muzic

The heart is a bloom, shoots up through stony ground
But there's no room, no space to rent in this town
You're out of luck and the reason that you had to care,
The traffic is stuck and you're not moving anywhere.
You thought you’d found a friend to take you out of this place
Someone you could lend a hand in return for grace


It's a beautiful day, the sky falls
And you feel like it's a beautiful day
It’s a beautiful day
Don’t let it get away
Love, lift me out of these blues
Won't you tell me something true
I believe in you


Touch me, take me to that other place
Reach me, I know Iím not a hopeless case


"In A Little While"

In a little while
Surely you'll be mine
In a little while I'll be there

In a little while
This hurt will hurt no more
I'll be home, love

When the night takes a deep breath
And the daylight has no end
If I crawl, if I come crawling home
WiIl you be there

In a little while
I won't be blown by every breeze
Friday night running
To Sunday on my knees

That girl, that girl
She's mine
And I've know her since

Since she was a little girl
With Spanish eyes
Oh, when I saw her
In a pram they pushed her by

My, how you've grown
Well it's been
It's been a little while

Slow down my bleeding heart
A man dreams one day to fly
A man takes a rocketship into the skys
He lives on star that's dying in the night
And follows in the trail
The scatter of light

to be loved as to love with all my heart

is it synchrosity? Or is it just that he loves me. I walked home yesterday, cold damp dark ... and I was halving this imaginary conversation with a imaginary person (who sits always in my head) and I said ... 'the sunshine - the beautiful sunshine in dibba. ill never again crib about the sweat and heat.' i woke up this morning to blinding sunshine.

i feel him somewhere around. he is there. he is waiting. and he does love me. i feel it in every part of my soul. he pushes me and makes life hard and cold and he keeps raising the bar, cz thats what i had asked him for.

after years i find myself humming an old favourite from school days

"Father, hear the prayer we offer:
Nor for ease that prayer shall be,
But for strength, that we may ever
Live our lives courageously.

Not forever in green pastures
Do we ask our way to be,
But the steep and rugged pathway
May we tread rejoicingly.

Not forever by still waters
Would we idly, quiet stay;
But would smite the living fountains
From the rocks along our way."

cohen

I loved you in the morning
Our kisses deep and warm,
Your head upon the pillow
Like a sleepy golden Strom.
Yes, many loved before us
I know that we are not new,
In city and in forest
They smiled like me and you,
But now it's come to distances
And both of us must try,
Your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

I'm not looking for another
As I wander in my time,
Walk me to the corner
Our steps will always rhyme,
You know my love goes with you
As your love stays with me,
It's just the way it changes
Like the shoreline and the sea,
But let's not talk of love or chains
And things we can't untie,
Your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

I loved you in the morning
Our kisses deep and warm,
Your head upon the pillow
Like a sleepy golden Strom.
Yes, many loved before us
I know that we are not new,
In city and in forest
They smiled like me and you,
But let's not talk of love or chains
And things we can't untie,
Your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.



Every phase in life, each sequence of days, seperated by coloured paper seperators in the filing of our heads, each one has a theme song, for me. Like Sauces wedding was 'from this moment'. This last trip home, probably my nicest time at home since I left for Pune in 1994, was this song above. Or probably all of the Cohen collection. I will never forget those days. Suddenly I miss my pogie and bose so much! Its not funny. Its all these people you love, or its their memories, the echoes of their voices that they leave in your head, its the shadow that drags behind them as they fly away, the way they made you feel ... its all these little strands that knit together and form a place called home, in my heart.

the anne frank house

"When I returned and after I had the news that my children would not be coming back, Miep gave me the diary which had been saved by, I should say, a miracle. It took me a very long time before I could read it. And I must say, I was very much surprised about the deep thoughts that Anne had, her seriousness, especially her self-criticism. It was quite a different Anne than I had known as my daughter. She never really showed this kind of inner feeling. She talked about many things, criticized many things, but what her real feelings were, that I could only see from the diary." Otto Frank

"A single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did, but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it's better that way: if we were capable of taking in the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live." Primo Levi


July 27, 1945

Dear Milly,
I suppose you will excuse me that I did not answer your kind letter right away. I couldnt. Daily, I tried to speak to people in order to find something about the girls. And I speak to quite a lot who met them at Bergen-Belzen in January or February but then I could not trace them any further. Now I know all the truth and I know that I shall never be able to believe that strk. I seem to be very calm and do everything to divert me, just not to think. Nobody can help me, though I have many friends.


Otto Frank to his sister, Milly

It took me 17 mins of standing in that same hallway to note down this passage that was being played there (had to stop to cry once in a while)!

What hit me most was the ordinary normality of life. peter's new board game. the pinups on her wall. all the little details which make you realise, actually realise, it wasnt just a story ... it happened. How did it happen? There must be a answer. There must be a rationale. But how do I find it and where do I look. Is it in the 'maaya' or is it connectivity or what is it? How can we go on living like it never happened? How can we go on living without understanding it? Or die? it is all the more chilly when you think of the years the dates. you know that time. you have read those dates before. so and so's birthday. or something like that.

keukenhof

The flower I fell in love with:

Amaryllis Royal Velvet

i could have told you vincent ....

van gogh:
bridge in the rain
courting couples in the voyer d'argenson
the harvest
wheat field 1988
triptich
the sower
st pauls hospital garden
branches of an almond tree in blossom (gift for theo's son)
the reaper
wheatfield with crows
wheatfield with poppies
wheatfield under the clouds
view of auvers
farmhouse at auvers

other artists i liked there
manet
preitenger van dongen
gaugin
raffeilli
gaugin

paul serusier
edouard vuillard
pierre bonnard
felix vallotton
josef israils
herder shephard
odilon redon
floris vester
lepere auguste
valtat
george breitner hendrik

i was amazed by the boldness of a painting of a lady called Gus - Augusta.


caveat - the names are all from my (very) hastily scribbled notes at the museum during a very rushed and cursory run through it. Half of which time I was too tired to be thinking straight. so, i expect i got a lot of them wrong!

i left wanting to find out more about the relationship between him and gaugin. about his 'voices'. and to think about why he volunteered to go to St Pauls and how he felt after that. did he feel trapped. also want to read his letters to emile bernard.

quotes:

"for you, the public, it is really done. i think that saying is true: For you the public, it is really done"

Vincent to Theo, Nov 1882

"I feel a failure. That is my destiny, which I accept and which will never chnage"
27 July 1890. Vincent Van Gogh Stichting.

its ironic, how im back in the game

am i the only person in the world who takes notes whil watching tv? while going htough my notebook for the amsterdam notes i found notes on a chinese valley of soldiers, greek medicine, and ofcourse the usual songs (damien rice) and movies (gosford park) to be hunted down.

probably one of the scariest things to have is volatility and lack of control.

i wish i was taller

the skies are dark this afternoon with storms clouds and the grounds slick with drying rain. makes me think of home ...

Most days, I am haunted by spirit. He is, by turns, restless, impish, naughty, shy, sweet and unbaeatably persistant. He stands, like a shadow, just behind my right shoulder. in everything i do or say, when i am talking to someone, when i am workinhg, in the gym, in the class everynow and again it will prod my in the ribs and reminds me of things I dont want to think about, of things I run away from, of things I like to hide from. Distracted, I los my train of thoughts and Im lost, till with a start, I wake up again. In these days of high stress and sharp tension, It reminds me of the late nights just before the exams, when denying all human feelings, we forcefull keep ourselves awake and suddenly when our head jerks down and we wake, only then we realise we had fallen asleep for a split second. like that, waking from a day dream i realise i had fallen. theres a feel of something coming. of wanting something. of being on my way somewhere. i flit between panic and a incstinct to run from whatever is up ahead and my whole heart singing in anticipation.

Sometimes you have to let people go. Sometimes you have to let a friendship go. However precious, however dear, however natural it was. I know I was wrong. But theres nothing I can do now but feel sorry. I want to run away somewhere and I want to run to someone and tell them everything, just vomit out all the pain, and cry. But theres no one like that. You cant lean on someone unless you knew he could take the weight. All the way.

I miss chatts. I need chatts. there are times when no one else will do. Or Sauce, or Juls, or Ad, or Pogie. Yet just having recognised / remembered the comfort of having friends like that consoles and spread over you like a balm.

For a moment, theres peace then your restless again. Its not a ache, so it cant be fixed. Its just this funny feeling. Like somethings wrong somewhere. Like something big is about to hit me in the head and I cant see it.

I guess its been that way ever since the dreaded yearly review. I havent gotten over that yet. I dont know if I ever will. Yet there are certain things that make you feel that maybe it wasnt that bad. At the end of the day, its all that matters, isnt it? The principle thing you do. If I tell you, you suck at your work, what do you have left. If some idiot tells you that you can tell urself its just the idiot. But if one of the people whose judgement you really trust tells you that, then what do you do? At the end of the day, but its all about interpretations, isnt it? It doesnt have to be the end of it all ... you can still try for next time!

nostalgia

wouldnt it be nice if we could really live in the present. i know some of us manage pretty well, but a few are not so good or consistent with this skill

when i look back on my life till now, i see every colour, every shade in my memories. orange for fun & frolic, pink for love & laughter; red for anger & amor; grey for tears & trials; blue for the blues, purple for the strange lost days, black sins and pain; white for wisdom and peace. but given a choice, i wouldnt live one single day differently. 'got say it now - its been a good life all in all'

but the point here is that i look back. each moment i know, though i am, here and now, making memories i will look back on with fond longing some far away tomorrow, yet i spend a part of it looking over my shoulder at some long left behind yesterday.

through it all theres one thing i have realised. you never miss a place, time, person. i have gone back to all of them and found strangers where i had left bits and pieces of my heart. what we do miss is the way we were ... there,then, with them

we are different all the time. with different people, in different places, at different times. and we scatter our souls in the winds of our lives, spreading it everywhere we have touched, leaving bits and pieces of our selves every where we go.

wouldnt it be nice if we could collect all of us in space & time and be whole for that moment, that place.

i couldnt write in words how its raining. its like magic. the water. the light. the city. wish i could stay home and watch the 'way we were' ... or anything, for that matter

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody's lookin' for somethin'.

Some of them want to use you.
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you.
Some of them want to be abused


an old song stirs up so many memories. how the heart clings to everything old. old memories. old friends. old books. old poems & journals. t-shirts. ashtrays. stuff toys. perfume bottles. greeting cards. photographs ... somewhere in linda goodmans love signs, a tattered copy of which i still have at home, which was carefully brought down and furtively & very seriously re-consulted, through the years, with every new childhood sweetheart, somewhere in that much loved (old) book, she says the Scorpio must try to overcome its tendency to make a scrapbook out of its life and live it. i wonder if its true? dont really care ... love reading her stuff cz i love the glorious picture she paints of Us!


things come and things go. but everything that passes over you leaves its tracks. some are stronger than the rest. memories ... there are so many meories crowded in your head. some seem so real you can almost forget they are not here and now. some so faded and dry that they are like watching a movie or reading a book stored somewhere inside. there are things you recall, you know they happened, but it feels so incredible. which me was this thats so much more a stranger than anyone else i have ever heard of?

someone had once exclaimed, how can you hate yourself. how can anyone? how can you not love someone you have carried inside you for so long? treasured, protected, nurtured, guided ... (thats the way of the orphans ... but do the others do that too?) ... created, how can you throw any part of that away, how can you
tear out these cancers, which though dangerously malignant, are still parts of you?

Can you? Is there surgery that does that? Keep the roses. throw away the thorns. Can you discipline, control, carrot&stick yourself.into becoming someone else? into becoming a good person?

what will happen to the bits that fall away under the knife? will the float away from the soul and drift in ether forver, islands of faults and mistakes? torn thorns. poor little thorns.





nostalgia: the memory of the heart. Ive been speaking to Vani quite a bit lately
and I got a bigg-ish mail from Ghatak this morning
And I wrote a biggie to Pills yesterday
So all in all its PUNE TIMES in nostalgia land
With golden words like deccan and chit chat & FTII & Fergusan floating around in my head

In those days, when people told us crap like "these are the golden years of ur life" and "You will remember these days all your lives long"
I always thot, what crap man! I mean ... ye jeena bhi koi jeena hai lallu!
paisa nahi. hamesha bhikaario ka haal hai
at times we'd pool resources to get one vada pav
even an auto is like a luxury
holiday "getaway" start with 3 tier bliss (often unreserved & seatless) on IR (Azad Hind Express)
tumtum mein ghumo. dhup mein pako
ghar aake gaali khaao
journals / profs / orals / practicals / and EXAMS!!!!
chhhheeeeeeeeeee!

But in retrospect ... its something else all together!
pigging out on borrowed (beg / borrow / steal - been there done that) maggie in the dorm
and hanging out at Buggi's flat endless Sundays
and sneaking into FTII forever for lack of places to hang out in
and going to deccan for samosa's early sunday morning
and vani's street side friend
and me and pills going down the dorm - door to door - begging someone to donate a mafggie ka pkt to the kangaal janta :(
chhheeee - & people used to be so rude to us!
I remember somone (I think it was one of those semi localites) once asked as 2.5 bucks for a half pkt ... she said "please kal paisa de dena haan?"
And we were so shameless ... I think I would have felt really bad if it happened now! Ouch! Uss time pein kuchh laga bhi nahi hoga ... kya yedi hain ... aisa kuchh socha rahega :)
Didnt posses a music system so we were once camped outside this seniors (nandita's room) door when she was playing lucky ali
I fell in love with that album
once the second yrs janta mistook me for a fresher & ragged me ... I was in BE!
and I remember seema agarwal ... how we used to plague her
she used to squat in a corner in college (during prep leave - loadsa folk went to the empty bdg to "study") - and she'd rock back and forth and mumble to herself ratto-ing the whole book - cover to cover
and me & pills used to make fun of her so much
toh she used to say "no ya Im just like keeping it in mind"
that was hilarious

And Mona - my one & only Loci pal
Gawd she had a mom, and a house & and bed
And Foooooooooooooood!!!!

And I remember one time this babe
took an illegal night out from hostel and went to the disc
and poor child ... mtv chose that night to come filming in Pune!
Early in the morning there was this huge snap of her in Pune Plus ...
well not of her - but she figured pretty prominently :)
And the papers used to be kept on a kind of platform next to the matron desk
We couldnt do anything
So this other girl she kind of just went and sat on the paper ... it was really funny at that time.

And coming home on Azad Hind
It used to be like those school trains in Malory Towers or something
I mean almost 96 percent students
All the West Bengal and NorthEast janta in Pune going home
Music Jokes Halla ... Mad or Melancholy ... depending on the direction

and vani's M80 & Mona's sunny & Buggi's amazing Bike!
and how they seemed like the coolest in the world bcz of their great treasures
and hanging out a fergie & sagaar plaza & god knows where else to catch up with Ghatak
abnd SPDP

and me & vani & pills at Bugge's place
we knew vani was going off to the US
we used to ask her if she will mail and all
she used to say ya ofsourse I will
I remember this one time I asked her how often she wud mail me
she said everyday
but she never did!
:)
the us seemed so so far away
now i am here too, in the us
but it still seems like she is so far away at times
i guess once again - its a fn of time not place!
Those times when they pass take away so much
Now we are just old hags trying despo'ly to survive from day to day
and memories, and dreams are just a luxury, to be taken out of the attic and smiled at everyonce in a while :)
chatted with my mom
my leo (my beloved my sweet darling leo) is ill
he is getting old it seems (bull)
mom is such a darling
she is so cute
she lined up all my stuff toys in front of the webcam
and leo and my cats
and the birds
everything
and I saw my daddy in his red jammies :)

for a second such a wave of nostalgia swept over me
cant explain ... felt like my heart will break ... with a nice feeling ...
recently a friend asked me who is there for u when things go wrong
no ones ever there really ... but its not as tragic as it sounds
its no big deal - u get used to it jolly quick and all
u just take a deep breath and wait for it to pass
and u shudnt let any one be there
bcz people r very predicatable that way - they go away - or they change
or they turn out to be something totally different from what u thought they were
and then it hurts like hell

reading I think paradox's blog recently I remembered my daddy's smell
he smells of anteus and tide and dunhill and whiskey and the cement plant
he looks serious and scary or half asleep
and he frowns most of the time
and then he smiles, slow unexpectedly - and suddenly boom he's grinning like a little boy
there are things that remind me of him. anteus. smell of whiskey. or ac cars
crisp white shirts. anyone shaving and making strange faces
panes flying overhead, abriti, satyajeet roy, hemanta ... almost everything nice

listening to bhole o bhole ... corny song but cute :)
and also "piya bawri" i love those semi classical hindi movie songs!

spoke to mom for a long time
mists of nostalgia
play misty for me
svengali
fedora
kishore kumar
broken tape recorder
days of poverty
ahua
tartous
the sea
long winding roads - always the same end
whenever I talk to mom it comes to the same thing
sadiyon sadiyon wahin tamaasha - rasta rasta lambi khoj
wish I wasnt such a coward
but somethings ... u cant deal with u cant face u ant solve u cant bear
u can just run and run ...


me and the sky
I cried today to keep her company
And she rained all day
And then at night she lit up the chandeliers
To make my heart bright again
Everyone else just passes by
In the end its just you and i
Everything changes every minute
And ur left staring into the sky


one of my childhood friends commited suicide a long time back
here. in texas
we were in india then
i was in pune
chatts was in cal
sauce was in blore
chatts called me
she was crying ... i didnt know what to do
we become so selfish in times of pain
my first though was how sauce & chatts will be hurt ...

no one knew why
I was curious
i did a search on suicide in google
and I came across this site which said that
sometimes kids who are exposed to very complicated or hurtful situations
when very young are never very normal again
they never really heal
funny

back to life

much more to say. did go to van gogh and led zep and anne frank. and i have so much to say about those three places. it was as big as new york. ie to say it was as big a experience for me as going to new york for the first time had been. when i had huddled in a corner of my room, as a child, and wept for a little girl i had never known, i could have never imagined i would one day actually see the place where she lived. or almost lived. or lived. because you always live. because life, the real part of it, is unkillable, irrepressible. thats why it goes on. the walls and rooms were almost the same as i had imagined it. same, yet different. what moves you most is her father voice. i stood there for fifteen minutes and heard the recording over and over till i had transcribed it. i want to put that up too. and vincent ... he was as beautiful as i had imagined him. i hadnt known thought that he had cut off his ear. and that gaugin didnt come. and new friends. gaugin. manet. and two more. took frantic notes. feel in love and million times. such skies. such blues. such faces. amazing pastels. and he does oil as well. 'i could have told you, vincent ...' the reaper ... thats what i fell mostest in love with. late for class so rest in next :)

holland. between the lines

how was amsterdam? the cities span out in rings. rings of roads. the city packed in, between the lines. the town square is called led zeppelin. that one for next time. couldnt do that now. but i will come back with my 2 kiddies. missed them so much walking these streets. most of the land is reclaimed. learnt about recalimed land, dikes (the land things the build to block in the water), windmills, canals and millions of kinds of tulips i didnt even know existing. wooden shoes. a strain of tulip called 'akela'. and fell in love. with these dark, evil, ox-blood-red flowers ... dont know what kind they are. took notes and pictures. ate like a pig. saw edellweiss. ate crisp apple strudels. got sugar dust on my nose. smelled fresh fish at lunch time in a quaint fishing village with lanes i couldnt have passed through few months back (before id lost some weight. saw some beautiful dutch men and women. remembered my favourite betty neels MB's.

Theres madness on the streets. accessory shops selling weed cases and speciall filter. floating smell of grass in the air. ashtrays that say why go to high school when u can go to school high. and my favourite ... 'its amsterdam - grass is legal' everything is allowed. everything is ok. the streets in the evening feel like a shot out an old sixties movie. the people seem lost, depraved, wasted ... a lot of people would say ... but enormously peaceful. like they have reached. wherever they wanted to go. is this the return to innocence? not a lack of sin but removal of the label? a changed perspective.

in the cities, a blend of old and new that would put my lovely lady, cal, to shame. everywhere people hanging out. doing things and nothing. i try to track back and remember how many people i saw who were hurried or busy.

we were really lucky. had wonderful weather troughout and long sunny days. and two wonderful people planning everything for us and taking us everywhere. god bless them!


saw a tram for the first time outside kolkata. shocked by the difference! are they the same vehicles!

saw an old man scavenging a garbage bin. and he looked the part.

saw some little kids running a kfc. students. they said. i dont know why that stuck. will think about it later.

van g, anne frank scheduled for tomorrow. good luck prevailing. till now covered, tulips at kukenuf, delft, den hague, a traditional cheese factory and madurodam ... not v exciting but a good experience, i suppose. and a tiny traditional fishing village i feel in love with. and a lot of prettiest little houses here and there ... that made me reach out for the words sunny happy families and perhaps for the first time, feel this longing to find my way home.

if i could do it all again? id have stuck to the streets of amsterdam, the museums and led zep. and den hague. but all the same, it was great!

hurt

maybe someday i will be able to look back with maturity and perspective ... for now its just betrayal & it hurts. when ur hurt, specially by someone u had cared about or trusted ur mind goes round and round the same point ... why? the key is to suspend thought. put it off till u can deal with it logically. people change all the time. its not even a big deal. i already knew that everytime u like people, make new friends, take in strangers ... its a risk. they might hurt u. still u do it. then u have no right to be hurt. no right to expect. all hurt maybe stems from that doesnt it ... expectations, trust & caring. dont care. dont run to great lengths to make people happy. dont care too much if they are unpleasant. or if u care dont show. but i cant. im cellophane

Hurt

maybe someday i will be able to look back with maturity and perspective ... for now its just betrayal & it hurts. when ur hurt, specially by someone u had cared about or trusted ur mind goes round and round the same point ... why? the key is to suspend thought. put it off till u can deal with it logically. people change all the time. its not even a big deal. i already knew that everytime u like people, make new friends, take in strangers ... its a risk. they might hurt u. still u do it. then u have no right to be hurt. no right to expect. all hurt maybe stems from that doesnt it ... expectations, trust & caring. dont care. dont run to great lengths to make people happy. dont care too much if they are unpleasant. or if u care dont show. but i cant. im cellophane
shadows of raindrops
gliding down sheets of glass
humming songs of water
tumbling down over the house
soft, warm rugs
ur song on the tape
the smell of hot coffee
the feel of hot baths
warm fur, warm eyes
at your feet, by your chair
sound of voices and laughter
from the kitchen
old movies on tv
all ur old books dragged out
vistis in the evening
old friends rediscovered
starsry nights
alone on the terrace
more coffee
check on my little girl
trying to pass on things ive learned
and learning that u cant
now and then the mind
takes a small trip home
and i wake up the next morning
smiling at the day

post exam tension

Was it bad, or was it bad! It was disastour. Anyway - no point obsessing about it now. One way or the other, atleast its over. Kind of like life. Song in my head today:

You can tell by my eyes that I've prob'bly been cryin' forever,
and the stars in the sky don't mean nothin' to me, they're a mirror.
I don't want to talk about it, how you broke my heart.
If I stand all alone, will the shadow hide the color of my heart;
blue for the tears, black for the night's fears.


very old memories. and i wonder what or who dredged that up? its such a crazy thing, the human mind ... no one really knows whats in someone elses. or even there own. i constantly surprise myself by what i am thinking, or feeling.

im really tired now. stayed up most of the last night. last minute cramming. but is the management charge expressed in KFD as expenses ratio ... lol ... no its not. i down.

I wonder why its nagging me? 5000 bucks is not a lot of money anymore. but she is a baby. shes not really, but we dont ever allow our children to grow up, do we?

nor do we stand and wait by them to guide their baby steps. we leave them like that half baked cross between between innocent and wild, between idontcareaff & idontblvthathappenedtome, between trust & cynisim, between everything and everything ... never to belong anywhere, never fit in, floating in that unstable other world which the stable which the stable know nothing of, each propped by each other ... fascinating, deadly, posionous, fatal, doomed. why? why did this happen to you? why did we do this to you? when so many other children have healthy homes, families, lives, minds. when so many others have what you will never have. a chance. yet i can only stand and watch.

anyway, coming back to the 5000. i remember college days when the entire months allover check was 2000. and rent was 1500. how did i manage? vada pav and walks to college. (yeah, yeah there i go again)

you have to keep them at a distance. you have to relate to them on their terms. casual friendships. dont over obsess. it doesnt pay and it sure doesnt matter. as long as you dont care about them they cant hurt. as long as you dont let the expectations grow, like fungus in stale bread ... spreading to melt the whole down to own rotten morass.

how many questions did I get right? i dont know. i will know in ten days. in the meanwhile, im off to amsterdam on holiday! might be meeting subir again! might even get to see fatso and their daughter! & thats really something! here looking fwd to suspensiion of reclusion (is there such a word) for a weekend :0)

pre exam tension

2 days to go and 7 chapters to go! will I pass? ive stopped going to the gym - that should give me two hours more every day. plus one for travelling. eating like a maniac. working till 8 and studying all night. literally. yikes!!! still so much too go!

Shows you how old you have become. in college i could maaro 3/4 nights at a stretch without turning a hair ... now look at me.

even bunked class this week! and i hate missing class. in the words on an immortal 'its the one bright spot in my life right now'.


Will I pass?

wish i could borrow some brains for two days ;@)

wordsspeachless

two of my favourite poems (or snatches from) its as hard to decide as between songs, or books, or moods. Lev Pasternek, Dr Zhivago:
"and yet the order of acts is schemed and planned. and nothing can avert the final curtains fall. i stand alone, all else is swamped by pharisim. to live life to the end is not a childish task"

such few words, yet they say so much! they seem to me to pack a whole lifetimes result into that one line. how would i write what he wrote in those few last words? why do things go wrong? why do we make mistakes? why do i always make careless errors? again and again and again. 'silly mistakes'. dyslexia. autism. add. what was i thinking? i wasnt! It just 'happened'. I didnt know how to say no so i kept shut. i didnt know how to deal with it so i did nothing. how could i? and how will i live with this now? everyday something happens. everytime i steady myself, off it goes again. why cant we forgive ourselves? accept ourselves. why do we want to be better than we are? why do we expect we might get somewhere if we try hard enough? why do we feel humiliated when we fail? why cant we accept ourselves as we are? im so tired. im tired of fighting with my monsters. im tired of fighting the monsters that are me. im tired of trying to control myself, mould myself, discipline myself. im tired of trying to be a good person. better person. im tired, most of all of the constant battle s in my head between all the people that i am that i am.im tired of being alone. i want a friend. someone to talk to. someone you dont have to talk down too. pretend with. spare. fear. love. just be. someone i can like. or just bear. thats a tall order. im tired of bearing things. im tired of pain and burying pain and ignoring pain. im tired of planting smiles on top. tired of guilt. tired of the mirror. tired of hating the reflection. tired of waiting. thrity down. how many more to go? i dont know.we read, again and again, the words of the artists we love most, cheris them, caress them, nourish them with our love till in our mind they come to life, become 'the living' and live and grow in our emptied hearts like phantom ballerinas in a ballet of life. thus, what we love most is what is most real for us. it is the love that brings them to life ... what the b*£%%&% f*^"£ am i saying? its really late and I better leave the office. and get down to some STUDYING!

Another of my most loved lines. (These are maybe 2 of the only 3 lines of verse I can write / say from memory)

"Could I embody and unbosom now
That which is most within me! Could I wreak
My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw
Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings (strong and weak),
All that I would have sought and all I seek,
Bear, know, feel, and yet breathe into
one word,And that one word were lightning, I would speak!
But as it is, I live and die unheard
With a most voiceless
thought, sheathing it as a sword."

to cry woolf

i got some new books from amazon. diaries of woolf. the set. and some other books (most of which was birdonthewire's fault) and music. led zep - best of - vol 1 and 4, dylan, doors, and the wrong album of bruce springsteen. there were two best of's out there and i wanted one, but i got the other by error. so, no little girl :( - but everything else decent and some movies - fight club, double life of v, motorcycle diaries, the hours.

used & new. miss half.com!

woolf. why do i have this endless fascination with her. infact the word is not enough. there must be some word, which more effectively describes, how we pick these people who we dont even know and are totally, unfailingly, impressed and intrigued by them, by their minds, or what we think their minds were / are like ...

i have others on my list but perhaps she the number one. aparna sen, rahul bose, sushmita sen, james douglas morrison, ravaan, syd barrett, sylvia plath, nash, ... random samples. but not like this.

"I am alone, Virginia thinks. She is, of course not alone, not in a way anyone else would recognize, and yet at this moment, walking through wind toward the lights of the Quadrant, she can feel the nearness of the old devil (what else to call it?), and she knows she will be utterly alone if and when the devil chooses to appear again. The devil is a headache; the devil is a voice inside a wall; the devil is a fin breaking through dark waves. The devil is the brief, twittering nothing that was a thrush's life. The devil sucks all beauty from the world, all the hope, and what remains when the devil has finished is a realm of the living dead - joyless, suffocating. Virginia feels, right now, a certain tragic grandeur, for the devil is many things but he is not pretty, not sentimental; he seethes with a lethal, intolerable truth. Right now, walking, free of her headache, free of the voices, she can face the devil, but she must keep walking, she must not turn back."
- Michael Cunningham, The Hours


that i have failed so utterly, completely, totally. in everything that was important to you. and for your sake, to me.

to have lost by absentia was foolhardy, reckless and grand. to have tried and lost, means the end of hope. the final stamp to banish you from the world of the 'can do's'

when i crossed over to your side, to your world, i burned my bridges, i closed the doors behind me. now i cant go back. to words and dreams and abstractions. now im neither here nor there.

a small task - to live - and that too so onerous. a small gift asked for and given so grudgingly. "to live life to the end, is not a childish task (dr zhivago)"

she took her life in her hands and walked up to them and said this is what i made ... dont remember which book (i think dalloway or ox)or the exact words ... just the idea.

"When people are happy, they have a reserve upon which to draw, whereas she was like a wheel without tyre, jolted by every pebble."
- Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

lessons learnt

if you arent chirpy and sunshiny peopel are going to send you prozac! why are people lkilike this? why is being / talking about / writing about anything serious is interprested as sorrow and depression? is that the way other people are? do they not spend hours thinking about life and death and lunacy and philosophy for fun? i guess not :) but why do they expect you to be exactly they same as theM/ why do they not accept ur different / weird / crazy ... and leave you alone?

weltscmerz

why is it that certain words fascinate us?

'weltscmerz' is an old favourite. there are many more. if you just let your mind drift free amongst the all words the words stored in your mind, like your eyes drift from star to star sometimes, when you stare into the sky for very long. Dont try to trace a pattern. Dont try to analyze, jump to conclusions, speculate, rush to / for parashoots of friendly solace ... just drift ... aimlessly through the skies ...

cerullean
sky
sunset
melting
magenta
gold
argent
blue
azure
saphire
drops
swirling
fade
glimmer
night
night fall
daybreak
renew
cycle
loop
automata
cognition
escher
ennui
tired
blank
empty
numb
cut off
isolated
scared
demonised
caricaturised
unhinging
fantasising
haunted
desperate
crying
sobbing
begging
defiant
angry
lost
inert
helpless
pathless
haunting
beautiful
aching
poignant
ethereal
surreal
ceramic
cerrulean
carmine
poised
taut
phoenix-like
burning
ashes
life, in the shadow of death
sunshine, defined by shadows
colours, bordered by black strokes

just words ... for us to play with.

again

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

shakespear again, the first steps, the first love, first crush, first all night long madness. 'girls, you must know your jc backwards'. the first fascination, enthralled, lost ... stunned awake by the bell. 9B. last row. sauce and bhatts ahead.

the second crush was soon to follow. legend. esoteric. exclusive. 2 bundles of papers. when 3/4th of the class failed. "girls, what do you think pressure really is ..."

too much love will kill you. just as sure as none at all.