i am walking around the garden path around the self-centric palace of my mind, and talking to me and myself. I am trying understand why I feel so unmotivated. ion. i'm trying to understand what I really want - because if what I thought I desired was what i really wanted why can't I reach out and grab it - when it's finally within reach
The hen who dreamed she could fly
This was the last fictional book I read - its been a while. It was surreal reading it at a time of the refuge crisis, immigration debates and at a time when many more women than before are arriving at their Forties in-style, only to be greeted at the door by biology. It's a book about a hen, who longs for a child of her own. Every time she lays an egg, she tries to will it into a baby with all her mental strength. But her will-power proves impotent to fight her age, the farmer and her circumstances. The days pass in quiet desperation. But then one day she escapes. Knowing the dangers that surround the hen-coop, the farmer and his wife assume she will be killed and dont bother looking for her, but by some freak accident she survives all the dangers: from the wolf to the roosters. The different animals live in the farm in varying degrees of autonomy and plenty. On her way out she lands with one and then other group; and they all treat her with different medley of acceptance and hostility, welcome and suspicion. Eventually, she makes her way to the hills, where she is free, but also has to deal with the menaces (like the vicious wolf and the dangerous snake) on her own. She makes a friend, adopts and child and finally sails away with her child to a far away land, dreaming of how she will always remember where she came from, for its bitterness and sweetness.
She had asked me for money that day. It was sudden. I didn't know what to say. I said nothing. But the silence could only be a negative. She went away
I never saw her all these months. I dont know what happened to her. For me, the days which had stretched out before me unfathomably, like a summer vacation, suddenly picked up pace, like a regular school week. Between getting the house ready (a perfect house is never done) and learning to be newly married at the ripe old age of forty; between negotiating my rights and freedoms in an unexpected merger, and soothing the wounds of decades of solitude, and learning to hide the ugliest of scars; and most of all, tending and hiding the embers of the call to return to the wild. Between all that, and somewhere in my spare time, trying to keep up the pretense of fighting what was fast becoming a lost cause - my career
I never saw her all these months. I dont know what happened to her. For me, the days which had stretched out before me unfathomably, like a summer vacation, suddenly picked up pace, like a regular school week. Between getting the house ready (a perfect house is never done) and learning to be newly married at the ripe old age of forty; between negotiating my rights and freedoms in an unexpected merger, and soothing the wounds of decades of solitude, and learning to hide the ugliest of scars; and most of all, tending and hiding the embers of the call to return to the wild. Between all that, and somewhere in my spare time, trying to keep up the pretense of fighting what was fast becoming a lost cause - my career
Cal sick. There is a rubber band stuck between me and my city, my lakes, my gariahat and the grins and horns and tragi-comic-melodrama-for-fucks-sake and through it all incessant passionate and pointless debate, of living less and thinking about life more and when it rains in Calcutta wherever I may be, the rubber band pulls back
Where I am from, sometimes its okay to make fun of people - even those you love, especially when they are trying hard. Somewhere humor crosses over to ridicule and mockery as we desperately struggle to avoid sounding naive and corny. this is often saddens me but especially now.
Like most indians, I am desperately proud of my athletes, how much they overcome and what odds they face. Growing up in a privileged world one cannot even imagine what life is like outside that bubble; And moreover what a vast chasm there is between someone like him and the elite, who may even be his neighbor and not even acknowledge him as a fellow human. The oppression of caste, class, race and the english language merge to an insurmountable wall between people.
What makes a posh-society-crapwriter who makes a living out of vile gossip and dirt, and not even honest well written funny gossip - who writes books that most people would be ashamed to be caught reading - qualified to call anyone a loser?
I know that this was not about that. I am conflating issues. But to me they felt related. Its as if in this fierce competition for resources you have to qualify for everything - even to try. But effort is not wasted, even if you do not "win". We do not waste money on these people - we could not "waste" enough money on . We waste money on the clubs and schools that nourish this system of pseudo-superiority