now. 

Someone sent Nana ji's pic to the family group today. Looking at him so many memories of childhood came rushing in. Memories I had long put a lid on. Memories which quintessentially involve an estranged cousin/brother/bestfriend. Memories which involve delicious simple meals that we would have sitting on a carpet on the floor along with other cousins. That involve teasing elder sisters, cheating younger cousins at games and the like. Stuff that makes for a great childhood. Oh yes, and amras, bhindi ki sabzi (okra) and roti (Indian bread). And when it would be too hot- it would be aam panna and a Rajasthani fruit which I think is called kaachra.

Savour it

How long can you keep yourself wrapped in the hijab of everyday life. How fine the balance. A few words stringed together are enough to shake you out of reality and into the world you love most. And you stand at the threshold - to enter or not to enter? Setting foot is oh so comforting. Into the world of words and music and books and passages upon passages and of cryptic conversations that seem to melt in your mouth and warm your heart. 

But you keep yourself away. Why? Is it the lack of courage? 

But for now let me savour it. 

While you are away.

I was just thinking. Actually I was trying not to think but could not dodge the thought. You and I spent 5 whole years apart. I spent the first two years dying every day. You don't know what it was like. I have tears in my eyes writing about it right now. Every.Single.Time. 

And no, it is not because I cry easy otherwise. The only time tears well up like this at the mention of something is N getting ill. Anywho, we spent all that time apart. As apart as can be. Usually people drift off. We did not it. I did not. A part of me would not budge. The pain was so much at one point of time I felt dying would be easier and would make more sense. The pain was so much at another point of time I felt perhaps our apart was not 'meant' to be. It was an epiphany. In pain. The epiphany told me that perhaps there was some cosmic equation that did not quite add up, some providential circuit that had got disrupted. So strong was this instinct that I paid heed to it and called you once around Christmas. To tell you what that pain was doing to me. 

How it was changing who I was. As if I had disturbed a whole butterfly-effect thing. Touched what was not to be touched, something sacred and the dominos lined up started to fall, like a fort of sand. 

Invariably I tried to put an end to it. In having you I was unfulfilled. In leaving you I was miserable. I chose to leave to allow both of us a better chance at love. 

I don't write like a lover here. It is not impossible to leave someone, I know. I had left someone before I met you and I have left someone after you. I have parted and been in pain but it was bearable. But our parting changed me forever. I had touched the outer limits to how much a human being could endure, or so it felt to me. 

If you asked me what it was that caused the pain- if I missed going out with you, being with you, hanging out together - I would not know what to say. I was not dying to meet you. I was not dying to hang out. I would have been able to meet had I really wanted to. I was not a drug addict but my withdrawal was the same if not worse. I was miserable like one would be without  oxygen. Like a fish would struggle with water only enough to wet its gills but not enough to allow her to remain submerged in water. I did not have a clue why this was happening to me.

With time I learned the tricks. And I buried all of 'it' somewhere. Knowing I was never to return. Knowing that this would happen only once in my lifetime. 

---

In missing you like any partner would since you are away, I am thinking of those 5 years. And I am thinking of this one week. And I'm scared for myself. I am scared that so many years ago I could feel that epiphany, that cosmic thing. And here we are, together. That I was right in sensing all that even though I could not decipher it at the time. But it turned out to be true. 

How strange that we once spent 5 years apart and this one week has been difficult for me. Why am I like this? Why can't be more 'normal'. Why feel so many feels. 

This is not a love letter. This is more like how Neil Armstrong must have felt seeing the galaxies fromthe outer  space for the first time. Thousands of stars and the planets glittering against a colourless universe, traversing their path. The awe. The beauty. The infinite mystery. And the fear of being so lonely even when you have conquered the universe.

Neha

Quiet

Where does one get the conviction to say something - anything that takes form in the shape of an opinion? I used to be able to write so much. Unbeknownst to me were the limits to my own understanding of an issue. The more I have learned, the quieter I have become. I have realised one knows only so much. I have gauged the depth of my own inadequacies (which might still be substantial for some) and this knowledge has had me paraplegic. Excess of everything is bad. Holds true for so-called virtues too?

On one hand, therefore, is the need to be able to say some more. So that the more you say the better you get. As goes the process to anything we do, really. But on the other, the handicap of the knowledge of not knowing enough. 

In any case one should not go quiet, right?

Check-in

I write this on the small screen of my phone. I just wanted to check in. Tell you I missed you. And tell you how much you mean to me. 

Back

I return after a long hiatus. Time I needed to gather myself and my thoughts. Time I needed to come back from the self-inflicted purgatory, as it were. I intend to write more, though how much I am actually able to write is unbeknownst even to me. For writing doesn't come easy to me now. But try one must. 

I often deliberate how important it is for one to be honest to one's writing. I started off as a firm believer that every word that one writes is reflective of one's integrity. My previous posts are a testament to that, however cryptic the posts might have been. My brief departure from here has given me some time to ponder. And it has humbled me. It has taught me that writing for writings sake is as important as breathing for the sake of living. Till the time 'it' is coming to you, you must write. The day you find yourself at a loss of words, quite literally, could just be round the corner. 

This post here is partly an effort in that. 

PS: I got married last month. 

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and others) - Douglas Adams

“For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.” 

Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.” 

Flashback

The need to get away was never more pronounced. To go away and take with me whatever I can salvage. Some love, some cover, some laughter and a lot of freedom. Oh wait, that is mine, right?

It is surprising how memory works and whether it is talking to us. I often and much more often now than ever before think of London streets. Streets that hold no special memory - shops I just passed by unmindfully at the time are all so clear to me now - yes now - almost 3 years after. Some cupcake shop, some turn, Kingsway, some corner at a busy crossing - none of these holds any meaning for me. Nothing happened there. I walk on those streets even now. Flashes of a quaint streetlight of a busy road, a decrepit wall, an empty street by night, wet tarmac and the reflection of light. And I am transported. I can feel it, smell it, I make an effort to come out of it.

I do not now why these vague memories. Nothing was left unfinished there. There is no real reason too I know. But the memories come and go, pass me by and more often than not I associate them with freedom, or is it longing?

Aftershocks

It was disgusting how I ran when the aftershocks shook Nepal. It was shorn of dignity when I ran each time a big aftershock occurred seeming to claim us all, only to stop suddenly as the earth would become still again. Again and again it happened - and again and again I found myself on my feet, with or without slippers, sometimes in slumber, in the hotel lobby - lunging for the door. My insides revolted for this ignominy the moment the earth would go quiet again. 

John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men

"With us it ain't like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us. We don't have to sit in no bar room blowin' in our jack jus' because we got no place else to go. If them other guys gets in jail they can rot for all anybody gives a damn. But not us."

Lennie broke in. "But not us! An' why? Because… because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why." He laughed delightedly. "Go on now, George!" 

Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending

Black omni

In the darkness of the backseat of the omni cab she sat with her legs spread open. Like guys sit. Like guys have the freedom and the approval to sit. With their thighs taut and comfortable - all weight falling on their feet and hands clasped in macho design. How sitting with legs closed - so close and together - is the hallmark of feminine posture while sitting with such open swagger is so male, so authoritative and decisive. She sat with that authority. As if blood rushed through her legs in surprise. It felt good and definitely felt so much more in control. The driver won't turn back to look, would he? Sit back, she said to herself. Even if he does, it is comfortably dark.

This is her little secret in darkness of a black omni.

:)

Basics

It is fascinating and almost a relief, finding delight in oneself. Some months ago, I found myself deeply troubled, grappling** to find a plausible answer to what was the fundamental purpose of living (as opposed to life or simple existence), of doing anything at all, really. I was questioning the basics of work, routine, taste, recreation, vacation ― what was the underlying reason that we did those things and if living, every single component of it that we call 'doing' something, meant anything, or whether it was supposed to mean anything. After days and days of looking into myself I felt that the only purpose to living (as it happens to us, not as we go ahead and make of it) was to come to know oneself better and as a corollary 'replace' oneself. For some days this 'deduction' helped,provided some relief and I started to test it against my everyday actions.

**Grapple, because I was fast losing myself to the idea of complete futility. I still think part of it may be true. And now as I look back, as much as a part of me did accept how futile things really are, the rest of my self rebelled against it and it was this bit that struggled to find that which would justify the status quo by arming it with a theory, to be subsequently tested.

(In conversation)

Statis

I am good. Delhi is the same as you left it. Dreary mornings, warm days and cold nights. I go for a walk everyday like I used to. It is also my favorite part of the day.

I am not reading any particular book presently. Either go through a huge book on human rights or read poetry on the net. This year I mostly read Hindi books and Urdu poetry. Agyeya I liked. Have you read him? And this another lovelorn Pakistani poet called Jaun Elia.

I have realized this new thing or should I say a new-found pleasure, which I could share. I was always secretly proud of my flexible ways, of being fine with my clothes in luggage bags even though it was an year since I had returned to Delhi, (because the cupboard had no space for my clothes), of being okay with sleeping anywhere, eating impatiently, working in a mess as long as I had the bare minimum. My focus was on substance not form, or such was my refrain.

Couple of months back we got wood work done in my room and now I have a double bed (in place of a single bed), two bedside tables, wooden almirahs in place of the old wall-unit to keep my clothes in, and a new book shelf is on the way. I also bought a bedside lamp for myself which I use at night. To my surprise, I now take pleasure in hanging my clothes (with care) in the cupboards, I have started taking care that my bed stays clear of knickknacks, I also have a money plant in an old liqueur bottle on my table and I like to see it grow. I would now take a moment to place my earrings in the box on the bedside table or duppatta in the third drawer. I know people live like this generally. But the fact that I am doing these things with a certain care and nafasat, believing that a small act of securing little things is also as important as the next article I am reading, is something that gives me a quiet sense of equilibrium and poise, before I return to my routine.

(In conversation)

Tujh Se Gilay Karoon Tujhe Janaa'n Manaaon Main

Tujh Se Gilay Karoon Tujhe Janaa’n Manaaon Main
Ik Bar Apne Aap Mein Aaon To Aaon Main

Dil Se Sitam Ki Be’saro Kaari Hawaa Ko Hai
Woh Gard Urraa Rahi Hai Ke Khud Ko Ganwaaon Main

Naadim Hoon Woh Ke Jis Pe Nadaamat Bhi Ab Nahin
Woh Kaam Hain Ke Apni Judai Kamaaon Main

Kyon’kar Ho Apne Khawab Ki Aankhon Mein Wapsi
Kis Taur Apne Dil Ke Zamamon Mein Jaaon Main

Ik Rang Si Kamaa’n Ho Khushbu Sa Ik Teer
Marham Si Ik Wardaat Ho Aur Zakham Khaon Main

Shikwa Sa Aik Dareecha Ho Nasha Sa Ik Sakoot
Ho Shaam Aik Sharab Si Aur Larr’khraon Main

Phir Is Gali Se Apna Guzar Chahta Hai Dil
Ab Is Gali Ko Kaunsi Basti Se Laaon Main

- Jaun Elia

Faraar

Apne Maazi Ke Tasawwur Se Hiraasaan Hoon Main
Apne Guzre Hue Ayyam Se Nafrat Hai Mujhe
Apni Bekaar Tamannaon Pe Sharmindaa Hoon Main
Apni Besud Ummidon Pe Nidaamat Hai Mujhe

Mere Maazi Ko Andhere Mein Dabaa Rahne Do
Mera Maazi Meri Zillat Ke Siwa Kuchh Bhi Nahin
Meri Ummidon Ka Haasil Meri Kaawish Ka Sila
Ek Benaam Aziyat Ke Siwa Kuchh Bhi Nahin

Kitni Bekaar Ummidon Ka Sahaaraa Lekar
Main Ne Aiwaan Sajaaye They Kisi Ki Khaatir
Kitni Be-Rabt Tamannaaon Ke Mabham Khaake
Apane Khwaabon Mein Basaaye The Kisi Ki Khaatir

Mujhse Ab Meri Mohabbat Ke Fasaane Na Poochho
Mujhko Kahne Do Ke Main Ne Unhen Chaahaa Hi Nahin
Aur Wo Mast Nigaahen Jo Mujhe Bhool Gayeen
Main Ne Un Mast Nigaahon Ko Saraahaa Hi Nahin

Mujhko Kahne Do Ki Main Aaj Bhi Ji Saktaa Hoon
Ishq Naakaam Sahi Zindagi Naakaam Nahin
Unko Apnaane Ki Khwaahish Unhen Paane Ki Talab
Shauq Bekaar Sahi Sai-Gham Anjaam Nahin

Wahi Gesoo Wahi Nazar Wahi Aarid Wahi Jism
Main Jo Chaahoon Ki Mujhe Aur Bhi Mil Sakte Hain
Wo Kanwal Jinko Kabhi Unke Liye Khilna Tha
Unki Nazron Se Bahut Door Bhi Khil Sakate Hain

- Sahir Ludhianvi