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