easter break and the coming of spring!

I run.

As always, I've been thrown out. As much as I would wish to get absorbed, as much as I would wish to wade through the puddles of reality - it tracks me down, thrashes me in the head and the other second I know not who I was. As if my time in the penseive was over and out I'm hurled. Once eddied though the convolutions of all that's happening, loneliness strikes and strikes hard. And such fear as I have never known of or imagined fills in around me, choking me. I know not who to go to. There is no one for miles around - just smiling faces, calling out to me. But I keep running, running for life and sanity. Losing my head to it all, I run.

जो मैं सोचे जाती हूँ

मैं पिघलने लगी हूँ शायद. ऐसा नहीं कि अब तक सख्त थी. पर यूं कि घुल जाने का मन करने लगा है. इतना की फर्क ही ना मालूम हो. कि मेरा आगाज़ और मेरा अंत दोनों बेमानी लगने लगे. पिघलना कुछ ऐसा भी कि मांग सकूं. बेधरक कभी माँगा नहीं मैंने. मांगने से हमेशा तो डरती रही हूँ, बड़े-बड़े शब्दों में खुद को उलझाती रही हूँ. अभी कुछ दिन पहले, बिन लफ्ज़ मैंने कुछ मांग लिया था. हो सकता है मुझे बिना बताए मेरी सिसकियों ने मेरे लिए पैरवी कि थी.

जो मिला तो अच्छा लगा था. :)

पोस्ट

आज हिंदी/उर्दू में लिखने का मन है. काफी दिन हुए कुछ ढंग का लिखे हुए. आजकल यूं ही कुछ भी पोस्ट कर दिए जा रही हूँ, ताकि मन को तसल्ली रहे कुछ तो लिखा है मैंने. हो सकता है यूं लिखना लेखन का नहीं, मेरी नासमझी का प्रतीक हो, पर कभी-कभार नासमझी में ही सुकून है. और इसी बहाने मेरी रोजमर्रा की आदतें वगेहरा भी दर्ज हो जाया करती हैं.

कल शाम से ही पढ़ाई का भूत सवार है. बेशक मुझे पसंद भी है किताबों से घिरे रहना. कुछ देर में library के लिए रवाना हो जाउंगी. सामाजिक अधिकारों के मुद्दे पर एक निबंध लिखना है. आजकल इसी पर किताबें आदि पढ़ रही हूँ.

विषय मूलतः स्वास्थ और शिक्षा सम्बन्धी अधिकारों का है. क्या वाकई ये 'अधिकार' हैं, या लोगों कि 'ज़रूरतें'? और अगर ज़रूरतें हैं तो क्या आम आदमी हक़ रखता है इन अधिकारों को 'मांगने' का? कहीं पढ़ा कल कि हमारा संविधान हमें स्वास्थ का अधिकार तो देता है, हमारे स्वस्थ्य रहने का जिम्मा नहीं लेता. अंग्रेजी में कहूं तो "we have a right to health, not a right to be healthy". सही भी है शायद. और दिलचस्प भी.

अरसा हुआ हिंदी में कुछ अच्छा पढ़े हुए, शायद इसलिए ज़ेहन में अच्छे/सही शब्दों कि खासी कमी है. कोशिश रहेगी आगे कुछ बेहतर लिखू. जब लिखू.

morning!

Hi! Keeping on with the daily blogging routine, here I am. Up and about. Mamma had packed me some paranthas to last a few days which I just had with tea and chilly pickle. The plan for the day is to get ready and start working on the SA4D5 essay due 27 April. I plan on finishing it in five days, so I can study and have a bit of excursion in April. The weather here these days is so good here you'd not wanna be anywhere else. 

Will go for a walk up the Jubilee Bridge across the Thames towards London Eye and South Bank tonight. Also, I notice it's been so long that I posted any pics here. Will do it once I get done with the essay. Nice incentive. :)

As for the new blog skin - bear with me. Will make it more 'chic' in time.

So long!

London again

London it is again. Back to my bed. Feeling better. Much better than last night. The flight was awful. The customs even worse. But the Merc I was picked up by (just as I was looking for a ladies room to go puke) was good and the driver considerate. I came, I changed into something comfortable and slept. Have been up since 5 am today knowing not what to do. Think will go to Tesco and get some bread and milk. Sustenance food. I like being back here where my work is. 

I have decided I will keep you updated with stuff that I do, don't do, observe, ignore etc. Let's keep it simple for some days. Missed you my blog!

Up in the air

I type this from the plane. This is a delhi morning, bright at its

best. Had an uneventful flight except for the late night storm scare.

I awoke-slept through the flight, sleep, thoughts and the window 

accompanying me.

I don't know who will come to pick me up. Perhaps they have sent a car

or perhaps ma will come. I fear I will shed a tear or two as I would

see her. Something I don't want to do. And so I dont want to see her. I

know. Strange.

Im not feeling so fine. As if something is lost there. There in london.
They wil be waiting for me. And they are. My heart feels torn. A

selfish need to be taken care of and another to just hold myself in

possessiveness.

Be there, be here

God is dead. Marx is dead. Lenin is dead. Gandhi is dead. I am alive and not feeling too well myself. — Graffiti, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. May 1983.

I feel alive again, and how! A blog did it. I stumbled upon it just now and it sent things racing in my head. As if a glimpse of that world was what I was waiting for. The last week went by in a daze. I was down with fever and low in spirit. But today is a brand new day. Reminds me of my journey for tomorrow. Delhi, once more. I came here from Delhi quite different. I will return different still. And I am curious about how I am gonna feel. Yes it has just been six months away from home, but for someone like me who can feel a feel six times more than an average person does, I think it calls for some retropection. But more on that some other time.

As for right now, I don't really know if I am looking forward to going. I certainly am looking forward to meeting people. Only if I didn't have to travel to meet them now and then. Be distant yet be reachable. Be there, be here.

These days reading Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom along with Michael Sandel's Justice..the themes are different and so is the landscape, but there is a common thread. The thread that one has to look at issues keeping a 'human' perspective..that no matter what, even if it is one person's freedom pitted against the will of majority, that one lone voice should be paid heed, even if you have to ultimately override it. And not because it would be right to do so - the paying heed. But because there is no other way. Of course, this simplistic stuff is not what these books talk about, but the more you read, the more clear things become, the easier the distinctions, the less daunting the dilemmas.

Also, received Palace of Illusions today. All set for the flight.

no pasó nada

Everything will be fine. I will write and I'll be fine. I will read some and it shall restore what I seek so intensely right now. Nothing has 'happened'. Nothing really happens here, does it? It all falls through dark chasms, or creaks, if you like. For long I have waited for things to 'happen'. That's all what it is all about. A few more minutes and it will pass I know, for I'm keeping time. And then - a world would be saved! Perhaps this is what happens when the dust settles. Sometimes you grow so accustomed to the dust that clarity becomes a stranger in your bed. The impenetrable clarity. And takes a moment getting used to. The speck in the eye then becomes a succour, the incessant rubbing - a daily ritual - a false absolution.

रास्ते का एक काँटा, पाँव का दिल चीर देता
रक्त कि दो बूँद गिरती, एक दुनिया डूब जाती!

a fear

Today, tomorrow or one of these days, there will be more of life in me. But right now, as I trudge my way through the cobbled streets of my mind, my boots tapping at the stones, there is a fear, an apprehension and a lone voice. That perhaps I might not recover from these notions that have found home in me. That perhaps all else that I cared for might have to give up on me. Obstinacy then might become my motto and I be it's slave for life.

I have been unable to write for long, you must have noticed. How I used to go on and on on these pages. How there used to be more to say and less to fear. Now there sits a fear unafraid, or should I call it an uneasy possibility. That my words might snap at me one day. Pierce their fangs into the fingers that tend to them and be right in doing so. They might stand upright in front of me and ask, "whither belongeth thou?" What will I ever tell them?  To whom will the cowardly me go?

In that it is bliss to have the fearlessness of a child. The blatant ignorance or waving off of reality, responsibility and consequence, even if punishment awaits at the other end. The lack of intent or purpose. The task at hand is then their world, the task in itself the incentive. But one cannot have a realisation and still be a child. It just doesn't happen that way.

Listen!

I do want to talk to you. Only you would understand. I say thus in a fervent hope that you do, because if even you don't, It would confirm I am living in a vacuum, nay, a sceptic vacuum. Not even a single sound returning to my ears. I want the echo, I want it to come hit me again and again and again, even if it is hard to bear. I want some air to fill my lungs every now and then. Sometimes I tire of giving answers. I may tire, but I am relentless. Is that good or bad?

It's foolish what people take from this School or any school for that matter or brandish as if they have learned anything. It's foolish its people, it's also foolish what all these people here have learned. They need no learning. It's unlearning that signifies. Wash the sins of their bigoted thinking and then perhaps learn to read and write. Perhaps then learn how to take up the pen again and begin afresh with the alphabet.


Pardon me my misdemeanor and lack of propriety or even calm. But I must write or I just won't, yet again.

I will come back. Perhaps explain what's going on.

nada!

life shows you much when you are single and have been for some time now - out of choice you may say, or lack of options. 

be the girl. be the 'other' girl. be the ex. be the probable. be the most probable. be the new younger one. be the new elder one. be the muse. be the derelict. be the envious. be the envied. be the recluse. you on top. the other on top. wanted. wanting. a hundred no's and a single yes.

nada!

the two of me

There's two of me

and I can see both

so distinctly

entwined yet estranged

they are from one another.

At times

my eyes falter

and mist befalls

but there, right there

before me - this once

there's no mistaking me

stand

the two of me

One lives by the

rush of day

and the other enlivens

at the hush of night

a cloak worn

and a cloak worn off

concomitantly

in the knowledge of all

and in ignorance too

there, right there

before me

breathe

the two of me

extracts

"The journey is my own but you give it momentum, you give me a push and I take off. Soaring high, breathing in life till I hunger like a child and quietly land by your side. As if to be with you is all I have known. With you I learn and surmise, I sit, drink, eat and play with my words and make love, yes."

"You wanted it once, you want it no more, you might or might never feel it again. Your calling is something else and the rest must be a distraction for you. As life unfolds I might be standing nowhere for miles around. I like you for all that as much as I would like you to come to me. Because I like you taking decisions. And I realise that nothing is for ever. I'd like to witness your journey - back and forth - in ideas and forms, if it is meant to be."

"My love finds peace when you actualise your self. Each moment that you live for your self I feel you're freeing me. If you are an extension of me then how can I begrudge you your freedom? How can I ever resent your decision?"

truth and the shadow of it

It makes me smile. The fine lines that demarcate and alienate truth from the shadow of truth. Most of us, most of the time weave our lives with utmost care and precision around what is but the shadow of truth. We take the shadow to be real, beautiful even in the pain it can cause, somewhat liberating too. And in that knowledge we feel the glory of being truthful, righteous even. But more often than not it is an imitation that we so love and hold close to our chest. Not that the shadow is untruth. But the truth lies elsewhere even as we love the shadow most profoundly. And the truth - we'll be surprised - is even more beautiful if only we have the nerve for it.

It's not often that you meet someone with whom you can see the fine lines magnifying, enhancing in contours. Unmindful of any fear or reproach. Bereft of all censure. It's freedom you feel then, because you can see. The world is always trying to make the lines blurred for you, to fool you further - and to fool you as a matter of its wont. No motive is of import. If you cannot see the lines, you are not to blame - you're absolved ab initio. Those who choose to see must to go through a stricter scrutiny at every step. It is an imprecation for their possessing the faculty of sight. A curse for which they must pay. If you can see Thestrals, you would have witnessed death.

The truth is fantastically simple, so simple that it takes ages for our shadow-fed mind to identify. The shadow of truth is pleasing to the heart, more pleasing than the truth. The shadow makes you feel free, makes you feel good even as you embrace your pain bravely, believing (?) that you've been truthful. It makes you feel you have matured in that you now embrace such pain. Tired with your unending fantasy, smiling at your misplaced enchantment for it, Truth stands there. Looking helplessly at you two dilapidated lovers.

why religion is a good thing

Funny thing happened. Subah se had had nothing to eat. So, first I went from library to eat Hare Krishna meal, hoping there would still be some food left. There is a guy who peddles in with a cart full of hot food for us every day at 1. In no time a queue is formed and students from all over the world join in and thank the Lord for such hot free food in such cold and costly London. They serve world's most bland but hot (I emphasize) and holistic platter. Today it was plain white rice and lentil soup in a disposable white paper plate with a disposable little spoon. I felt nice that I was from the land of Hare Krishna, boiled white rice and lentils. Basking thus in what was a reminder of my Hindu origins, I walked on towards Houghton Street to get me some coffee.

As I was counting change (60pence) while also keenly admiring my image in the glass-door of a building, I saw a stall which read "Christian Union". My gaze soon fell on to their banner on which was wrote in big bold letters "FREE coffee/ tea!". Though reluctant at first (as I usually get when I see free stuff), I realised I needed that coffee bad. Not to mention I had not brought me any cash today except the 60p. And so there I went towards the stall, suddenly feeling as Christian as it could get. Got me a cuppa Christian coffee with a Christian cookie to boot, while discussing with the girl at the stall my experience of attending mid-night mass on Christmas eve at St Pauls and suppressing my giggle on their event titled "Which sort of people go to heaven". 

Moral of the Story: God does come to the rescue of His hungry children. No, really. Thank the Lord for today.

Moral of the Story II: The more the God, the more the religions, the more the free food and coffee, the more the people survive, the better it gets.

Spinning an honest yarn

"The more despicable she found her life, the more romantic her poetry became. Perhaps it was a way to soothe her wretched nerves. Perhaps a need to express even in the absence of a muse.

In obscure words she asked him if she would forget him. This was even before she had really embraced him. And fool that he was he said, "yes", not knowing what he said. But she loved fools. Always had. Fools to her were those who thought not of saving themselves when listening to their hearts, fools were those who plunged into the unknown and the known alike and more often than not broke their limbs. But then there is a swagger in their limp. Like crazy men they went about with 'ideas' on their minds and therefore fools to her were rare and fools to her were courageous. He was not a fool - this she had known since long. But this act of his was that of a fool and she smiled at his foolness. No, not foolishness. She had no patience with the foolish, the dumb and the slow."

---

Perhaps you can only like music and love words or love music and only like words. You cannot love both. If one has to be a lover of these two ideas at all - one is either born to be an ardent lover of music or an ardent lover of words. But not both. You'd know the risk in both. You'd know how both can mislead. But you'd have made that choice, subconsciously perhaps, or it may be that your choice would have already chosen you.

---

"These days my mind closes itself at my will. This never happened before. But the more people I meet with who I cannot Talk, the more closure I get. I come down a ladder or two from who I am and then simply 'deceive'"

---

What if you meet your extra-marital lover even before you've met the one you'd marry? 

---

There are times when I can observe the orbit of my own growth (or degeneration, as it were). At times I am removed from the scene. I hate to use the word, but yes,  futuristically. I haven't yet reached there, but I know which binds will be broken and which I would stop caring about. Already a lot seems unfastened. I sit on the edge of my seat and watch.

Unfinished..

The window to my life

It was open so long

the passion that you fanned 

burned cinders for long. 

Winds gushed in 

and storms moved out

But nothing changed

And nothing will

At least Someone's having a laugh!

It's funny what's happening. It really is. It really really is funny. I'm sure God is up there somewhere rolling on the floor laughing looking at me.

More to come. A lot to come.

Later.

Es muss sein!

"Muss es sein? Es muss sein! Es muss sein!"

I know now. Either I am crazy or there is something to the ideas that float in my mind. There is something concerete albeit hidden beneath a thousand apprehensions. There is that world. A world of convictions, ideas, metaphor, belief. More often than not I have questioned myself. I have been someone who hasn't seen much and was thus afraid of being the only one out there, looking for approval, seeking a fellowship of thought. I don't feel it today. And I'm silently elated. As elated as I felt lonesome last night. I might relapse. But when I do, I will think of this place.

tonight i shall write

tonight I shall write
and even though there is nothing no more

I shall write and believe you hear it

tonight I shall word

the letters I had wrote, and

the poems for you

that I forced rhyme!

and when I do that

I shall relive your touch

on my slender shoulder

bare, ever since you caressed it

tonight I shall write of those long lost evenings,

of your fingers running though the strands in my hair

and of my nights spent by your chest,

even as you were to be years away

there are, there were, and there will be morrows

more and more till I ache no more

but tonight I shall not restrain

tonight I shall go weak

and not be afraid

not be afraid

(i recall now that there is an uncanny similarity with neruda in the first line.. but i must mention that the same came as a surprise to me. the reason why i am still posting.)

aise hi, mann hai

Aaj mann hai thora aaram se jeene ka

khud ko samjhaye bina.

Idhar udhar ke shagufton mein uljhaye bina.

ulti-pulti baaton ki patti paraye bina.

Aaj mann hai

bebaak ho jaane ka

kagaz par bekhauf syahi ki tarah

surkh neele rang mein mil jane ka

likhte mitaate - likhte mitaate 

aur kagaz muchore bina.

Thori garam chai, thori dhoop

thori thand, aur thand mein kohra

ek neend ki jhapki, ek chatai!

aur ek balcony ka bhi mann hai.

Aaj mann hai 

thora pyar kia jaye

nahi, dher saara kiya jaye

beparvah! beinthaan! ishq mein para jaye

Aur mann hai thora

pare rehne ka rajai ke andar

ghum fir ke vapas aane ka

ulti-pulti baaton ki 

fir koi patti parane ka!

fly by

I wait by the window

hoping a thought would fly by

perhaps perch at the sill 

for a moment or two 

before flapping its wings again

-taking to the air

taking me with it.

Or it'd knock on my doors,

I might even answer not

For I avoid all who come

with things to think and do.

But as the knocking persists

I'd run to comply

And open the door wide-

Lest it should wander off

leaving me to myself

la jerigonza

I wish I had someone to talk to tonight. Yes I am lonely, but more than that, it is important that I sleep. Sleep and meals are things I am not taking seriously and the results are showing with a loss of appetite and insomniac tendencies..one leading to the other.. leaves me

I will blabber tonight. Lullaby me to sleep it would.

I miss mom. Her smile. Her innocence. Her hands. My head. A pat.

I miss talking to her. Now when she looks at me over skype - I can see she misses me yet would never utter a single word to that effect. It is settled between us that I am the crying one - so how can she go weak in front of me. But you know, I am not the one to cry because I am the child, I am the one to cry because I act like her mom around her :).. and so like one of those tragic mellow moms - I cry seeing her. :)

I also notice a twinkle in her eye, a bit of apology for not having had the time to come online, but I know she is proud of me. And I know she knows not why. Perhaps that's the very reason, that she understands not and as is our wont, she admires that what she can't easily understand. :) Oh, she is so beautiful my mom is. SO beautiful when she smiles. And then on skype I would show off my long hair, "look mamma look! so long!" Wanna put my arms around her neck, on tiptoes (she's taller, you see)..and not let go till she wrestles herself out of my hold.

Oh this time is not right. I should have slept three times by now. I should have.

I have started a new 'venture' here on the blog. It's the Word Post. I would keep coming back to it and post words. Not sentences. Not meanings. Nothing you may even endeavour to comprehend.

I would see how it goes about. Too often with me these days words happen. But neither does a story, nor does a relation of it. It's just an experiment to capture those words. Nothing brilliant about it, just that overtime it might reveal a trajectory worth putting on record.

And as it turns out - I am more awake than I was before I tried on this 'lullabying me to sleep' idea. But now at least I am a happy insomniac.

:) muah

Word Post

Regret Alone Night Reclaim
Vulnerable FAIR Purple Smiles
Silence Home Reveal Reflection

a crumpled rose

"As if my blood is lying spilled somewhere..away from me.. But I know it is mine. I carry it in my conscience as it carries me in its essence. I may never see it again but its mine, mine! Pragmatic me lashes out again. The lover retaliates. Why does reality even happen when the 'unreal' could be so beautiful? Even in our silence we seem to have shared. Even in our pact not to talk is something dear to me. For even in that we partake in something. You would love to get drenched in me. I'll make sure you do."

"You are! Oh  you are! Is it just me or can others sense it too? Can't say I know you. Can't say if it would last. Might just all wither away like the most beautiful flower. But thank you for showing to me that it exists. However small the moment..however frail to even last. It was reality you know..when it was most not. And this is but a smidgen of it. All of it. A pretension. A pretension and a shadow. It is not you who lacks. It's me. It's not your years that came in between. It's mine! Oh can't you see? Won't you see? Won't you agree with me? Let me go for now. And do let me come back once. Let me grow up a bit. Let me fail first. This cruel age should know. I will wait to fail. I will pray to fail. So I may know. So I may know."

This piece might not matter now or might not be understood or worse still - might just be. For more reasons than one. It's like a crumpled red rose perhaps..tucked in between old rusty yellow leaves of an old hardbound. While placing it back on the stack from where I pulled it out, I thought I would just as well post the contents.

These words here are most precious to me.

31 Dec 2011; 1.57 AM

The last few hours of the year remain. The last twenty two. I was watching a movie just now. And it made me think. No, not the movie. But the banal act of sitting down and watching one. I had bits and pieces which felt like a cinematic deja vu. Chunks of it that I had seen before. And now that it is over I feel disgusted. The movie was fine. On a better day I might have even enjoyed it. Morgan Freeman never disappoints. 

Tonight, however, I wish to write.

Never mind everything else. I just wish to write tonight. Just want to play with some words here. Just wanna stroke 'em, juggle 'em, throw them up in the air and catch them off guard. I wanna pet them, spoil them, make them mine.

As I see out of the window, I see different hues playing against the dark backdrop of the night sky. I hear they're flashing lights somewhere up the London Eye for New Year's perhaps. I see no lights but only the reflections. Making the 'welkin' gleam! The clouds seem awashed with the most interesting hues - purple and blue and pink and green..all random all brilliant. It looks good and comforting. Especially because it is right there. I don't even have to move an inch to be able to see it. It's right there. Just saw some white light dazzle in the sky, as if the moon's been waltzing by itself.

I will try and write more tomorrow. But if I don't then let it be known that the year has been spectacular. I would always remember 2011 as a wonderful, thoughtful, surprisingly charming an year. A lot changes in an year. Doesn't it?

Sigh. I don't feel very good tonight. My wish to be able to go away for a while has remained unfulfilled. I am neither in pain nor uncared-for. I just wish to know me better. Perhaps spend some more time with me would set it right. I shall do that more often now onwards. 


PS: I miss you bad, Panther..I wish you'd just come running back to me.

the courtroom of conscience

Words elude me like never before. I say I am sorry but they still don't speak with me. This is an attempt in perseverance. I write much like a child who knows she has erred and who, in an awkward nervous fashion keeps standing at the doorway. I too stand there, with my head bowed and hands tied. I am not apologetic for not writing - not here or otherwise. But for that because of which I was not able to talk to myself. Writing would have required an honest reflection and for many days I had kept averting my gaze. But then words precede me, as always. I was 'dropped' and rightly so.

The part of me that writes had ceased to talk to the part of me that wants to write. If it has happened to you, you would know the agony it can cause. It was an injury upon a wound. Words, my precious palanquin bearers, took sides with the former. I choked at times, but I did not have the strength to face me here. For in here one has to be most naked. Brutally, beautifully - naked. And utter exposure needs unfaltering conviction.

I have realised what writing is to me. It's worship, it's prayer, it's the answer. It's the one most honest act I ever do. Something that's as much mine as my own child would be. Even more perhaps. And when I couldn't face myself in words - oh I felt dismembered - as if left abandoned at the outskirts of the same cobbled streets that were (are) home to me. 

Often in the past I have thought about how it is the biggest sin - doing what one does not want to do. That there is to be dignity even in one's sins - this dignity toboggans from a 'want' - which is the expression of one's own volition. The 'will' fills the cognitive senses and lead us up to a decision, however dastardly it may be. It would be lesser an evil to skip morality, commit a wrong, if only one has/had a 'want'. But when you do something you did not even 'want' to do - you couldn't have caused a bigger ignominy and disrespect to the 'self'. If there is a bigger sin than sin, it is sinning without wanting to.

I whispered apologies to me a hundred times. But the writer wouldn't allow for unjustifiable mistakes. Not from me. 

The courtroom of conscience has room enough for reason, excuses, even tomfoolery. It has many windows too for one to take flight and escape. But there are no doors from which one could walk out with dignity, unless one has justified oneself. Yet, how to justify something I did not want to do? My standards are engraved in stone, the bars are always high. I could find no justification. And so I struggled. I couldn't and wouldn't flee from the windows. And I could not walk out the doors too.

And so here I stand, staring at the floor in obeisance. Hoping.

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