You shouldn’t come
around here anymore. I tell you. This way lies heartbreak – that’s what it says
in big bold letters on the door too, don’t you see. But then you only see what you
want to. I guess that’s what I came to love about you. It drove me nuts
sometimes, your short-sightedness, your belief and your passion. You saw things
in ultra-HD, even when you didn’t see more than 10 feet in front and five
minutes into the future. You were prepared to risk it all, which surprised and maybe
even scared the ever-loving hell out of country boy me.
Anyway, its done
and you’ve gone moved on. And it’s me that stuck between wanting and just
simply being stuck. See, I did something stupid. You left and I couldn’t see my
way around the map of happiness I carried in my head. I got a little pissed (well a lot pissed) and
then took a long swim (and you know I can’t swim). And honestly, I was good
with that. I was done with this side anyway and I was mostly good, not to you I
know, but apart from that. But, you see, the gatekeeper seems to be
old-fashioned… and I need you to forgive
me. I have told him (and told him) that you don’t know that I was dead and
anyway it does feel like blackmail to say that you are holding me back. But the
gatekeeper is stubborn as hell (a small joke, don’t tell him). It been six
months and here it feels like forever. I am really getting antsy. You don’t
need to write or anything, which would not be possible anyway. If you think it,
the gatekeeper will know – he says that and I think he cannot lie.
She woke up with a start. She had fallen asleep on the
sofa with the TV running again. Glanced at the phone, it was past one. She
really needed to get to bed. Instead she padded to the fridge and took out a
can of ginger ale. Sat on the ledge and took a welcome sip. She felt all funny
and thirsty. Took out the phone and signed on to Facebook. He hadn’t posted any
update for more than seven months. She wished him well, she did. She
smiled to herself and unfriended him. Time to move on.
She felt a sigh. Maybe she sighed herself. It was late.
____________________________
I don't know why I listen to these songs. Maybe cause lyrics don't matter sometimes?
1. Soda Stereo - Disco Eterno. The only Argentine band I know. And I freaking love this song. Smooth and psychedelic, kind of how best 'shrooms would feel I guess? Check out the live version as well.
What’s your earliest memory? Is it a good one? Do we
tend to remember the sad ones or do we hold on tighter to the moments when we
were unadulteratedly happy? The potential for tragedy seems to be higher
really, but then that could really be my sunny disposition unfurling. It just
seems that we have so much more to lose than to potentially gain. It is weird
to say that perhaps, a pessimist saying that we have it good but that’s kind of
how I feel – as a species, we have perhaps inhabited a Goldilocks’ zone of some
sort since the great wars and collectively we are set for a great reset of
sorts. And individually, with there are being so many things that can go belly
up, just thinking about all those possibilities can be quite debilitating. For
me, the moments that were squirm inducing are never really away from the
surface of the memory pool – and I do like absently scratching away at my scabs.
But if I put my mind to it, peering deep as it were, there are bright shiny
pieces, gleaming and eager to be found.
I am seven and sick with worry. Dad’s home for the
weekend. He’s promised to take me this time. The sun is merciless – May promising
glamour tans and scraped knees from sliding on concrete sidewalks. I can’t bear
to wait for sundown – I have packed and unpacked and changed the plastic at least
a couple of times. Even the evening routine of prayers and incense fails to
calm me – knees tapping away at the leg-board of the sitting room divan,
waiting for the parents to finish their tea. It’s a long walk, maybe 3km,
beyond the nursery school, across the old D-type flats, along the bachelors’
quarters. I bounce (can you imagine?) all the way, tugging Dad’s hand. I change
by myself (grown up aren’t I) and take a quick shower, taking care to put my
new glasses into their case. The water is a mysterious green with the lights and
the surface heat lending it an otherworldly air. Dad goes in first and then he guides
me in. The water is cool and smells quite strongly of chlorine. Dad tells me to
grab a long breath and then I sink in.
I am seventeen and thereabouts, traveling home for the
weekend. Its December or January. I wake up at around 4, the 5w yellows encased
in absent glass and rusted iron at the end of the corridors providing the only
hint of light in an otherwise suffocating darkness of snores and stale air. I
clamber down the ladder and loop my trusty denim bag over my head as I head to
the nearest end of the coach. It takes a couple of tries before I can wrench
the heavy door open – it opens with a creak morphing into a groan and a whoosh
to end – thankfully, the attendant doesn’t come rushing. I have an hour to go
and I know that the train won’t stop for anything. Villages blink by, lights
twinkling and flirty bamboo groves a-titter. Occasional glimpses of NH-34. The
wind is nippy and alive and I brace my feet against the door jamb and lean back
into the hand rail and close my eyes.
For someone who is not really big on uninitiated
contacts, I am quite haptic I find. I
like the sensation of touch. I thought of learning braille once (didn’t have
the patience) and even used to scrub my fingertips with sandpaper (in a
non-mutilating way). I was/am weird? Memories are triggered by the littlest things. ______________________________________________
Been away for a while. But now I am back, a little
different, no better or worse, but simply different. Met some family and made
some family – though I hesitate to really put labels on things are so new. I
have been comfortable so long in a shell of my own making and I am nothing if
not lazy, so I know I will take my own time to understand about these new
people and even then, I doubt I will really get to know all of them. How am I
different? That I don’t really know yet. Something fundamental has changed,
with full consent and knowledge yes, but still it feels quite invasive. I feel
weird waking up some days, almost convinced before I open my eyes, that nothing
has really changed. But then I get up and it really has.And now I can’t smoke in my own home. But I
have had time to organize my bookshelves after a good long time (since I left
C-101 really, apart from a short time in 1503) – and found out that I have now
gathered about 300 books in Mumbai (over 9 years, so that’s acceptable and
doesn’t really require any intervention I think, right?). Putting up the
current status of my comics shelf (going to be shelves soon I think) here – I love
how they are so uniformly sized, very satisfying to my mildly OCD self.
I will sign-off here. I really wanted to write. It had
been so long. A couple of songs I must mention here.
1. alt-J - Taro. I discovered the band pretty recently - what can I say - pretty much my loss. Incoherent jabber, lyrics interlaced with history, very different instrumentation and a Brit band to boot. Am linking to the interesting videos/songs here (1, 2, 3) and putting up a more SFW video.
2. Mumford & Sons - Babel. Yes, its mushy and cliched. Why not?
I was on my way back from Dahej. It’s a nothing town,
hot and dusty and parched in May. The nearest train station is Bharuch, a tiny
municipality that’s been mostly known for the army presence there, in keeping
with the proximity to the Pakistan border. But now Dahej and Bharuch are both
exploding, due to the SEZ that was set up in 2004, I guess as part of the
incumbent PM’s push for investments when he was the CM of Gujarat. Chemical,
pharma and petrochem companies give the air a distinctly metallic tang, and the
mad dash of colourful and rundown buses ferrying people to work and back on the
state highways is something all too familiar in India, where urban planning and
infrastructure doesn’t keep pace with investments and ambition (see also Bangalore, Karnataka for e.g.). Despite
it all though and because all these things are still new (maybe been a decade
in the making), the places still retain a mufassil
charm, a place of tea-stall lean-tos, single-storey houses, cattle on the road
and patches of greenery hyphenating modest new building societies. They grow
cotton and groundnuts beside the highways, on land that’s not yet been given up
or taken away for building/expanding those highways.
It was a long drive, maybe 8 hours and a bit. It’s a tangible
difference as you near Bombay, crossing the Vasai creek. I had been napping,
the car doing a comfortable 80 on smooth highways that surprise you even after
all these years. As the car slows perceptibly, I wake up. You can look through the
window, your breath leaving patches due to the ac being near enough to
freezing. It’s almost surreal, your brain slowly waking up and trying to get
its bearings. Its row upon row of cars, flanked by high-rises and developments.
The city reveals itself, a honeycomb of thousands of cells with a hundred
thousand windows. Windows bathed in golden and cold-blue lights, some darkened.
Millions of strangers bustle inside, shadowed and in relief, as they attend to
the private business of the night-time hours. You can see them, unadorned and
naked and unknown, strangers to you, seen and unknown, exposed yet mystical. You
are all alone, surrounded by the teeming millions, physically proximity not
enough to dispel the inner isolation that comes from and characterises urban
living. Its nearly midnight when you do
reach home and as you stand on the sill of your Juliet window, smoking, you can
see car headlights on the highways. You wonder if someone is looking up from a
car, wondering at all the windows.
________________________________________
Couple of quick music video mentions, putting music videos that I found interesting, one kinda old and one kinda new (I somehow can't find the videos through blogger search, so links will have to suffice):
1. UNKLE - Burn My Shadow. A storyboard. I thought Goran Visnjic would become more famous.
2. The Chemical Brothers ft. Beck - Wide Open. The making of the video is pretty interesting. Good work demands rigour - technology helps yes, but the work still needs to be put in.
I saw a few movies - mainstream fare - Baahubali 2 (fun), Ghost in the Shell (I was prepared to dislike it and was pleasantly surprised, I wish the need for possible sequels weren't so obvious) and Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (its different from the rest of the MCU movies in tone and palette and that's a definite plus).
_________________________________________ I am trying to remember which children's magazines I
read as a kid.
