Over the Hills and Far Away

Valentine's Day and School Dirtyness

2012-02-15T17:24:00.002+05:30

Learning to be alone is listening to upbeat love songs on the radio on Valentine's Day, alone in your room, gyrating your butt slowly in the air.

Also, on an unrelated note: I once wrote some hebbie fantasy pornography in school. During class, in an exercise book. It was a chapter in my unfinished master fantasy novel The Ruby of the Fallen. The heroine looked something like this--

Mmm, yummy. Why don't real women look like this? Anyway, the manuscript of that incomparable work of literature is now lost. Sigh.

Also, my friend RMD used to bring Bengali panu to school and read from it. Does anyone know what "ramthap" means? I do. Also, my friend R used to invent amazing porno stories on the spot in class and whisper it to a close group of intensely interested listeners. It used to happen during zero period. We used to call it "Woody Hour".

Yes, boys' schools are very homoerotic spaces. Yes, it's slightly disturbing. We used to spend an inordinate amount of time in class with boners. We also used to randomly whack each other's crotches and run away, while the victim squirmed in pain for 10 minutes. It was called "tookie". If I don't have children, I will know why.

In above picture, note friend M's protective gesture. Tweaking each others' nipples painfully was another common practice with disturbing undertones. It was called "pungee". It is a dark fantasy of mine to do this to a girl (gently). Hmmmmm.

That's R and me. I love him. When I hang out with my school friends today, and I'm very glad that I've remained close to them (in fact the circle has expanded after school) and intend to stay close to them for life, we still have this Inkling-esque parochial, slightly misogynistic, homosocial dynamics. We tend to lionize heteronormativity but er, I think there may be some undertones in the group's dynamics that would interest someone in queer studies.

In one class in high school we used to intensely fantasize about boning our slutty looking somewhat hot class-teacher. The rumour (probably untrue) was that one jock-type fellow in class, who had failed three times, had banged her. This is at a time when one person told me that babies are born when a man pulls out a white, triangular thing that looks like a piece of paper, from his erect dick, and inserts it by hand into a woman's vagina, and we believed it for about a week. So I think it's highly unlikely the said jock banged the hot teacher. I also used to have a khata where I used to stick pictures of scantily clad celebrities cut out from newspapers. That wonderful document is lost as well. I think my mother disposed of it. This was the age when we collectively discovered masturbation, that wonderful thing. After fire and the wheel, the fact that you can pull on your own thingy and feel very happy for some time, is, I think, man's greatest discovery.

That's all for today on Confession Radio.

Zeitgeist

2012-02-13T22:05:00.005+05:30

Miles to Go Before I Sleep

2012-02-13T21:14:00.006+05:30

So my first class happened. It went as well as I could have expected it to go. I think I taught decently.

I am trying to be an ascetic, when I'm really not. The problem is, that I have so much to read, so much to know. So much, really, that I should be in the library all day. I have

Two courses to read for
Term papers to write
Presentations to prepare
An academic blog to manage
Research assistant work, which is dog-hard, banal editing, combined with secondary reading so my comments don't sound like an illiterate's
Some freelance editing that I recently took on. Editing a non-English-speaking person's travelogues.
Preparation to teach classes
Preparation for the GRE (not begun yet)
Preparation for the NET (not begun yet)
Besides that, I feel there are seminal works of English literature I have not read, (I won't name them, it's embarrassing) which any self respecting lit student should have read by now. I need to get cracking on those.
Also, I should be writing abstracts for seminars (somehow the enthu has just vanished after my initial burst of three papers)
I should also be looking to publish a few papers in journals.

Is that not truly an insane amount of work? Just LOOK at that list! And there are people who complain about 9 to 6 jobs. Exhaustion? You don't know exhaustion, my friends. Exhaustion is trying to read Freud at 1 am so that you can make informed comments on your boss' work, after a whole day of classes (and our classes are four hours long, and you have to pay attention because you're graded for it). The worst thing is, in this discipline, you cannot switch off your mind.

How did I get from the land of the lotus eaters to this concentration camp (pun intended)?

Now the thing is, I have to force myself to become this scholarly person, that really, I have not been. Not in school, not in college. I like people more than books. I feel lonely as hell if I don't have someone to talk to properly. And I have the attention span of a cretin on crack. What the hell do I do? I miss football, I miss music, I miss school friends, my inane college friends, and my ex. In short, I really don't like my life right now. But what the fuck do I do? All my friends are "making it" and leaving for top-of-the line research in top places in the first world. And here I am, thinking mujh ko bhi toh lift kara de? And why the hell not? I've always been a top student, right up there.

Moment of reflection: technically speaking, I'm not in a bad place. It's one of the best research universities in India and the department recently beat all English depts in India in a respectable study. But somehow this bidesh jawa worm has got into my brain and won't get out.

Also, is this insanity what it is in the long run? A PHD can only mean harder work, I have to accept that. And then? Slogging it out in the rat race for a job. Get more publications! Read more theory! Be seen in the right crowds, lick the right ass. Go for launches, lectures, seminars, run, run, run. More, more, more. Why do we live in such a fucking rat race?

My inner escapist is moaning and groaning. I just want to drop out of this shit. Just sink into something warm and disappear into a simpler world. Where there's good and evil and love and camaraderie and beauty and beer and song and sunshine.

Why, why why did I read those books as a child? Why couldn't my parents grow me up and read me some modernists? Why do I have, to quote Soumik, "pointless dreams of endless light"?

2012-02-12T23:36:00.003+05:30

So tomorrow I take my first class. This is rather a big moment for me. I've taught my school kid neighbours a few poems, I taught English grammar once, at an NGO, and I tend to make my presentations in Mphil classes a bit like teaching, but that's really all the teaching experience I've got so far. This is something different. I'm teaching "Reading Strategies for Specialized Texts" to BA kids from other departments. It's hardly high-level, but it's something.

I'm a tad nervous, but in a looking-forward-to-it kinda way. Tomorrow was meant to be a class on epics, but I've decided to start with prosody. I'm trying to teach them how to read poetry, thus. And analyzing form is one essential "reading strategy".

Lets see how things pan out.

Joshua Tree

2012-02-11T13:58:00.004+05:30

Lines written on the bus to Jaipur:

Desert bloom
Clawing needy out of dust.
Brambled staff
Older than ages.
Like a beggar, shorn, stripped
and naked
Pauper prince ruling,
In an empire of sand.

Where are your branches
Your flowers, your fruit?

Here is only dust,
You seem to tell me
Dust and ageless mountains
Riven out of time
No ostentatious bloomings
For the bowers of mankind

Tell me all your stories,
That I, inessential,
May mingle with stone and dust
And live,
Deathless in my destitution
An ancient, toothless king.

Quem Quaeritis?

2012-02-07T22:25:00.007+05:30

Quem quaeritis in sepulchro, o Christicolae?
(Whom do ye seek in the sepulcher, O followers of Christ?)

What do I write here? How do I map this out? Do I dare traverse these mysteries in words? How long can I bare my heart? Until another light is snuffed out, within its glooming portals? Another and another, dim, dim, dim. Dub thump, its throbbing violet veins growing dark and dim and muddy?

I want to be a seashell, on the last sea beach in time. Waiting for the last wave to wash me. To hallow my body with salt and seadirt. To clean me out with brine. And pray to me, ancient god, heir to an ancient line.

I want to be a star, far, far out in space, throbbing with the secrets of the deep. I want to be alone, but complete, a furnace bright with its own heat, it's own magic fires. Far away in time. Dead but burning, burning in your eyes.

I want to be Pegasus, the quickest. Fleet of foot, starlight blazing into fire round his heels. I want to fly. I want to be strong again, whole, unburnished, a blaze of light and laughter, reeling through the liquid vastness of the skies.

I want to be whole again. Held, and loved and cherished. I want to be the Only One. Your Adonis, your melancholy whore. The godhead in your secret shrine. A tempest that will break you, a name that will burn you, hurt you, rock you teary-eyed and hollow. If you feel at all.

I want to forget. Forgive. Live, let live, learn. I want to be the Buddha, blissful, large of heart. I want to be beyond this grief. Beyond this aching madness eating our my heart. Beyond this silent ebbing indifference.

A friend told me, the water comes. And then the water goes, breaking everything into pieces. Shells, sand, fragments, drifting slowly from my palm.

Hold me in your unremitting grief. Burn me till I am nascent, mixing with the secrets in your soul. Or let me go, let me go. Let me vanish, let me forget. Let me not remember your eyes your face your hips your lips your sweat. Your summersmell. Your scarlet velvet blues. Your dazzle, lightblinding. Your unrelenting charm.

If. If you feel at all.

Here I am, and there you are, and leagues of time behind us. A walk down a pitch dark road, hands clasped against the cold. An afternoon in a musty room, green light dancing on your perfect body. You a mermaid, me a sailor, drowning. An evening, dark and dusty, and raindrops start to fall. You, a jasmine, me a wafting evening breeze. Time, and time, and time goes by. Yet, there is you. And there is I. Remember. If you feel at all.

My stranger, my lover, my friend. My bells from ancient Albion, my long forgotten tune. The silent bursting laughter in my soul. My tragedy, my comedy, my drunken delight. My infinite joy. Do I turn away forever, or follow you into the dark?

Non est hic; surrexit, sicut praedixerat.
(He is not here, he is risen. Just as he foretold.)

Just as he foretold.

Winter's End

2012-01-27T19:49:00.004+05:30

Winter is coming to an end. I barely need the heater anymore and the thermal inners are making me sweat. Which is a bad thing because I've been wearing the same 2 inners by rotation for well, an indecently long time.

Time for another banal update. Things are rolling along smoothly, but the stress is piling up. I've signed up to teach a tool course in the centre this sem. This will be my first serious experience of classroom teaching, of my own subject, and I am insanely excited about it. People who know me know that I love to play professor in my head. I've had a class on Modernism charted out in my imagination since time immemorial, complete with imaginary student responses. Yes, I am lame. Other people dream of going to space, and curing cancer. All I want to do is make people go "Whoaaa" with epiphany. Also, I can't wait to be called "sir". :D Though I'm still some way away from "Professor Ray".

The course is called "Reading Strategies for Specialized Texts". I'm designing the outline and the syllabus myself. It's a very basic course for B.A. students from other centres in the School of Languages. I'll basically be doing an overview of various forms of prose, poetry and drama (drama will be taught by my senior Siddhartha) and arming the students with rewarding approaches to reading them. I'll touch very briefly on literary theory along the way.

That aside, work as usual. Shirking a lot. Taken three courses, but am dropping out of one. Meeting old friends for a change, and having a good time. Although being back in the Bengali elitist circles is a little strange at first, one gets back into the old cliques. I had a ball in the metro with Dhruva Ghosh, freaking out little Mandy by pretending to be British. Dhruva can't do the accent well but I sound like I'm straight out of some classic British comedy. We were talking loudly and pretending to be pretentious British people--which is not far from what Bengalis are anyway. Mandy was disowning us.

Met my senior Babelfish after that. Great food and good whiskey. Me much happy. Going to meet my long-lost JUDE classmates this Sunday, those poor overworked souls at Pearson's.

Going to Cal in a week. Hoping to stay busy and not get mindfried by boredom and depression. I have this idea of shooting a music video for a song in North Calcutta. Maybe I'll do that.

Personal life a bit of a rollercoaster right now, hitting the bumpy bits, but I think I'll survive. I need to develop Dhruva's sense of equanimity, calm and universal love. Now more than ever, I realize the wisdom of the Buddha. Desire is indeed the cause of all unhappiness. Alternately, I can go for the eros approach recently advocated to me by a certain someone. In that case I need to find me some suitably beautiful young lady to contemplate soon or my mind will unravel. Anyone interested in being my new muse? I swear I won't write bad poetry. :P Speaking of which, I recently wrote one two-line persuasion poem by SMS to somebody that would part the legs of the saintliest virgin, but shucks, I can't repeat it here.

Death by Dholpur

2012-01-17T01:14:00.004+05:30

Correction: Growing up is working into the wee hours at Dholpur, sitting between one guy, farting smelly and insidious, casting guilty glances left and right, and one girl, sitting with her incredibly stinky shoes off, blissfully oblivious of the rank smell of overripe cheese wafting inexorably from her shoes, towards others.

Eli eli lama sabachthani??

2012-01-10T23:40:00.001+05:30

Growing up is working into the wee hours at Dholpur House, JNU, at 3 degrees centigrade, no heater, with gloves, muffler and tupi on.

Ob La Di Ob La Da

2012-01-09T17:23:00.005+05:30

So the new semester is under way. In recent news: new friends, nice people, very friendly and helpful, each mad in his or her own way. Not my usual JU crowd, so glad about that. Meeting new people, learning to adapt, learning not to judge by appearances, manners, proficiency with the English language, etc. Jadavpur was such a niche crowd of liberal Bengali elitists.

Have specially bonded to a new level with my roommates, and Shakeel's friend Ashutosh, who is a trickster figure straight out of folklore.

Am smoking again, puff puff puff, but I'll quit after it stops being brutally cold.

Got bitten by a dog. Mad bitch that bit thirty people in two days. Ran around taking injections. No big deal. The surprising thing is that, unlike others who shared the experience, I don't seem to have developed a fear of dogs. If anything, I'm closer than ever to the campus dogs, specially my little Narmada litter. The pups have grown in leaps and bounds during the holidays, and were very glad to see me back. One little boy thinks he's a hunter. We play the hunting game where he hops around, skuffles away, and does a rush-attack on my hands and legs. But my favourite is the runt of the litter. Meek little fellow who loves to sniffs my crotch and boink his head against my chin. Now them doggies can bite me all they please, I'm nice and immune to rabies.

Classes haven't started, but I'm around in the centre, helping out with the upcoming seminar. Speaking of seminars, I seem to have missed all the deadlines of seminars put up on the notice board during the holidays. So much for improving my measly CV.

Doing my exercises regularly enough. Back pain seems to be vanishing gradually, thank god and touchwood. Played badminton yesterday. No discernible aches and pains today, which is a change from the last time I played. Please be improving, injuries.

Newspaper addiction is back, yay.

Planning a trip to Jaipur for the lit fest, but everybody seems to have made their groups already and are turning a deaf ear when I try to get in with them. Bookings are mostly done for people. I think I'll just land up there and try to work something out.

Got my first paycheque. Feels lovely.

I love this campus. Dear god, I love it. It feels like home. I love its familiar niches. I love the nilgai in my backyard. I love the trees, the fog, the streetlights. I love walking through the streets, rum-buzzed and warm inside, but my nose stinging in the cold.

Breakup depression improving. The less I think about it the better. Chick scene remains grim though. This is where I miss the smart, sassy, classy, convent-educated elitist Bengali girls. What a hypocrite I am.

That's all folks.

Aaargh

2012-01-04T22:31:00.003+05:30

I am fighting various kinds of addictions, again. December saw me, very foolishly, and very unnecessarily, returning to smoking, just for the fuck of it. It also saw me, as with most holidays, drinking almost every day (and since I don't get buzzed easily any more, this means drinking copious amounts--between 4 and 6 drinks, typically). After a hard day's editing in the library in JNU, there's nothing I crave more, when I go back to my room, than a couple of large pegs of rum and a cigarette (just one, goddamit?) to relax. But this is what buros with heart problems do. I must. be. stronger.

But here I am biting my nails off in the reading room because my drinking plans for the night got cancelled. And yet the bottle of rum lies in my room, untouched. Gleaming dark cap waiting to be opened. Warm happy sleepyness waiting to be enjoyed.

Aaaargh. Fucking hell.

Ramble On

2012-01-02T00:10:00.004+05:30

Got no time to for spreadin' roots, the time has come to be gone And though our health we drank a thousand times it's time to ramble on

- Led Zeppellin - "Ramble On"

When I came to you first, in the heart of the monsoon, you were wild and dark and stormy. I sat facing away from the canteen, gazing into unbroken forest. A sea of dense green, sunk in a valley. Hanging darkly above was a vast canopy of blue-grey clouds. Inky blue, like some half remembered passage from Ruskin Bond. Somewhere in the forest, a peacock called out--a strange and alien cry that sent a thrill through my heart. Thunder rumbled, and a strong wind blew all around. I knew then that I was in love.

Autumn was lonely, the days short, the nights long and listless, but I grew. I wended my way to the library, befriending strangers. One night I sat for hours on the Rocks and looked at planes, thrumming and groaning through the air. One afternoon in early winter, I sat there and grew warm in the sun, my feet cool on the bare rocks. I played tunes on my guitar, I sang loudly, one night I danced all alone on the chaat of my hostel, glad to be alive.

Winter at home has been painful. Old aches, old niches. Sinking into solipsism in this dimly yellow hole in my room. Tomorrow I return. I need you to save me, my world of beauty. My treetop deepgreen wonderland. Fill me with life. Take me away from all of this. Give me good cheer and company, friends and lovers and bards and brawlers and the mage with the golden-deep voice. Give me purpose, strength and clarity. Give me sweet sleep, and peace.

Mad, Bad, and Kinky as Fuck

2011-12-28T00:51:00.004+05:30

I fear I'm so nefarious,

That girls will just get scarious,

If they get too nearious,

To me.

That's right, I am The DEVIOUS,

My sins are Grave and Grevious,

But you will please forgeevy us,

I'm me.

My mind is rolling in the filth,

You get me if you Google "tilt",

Try it now, and try "askew",

Tell me, can I tilt with you?

I've lain with devilish impy girls

Who make the good girls' hair to curl

Who turn the farmboys into churls,

Like that.

That's right it's all that kinky shit

That mmm delicious dirty shit

That god-that-felt-so-goodly shit

We're B-A-D.

Bad, and mad

With a pinch of rad-

-ical, girls pickled,

Mmm, and sauced.

All red hot fire,

Lined with frost.

Drip drop drippity

Hot with sex

Minds like diamonds

Souls that vex.

High strung and heeled

They're girls who've keeled

You over, under, on the bed.

And messed up notions in your head.

I've stripped them off and...

Nay, nay. Stop.

To find out more,

Knock on my door,

I live in room

One twenty four.

Prayers and Resolutions

2011-12-27T15:59:00.003+05:30

WORK: I need to work very, very hard over the next 6-9 months. May I have the strength and the resolve to put aside all other things and just give myself to study. Just for this crucial period. In bullet form, here are some objectives/work/readings that I have to engage with.

Absolutely critical

NET/SLET studies.
GRE prep.
Subject GRE prep.
M.Phil coursework (term papers/presentations).
Application related research; application-specific reading in my area of interest (for SOPs).
Research Assistant work/Any other project work I may take on later.

Second in Priority

Writing seminar papers/getting my stuff published.
Political readings--the papers (regularly), magazines, Shakeel's collection of left thinkers.

Personal Front

There is some talk of my acting in The Importance of Being Earnest. Lets see what happens on that front.
More reading on popular science (yet to get through the books I already own).
Improve on my very incomplete reading of the fantasy canon, make some headway into the sci-fi canon.

Note to self: finish pending PAPERWORK. I fucking hate the very thought of it, but I have to. I have a pile of money pending, all my RA salary--I haven't got it yet because I've been too lazy to do the paperwork. I need to get transcripts from JU, and my degree certificate. I need to pick up my JNU grade card when it comes.

BODY: On another front, I have to, have to fix my back and my leg NOW. It's going from bad to worse--I can barely walk 10 metres without my back aching. I need to swim and gym and exercise my butt off to get sorted. This is more important than academia. I have to make sure I do the physiotherapy everyday.

I need to drink less. It makes me a soppy mess, I send random messages to people, I do random shit with strangers, I have fights with old friends, and I get fucked the next day, and my liver gets fucked permanently. I have a bad feeling about the Liver Function Test I had to take today. My tongue is white and my digestion is fucked, I've been drinking like a bitch this holiday.

I secretly hope I'm forced to go on another liver-health hiatus from drinking.

MIND: I need to put aside self-pity and depression, consign myself to change in life, and gain a modicum of inner peace. I need to be happy without any pillars/pillows of emotional support. I need to remind myself to spend more time with books than people for a few months--this is very, very important. And also what I shall find the hardest to accomplish. At present loneliness, alienation and disillusionment are eating me up. I just have to bottle it up. Bottle it up and turn to the books.

May the force be with me.

2011-12-24T23:36:00.001+05:30

Time. It's weird. 5 years in JUDE feels like one day. And 4 years, well. Did it really mean that little? Amazing.

Beneath a Hanging Moon

2011-12-24T02:36:00.003+05:30

*Lines written in Shantiniketan, in my uncle's new country house out in the wilderness.

I am beneath a hanging moon tonight, here in my uncle's house in the wilderness outside Shantiniketan. All is darkness around me. My breath rises in mist that does not vanish. Dim lights gleam in the distance. I am in a pool of orange, and darkness is heavy around me. Up in the sky, the moon shines. The mist obscures the stars. I feel small. So small in this vastness.

Man has forgotten his littleness. Fibrous dreams branch out of his scientific head, grasping. Eating. But how little we are.

You can only know this at the moment when you stare up at the night sky. Not when you're recollecting it, cloaked in language.

But we are little. Little threads in the grand pattern of being. And yet infinite, for what is not infinite, that is bound in an infinity?

There are few stars here, and the moon hangs in a dull wash of black-dyed sky. She is only a crescent from here. I know you, pale shadowlight. I have been told of your length, your breadth. It is written. That you are all dust and grey mountain. That no crow-gods eat you, no crone dwells in your folded breast.

But to the ancients who roamed these soon-dead ancient dim forests, you were magic, might, a light in darkness, divinity.

Where is divinity? And what is man, this poor beast of incredulity? This lost wanderer in poison heaths? His folly overwhelms. To have reached the limits of reason. To know that all his methods crumble like salty stone temples against the grand beauty of the dancer's dance--benign, unknowable. And yet, to profane, to claim truth, knowledge and power, while the spheres turn in the vast darkness, unconcerned. To conquer, to kill old ways of knowing, nay of feeling, of being. To turn the dance into slaughtersong, great wreaths of profane fire burning. To mine and till and rape and kill till all the earth is bleeding.

Stop. Stop, little man of science. Look up. Behold. Be still. For lo, he dances.

Life in the Age of the Inter-Net

2011-12-20T17:12:00.003+05:30

We live in a world of fads. Of things that surface, make a noise and glimmer, and die out. Everything is in flux, the rate of change dizzying. We, dizzy, are busy. Industrious little bees with a thousand eyes eating a thousand images, working, working, working. While the wheels of capital grind interminably.

Things are now "trending". Not even "trends", which would have implied some degree of permanence. We live in the present continuous. Facebook makes a reel out of your life. Your movements are tracked, displayed on a map. You are trapped, mapped and watched. Life is a series of "events". Born, so and so, got a job here, this date, got a girlfriend, here, this day, got married, honeymoon, the pictures. Your life, turned into statistics--consumable information that we are all addicted to. The surplus of Faustian energy that was responsible for our now notorious fall into alienation, to use Susan Sontag's words, has reached it's nadir. We must always know, track, watch, spy, photograph, appropriate, put into discourse.

The internet meme is our humour--Americana proliferating like irreverent cancerous lesions. The anthropomorphism of animals. Think about it. LOL cats, badgers, parrots, bears. All apparently almost human. Add a quirky line beneath and animal face. Ridiculous. Fear is gone, all is zoo-fied. It's only a picture after all. In "The Monsters, the Critics and the Fantasists", the incomparable Ursula Le Guin asserts that fantasy fiction is about the non-human other. Forgotten fears, animals that are animal, the unknown, beasts, lurking darkness, the wild that is wild. Nature--the non-human other. The very opposite of animal memes.

The keyboard, the computer, the screen. Interfaces. Inter-faces. Faces hidden, faces morphed, faces photoshopped. Photos from certain angles always make you look thin. You are as pretty as your latest profile pic. Emotion static--the emoticon. Con, is what it is. Condensed, concise, concrete. The smiley is the ultimate con-- :) -- am I being sweet, or sarcastic? Can I not hate you in my thought and make you know a false me? Yes of course :) All you see is my inter face.

Knowledge is commodified for fakers. My term papers make me seem well-read. Google books and Amazon lets you preview just enough of the Introduction to let you pretend that you know the book. We, the children of the fad, no longer read. Not cover to cover, but link to link in a dizzying metonomy. Borders undrawn, thoughts incomplete.

We ourselves are guinea pigs, trapped, mapped. Statistic. For whom? The producer. We are the consumer, they must know us. Our minds are wiped blank, as we consume, consume, consume. We have 3D glasses on, the shiny things stun us blind. While we spend, spend, spend. Spending on what's trending, only for today. A new rupee for tomorrow's trend. We are living in the end times.

This is the net. Pun intended.

Carrion Comfort

2011-12-20T14:45:00.002+05:30

The bitter taste of futility. Bitter as the demented cawing of crows on insomniac daybreaks. Foul as the aftersmell of spirits on a sprawling drunk. All noble thoughts turn to dung. Gods and saviors, ugly rows of mummers' toys, the whoring of the solemnest vows.

Whispered heresies, botched, stillborn hopes. The venereal spot festering in sewerstained thoughts. A disease eating ugly, growing strong. Sex, like a sore spot. Scratch it, scratch again. Scratch till it spills bloody.

Bitter, bitter, a tempest of roaring bile. Surely, surely, I shall crack. Surely retch out the evil of the world. The dark betwixt the polecat and the owl. But no, I suffer, here in the corner of my cell, tormented by my pageboys, chewing on carrion comforts.

Black out, ugly world.

Losing My Religion

2011-12-17T15:42:00.003+05:30

'Now you wouldn't believe me if I told you, but I could run like the wind blows.'

- "Forrest Gump"

I don't know what happened to me, or why I've forgotten. Forgotten the feel of the road beneath my feet, of sweat down the nape of my neck, running down my torso, soaking my tee. The ragged pumping of the heart, frantic, the breathing quicker and quicker. The pounding of blood in my ears, the rush of the wind. The solid throb of the road, like a pulse, sending tremors up the clenched muscles of my legs.

I have forgotten the joy of being free of thought.

Right now, with the way my injury is (not) healing, I don't know if I'll ever run again. The thought should come as horror to me, considering how important it was to me. If I walk too long now, I get pain in the left side of my back, and under my feet. This should come as a warning to anyone with a ligament tear who goes for a surgery. Don't take it casually. Because I didn't do the exercises after my surgery, my left thigh is chronically, perhaps permanently emaciated. Weight falls unevenly when I walk. I feel myself unsteady, wobbling sometimes. When I get out of bed in the morning I have to be careful not to fall. My knee makes sounds, it cracks and pops like a knuckle.

I feel like a fucking cripple. Like Tyrion bloody Lannister. This is not me. How did I let this happen to me? Somehow after the operation, I let it all go. I stagnated at home for months, just lying around. I did the exercises till the pain went away, somehow thinking it would all be fine after that. Now I'm stuck like this. The MRI shows damage to the base of my spine, possibly irreparable damage.

Maybe I could still do something about it. I have another doctor's appointment soon, lets see what this guy says. At least I can still swim. Nothing will stop me from that. I wish it wasn't bloody sub-zero in Delhi now. I can't swim before March.

I've become fat. I can't believe it but my father's clothes don't fit me any more. At 52, my father's waist was thinner than mine--and he was just as tall, and broad. I need to lose it all. This summer, for a while I went nuts in the pool, pulling 50-52 lengths every day in 35 minutes. That was amazing, it felt like compensating for all the unfitness of the previous months. I got fucking ripped for about 2 months, my delts were toned. Now I'm bloody fat.

This is not me. Others do other shit--smoke, chat and sit around. Read fat tomes, play videogames. But this is not me. Football always meant more to me than literature. I have forgotten my old gods.

Next year, I'm on a regime. Even if I can't run (hopefully only for a while) I'll do everything else. I'll swim and work out. I feel unhappy when I'm not physically tired at the end of a day. Maybe that's why I have trouble sleeping these days. This is it. My resolution last year was to quit smoking, and I did it. This year it'll be to get fit again. May the force be with me.

Look Forth

2011-12-15T06:21:00.006+05:30

The gyres! The gyres! Old Rocky Face, look forth;

Things thought too long can be no longer thought

It’s 6. I won’t sleep tonight—it’s not happening. After the wine I took a little nap—8 P.M. to 10:30 P.M, and now my body-clock is confused as hell. Anyway.

Mist is coming in through my windows. It’s lovely. I think winter could finally be here.

You know, I was thinking. After our little dinner that night, I feel remarkably clearer in the head. It was a bittersweet experience, but I think I’ve understood some things. That way is not a path forward, at least not now—that much is clear. I can’t just erase, rewind, repeat. At the same time, I cannot eject, remove, totally cut out—like R rightly did with me. There’s no need to.

I can never hate you, never even be angry with you for long, despite your many faults. Despite your short fuse and your alarming, feline aggression and so many other things I shall not write of here. I guess I can’t hate, and never will because I love you in many ways still, and always will. In many ways I don’t. I can be clear about that too. That way is comfort, mental parity, familiarity and friendship. But that way is not sustenance, or fulfillment.

My mother says, look inside. First, look inside. But today, I want to listen.

The leaves outside my window are rustling many wisdoms to the cold morning wind. I wish I knew what they were saying. But I love the sound. I love the smell of the morning. It promises a new beginning every day. Each day begins, then grows older and darkens, and then again, the dawn, the mist, the morning. Surely there is harmony in the world. Surely all things turn in a great circle—no beginning, no end. Only stories, endless stories that fill the listening void with laughter.

What matter? Out of cavern comes a voice,

And all it knows is that one word "Rejoice!"

- Yeats - 'The Gyres'

Louder Sang that Ghost

2011-12-10T20:51:00.003+05:30

Disclaimer: This is a lot of personal stuff. Feel free not to read it. The consequences of opening my blog up again is that this kinda stuff has to be aired in public again. Thankfully nobody really reads this blog. And really, I don't give a fuck if you do. I have nothing to hide.

Let the fools rage, I swerved in naught,

Something to perfection brought';

But louder sang that ghost, 'What then?'

- Yeats - 'What Then?'

Until I can convince myself that "she not the one", I will not be able to move on. Indeed, I don't know if I want to move on, or that she really is not 'the one'.

I should just take each day as it comes. Be open. Believe that the future is unknown, and I could be anywhere, with anyone by my side (who am I kidding, I tell myself, even as I type).

I wonder why I am so stuck up on this concept of 'the one'. Maybe it's because of all the Romantic rubbish I read addictively. But really, I always believed that you know, there's that one chick out there, she's just your chick, you know? It's like--you and her. Just that. Like in the picture on my fridge. Maybe not perfect, but well, she still makes you feel like the chorus of Tom Petty's 'Here Comes My Girl'.

I miss that 'here comes my girl' feeling a lot. A lot lot. In fact, when I see her, and a little part (large?) part of me goes 'here comes my girl' again, there's a whole swirling mess of feelings somewhere near the bottom of my chest cavity. Sometimes it's like butterflies, and sometimes it feels like nausea.

This is not like my feelings the last time. The last time I was left with a gaping, wrenching, aching, bleeding sore spot in my soul--because of hurt coupled with the emptiness of being. The twin of your soul, wrenched away. But there was no feeling of dispossession. Because I never was with S. I never belonged to her. She wasn't 'my girl'. I was just close to her.

This time, things are quieter. I was never that emotionally dependent. I was dependent in a different way. I was sure, I was safe. But I hadn't lost the boundaries of me and the other. It was like walking hand in hand with someone, not becoming one with that person. But still, you knew, that that person is going walk with you into the dark. That person, and no one else. And now--uncertainty. Well, I've learned to push it aside. But really, it's there. Not very dramatic, this time. Incremental emptiness, and I think it's already getting better.

I've been bad this year. Done lots of random shit. But none of it has meant a thing. Not one single second has felt like anything other than a bloody farce. Like watching yourself following a script. There was that brief spell, real feelings, but easily explained. To quote from Tess, 'The irresistible, universal, automatic tendency to find sweet pleasure somewhere' even in the darkest hours. That was a mirage.

And now? Step one: stop obsessing about girls (easier said than done). Step two: Learn to be alone and enjoy it (making progress on that front). Step three: Control your LUST boy (no progress on that front. Exponential regress.) Step four: when you're suddenly happy or suddenly sad and you want to share it, or you just want to be random and say dumb stuff and talk nonsense and say shit you can't tell others, or you're really pissed with someone and you want to rant... what? Stuff it up? Talk to yourself?

This is love. It's a cruel game.

Music and Such

2011-12-09T21:18:00.002+05:30

My speakers at home are just SO FUCKING AWESOME I just sit all day and blast stuff on them. Beautiful. No wonder I never get out of the house.

I WANT my guitar back! I want to record stuff! I've lent it to a friend while I was in Delhi. Getting it back soon. Yessss!

Today in the shower I came up with a totally kick-ass bass riff but I've totally forgotten it now. Fucking fuck fuckeroo.

If only I had a good drumming software. All my originals end up sounding a bit similar coz I have to lay the stuff on the same old drum track I once downloaded. And I need a mic! My fucking shit webcam mic is making me sound like a machine.

I want Moinak Bose back, to make me his chord slave. I want to eeemprovise! I want Shaapla Sen back to get wasted and SING LOUDLY with. I want Varun Gujadhur back so we can belt out brilliant original riffs which we subsequently never record.

I WANT! Musicmusicmusic. Goddam, I miss music. In my hostel room I have these teeny tiny speakers and roomies who want to hear hindi music. Poor Ranjeet looks so flabbergasted when I sip my afternoon coffee with Celtic Crossroads and Bach. Bengalis, he thinks, are nuts. We are.

Also, I'm completely in love with this woman. What talent. What beauty. My khaleesi, yesss. *dreams*

Ta-da da-da da da, da-da da da.

Can't wait for season 2 of Game of Thrones. Can't fucking wait.

A Typical John Stuart Mill Sentence: Or Why My Blood Pressure Must Be High Today

2011-12-08T18:15:00.004+05:30

Aaargh! I have to read through a HUNDRED PAGES of John Stuart Mill's A System of Logic. Because I have to write an assignment on him. Today is the last day to submit the bloody assignment and I cannot put it off any longer. Hence I am forced to confront JS Mill.

Unfortunately the gandu writes the most tedious Victorian sentences. Here is an example: (please note that this is ONE sentence):

Notwithstanding the universal consensus of the social phenomena, whereby nothing which takes place in any part of the operations of society is without its share of influence on every other part; and notwithstanding the paramount ascendancy which the general state of civilization and social progress in any given society must hence exercise over all the partial and subordinate

phenomena; it is not the less true that different species of social facts are in the main dependent, immediately and in the first resort, on different kinds of causes; and therefore not only may with advantage, but must, be studied apart: just as in the natural body we study separately the physiology and pathology of each of the principal organs and tissues, though every one is acted upon by the state of all the others; and though the peculiar constitution and general state of health of the organism co-operates with, and often preponderates over, the local causes, in determining the state of any particular organ.

Mill is a Type 1 Chutia. Apparently his daddy used to make him study study study all day long every single day like clockwork, and this is practically all he ever did. Thank god I had a normal childhood, spent mostly in running around like a monkey and climbing things.

Anyway, I don't know how I'm going to get through a hundred pages of this crap AND write an essay on how it relates to my research in the next six hours. AARGH.

Type 2 Chutia-tis

2011-12-01T19:32:00.006+05:30

The Type 2 Chutia, causative agent of Type 2 Chutiatis is more commonly known as the Shit-Faced Obsequious Toad. The Shit-Faced Obsequious Toad (SFOT) is ubiquitous in the jungle of the Humanities Department.

HABITAT: It is mostly parasitic, and is known to make its habitat in the nether regions of higher species, showing a marked preference for the anus.

ANATOMY: The SFOT is a very small creatures but can grow to a large size over the course of its life. Its neck is permanently bent down at an angle of 45 degrees. It is flightless but possesses small wings to fan the host organism with. Its brain is rudimentary.

DIET: Fecal matter. It is known to fight ravenously with its fellow SFOTs over the excretory waste left behind when larger creatures defecate. It also thrives in a particular mixture of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen, methane, and hydrogen sulfide more commonly known as 'fart'.

SYMBIOSIS: Its relationship with the host species may be considered symbiotic. It is known to play a vital role in nourishing the host's ego. But most importantly, it is known to clean the lower alimentary tract of the host using its long, protractable tongue. The host is known to enjoy the ensuing sensation immensely, occasionally bursting out in peals of laughter. Some SFOTs evolve a proboscis and can become vicious blood suckers. After several years of licking and sucking, the host is known to discharge the ripe and swollen parasite from its body by the use of a laxative agent known as Letter of Recommendation (LOR).

SUB-SPECIES: Some important SFOT sub-species are The Flatterer, The Peon, The Stalker, and the Politician. Inter-breeding between sub-species is common, to the extent that most SFOTs are a complex mix of the various types.

The Flatterer has well-developed wings with which it fans the host creature. In some cases the host achieves stable flight on the ensuing blast of air. Many hosts can fly only because of their army of Flatterers. Occasionally the host will step on the heads of the Flatters, but the Flatterer does not mind since its neck is very strong and can bend very low. The Flatterer is known to choose its host carefully, and prefers to remain with a single host for life. Old age homes are a favourite spot for the Flatterer.

The Peon is an industrious SFOT. It is vital to the Humanities ecosystem, performing several important functions, including terraforming. It is an agent of pollination, busily flitting as it does, from Office to Office. It is known to smell bad. Very bad.

The Stalker has highly developed senses. Some speculate that it is telepathic, but in fact, studies show that it is merely Very Jobless. It seeks out places where its host can be found often, and makes its nest there. Social spaces of the host organism are its breeding ground--a favourite locale being the murky bog called Facebook. In these spaces it monitors the host's lifecycle and insidiously poisons the host's mind. The Stalker's gender is sometimes hard to distinguish.

The Politician is the subtlest SFOT, often mistaken for more evolved lifeforms. Its brain is capable of complex thought, showing strong synaptic linkages in areas associated with Plotting and Scheming. It is a scavenger that thrives on battlefields, feeding on the bodies of fallen creatures. It is known to be fat and well-fed, being higher up in the food chain and having no dearth of food.

CURE: Type 2 Chutiatis is, unfortunately incurable. It is a chronic disease. Like cancer, ringworm and the bubonic plague, it spreads very fast. The Type 2 Chutia (SFOT) is too common to be successfully combated. Efforts are being made, however, to develop a highly advanced device known as a F.L.Y. SFOT-TER, with which the nuisance can be held at bay. Although still in development, the device could look something like this when completed --

Type 1 Chutia-tis

2011-12-01T17:03:00.002+05:30

Introducing Type 1 Chutia. When attacked by Type 1 Chutia, you are afflicted with Type 1 Chutiatis, and are overpowered by an irresistible urge to smash the offending virus with a large mallet labelled 'SHUT UP'. I have had to deal with Type 1 Chutiatis for years and have now developed a remarkable resistance, or at least a level of toleration towards it. Several friends and acquaintances of mine are, unfortunately, deeply infected by Type 1 Chutiatis, to the extent of being incapable of normal speech, and even more incapable of normal writing. The following is an good example of their modus operandi--

'Posture can be as important as politics when it comes to the intelligentsia. In other words, it may be less important whether or not you like postmodernism than whether or not you can speak and write postmodernism. Perhaps you would like to join in conversation with your local mandarins of cultural theory and all-purpose deep thinking, but you don't know what to say. Or, when you do contribute something you consider relevant, even insightful, you get ignored or looked at with pity. Here is a quick guide, then, to speaking and writing postmodern.

First, you need to remember that plainly expressed language is out of the question. It is too realist, modernist and obvious. Postmodern language requires that one uses play, parody and indeterminacy as critical techniques to point this out. Often this is quite a difficult requirement, so obscurity is a well acknowledged substitute. For example, let's imagine you want to say something like, "We should listen to the views of people outside of Western society in order to learn about the cultural biases that affect us". This is honest but dull. Take the word "views". Postmodernspeak would change that to "voices", or better, "vocalities", or even better, "multivocalities". Add an adjective like "intertextual", and you're covered. "People outside" is also too plain. How about "postcolonial others"? To speak postmodern properly one must master a bevy of biases besides the familiar racism, sexism, ageism, etc.

For example, phallogocentricism (male-centredness combined with rationalistic forms of binary logic). Finally "affect us" sounds like plaid pajamas. Use more obscure verbs and phrases, like "mediate our identities". So, the final statement should say, "We should listen to the intertextual, multivocalities of postcolonial others outside of Western culture in order to learn about the phallogocentric biases that mediate our identities". Now you're talking postmodern!'

-- Stephen Katz -- "How to Speak and Write Postmodern"

Alas, no cure seems to be in sight, despite rapid advances being made by scientists in mapping the human genome, and by Baygon Limited, in the manufacture of increasingly effective bug-killing sprays. A sprig of asparagus, so the authors of Asterix tell us, is partially effective in dealing with Type 1 Chutiatis.

2011-11-29T12:05:00.003+05:30

Sometimes being a humanities student makes me want to blow my brains out with a gun. The sheer bullshit, the TIDE of bullshit flowing from all sides. Humiliating. Sophism is so easy.

BLOW MY BRAINS OUT.

Right now, sitting in this classroom. Trying to not smash my face repeatedly into the desk.

Mars Attacks!

2011-11-28T20:47:00.002+05:30

Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem 'Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit one Midsummer Morning' four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging, and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived only by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been 'disappointed' by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve book epic My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilisation, leapt straight up through his throat and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England in the destruction of the planet Earth.

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Gnothi Seauton

2011-11-22T17:18:00.002+05:30

I am becoming a mean-hearted acid-spewing ball of bile. In the last six months, I've hurt R through neglect, S out of pure sadism, another R through insensitivity and T through thoughtlessness. Not to mention glancing blows at semi-strangers, and blows closer to home. I have been an ass with creatures I can hurt, and enjoyed my superiority.

Why?

Part of it is because I somehow convince myself that I'm better than most people. To convince myself, I push myself to extremes. I fry my nerves with self-created stress. I am anal about my work, for instance, largely because perfection makes me feel like I can lord it over losers. I will never use abbreviations, even if I beggar myself writing three page SMSes.

A large part of it is thoughtlessness, which comes from selfishness. A sensitive person is moderate, kind, careful with his words. I am brash.

A lot of it comes from frustration. I also take a lot of shit from people. I bend myself backwards to please people, and very often this means putting on a smile when I would rather express displeasure. To some, people I cannot outshout or outsnap or outbile, I am a doormat. Hit Ray the puppy. He won't snap. Well, get me on the wrong day and I will anoint you with acid. I foster a very raw, dark place, like a culvert in the foul rag-and-bone shop of my heart, from where strange beasts range forth at my bidding. Creatures alien to their master.

Some of it is bitterness. People fail me, let me down. Things don't turn out the way I want them to. I have unfair expectations. All my adult life I have waited for enduring love, gentle as a featherstroke and warm like wine through the veins. And yet I have turned the most affectionate, compassionate lovers and would-be lovers aside with a sneer if they can't hiss like cats and strut like madonnas to make my libido rage.

I had something. But that anchor broke a long time ago.

I want you, perfect. A sex bomb and a mother. Brilliant--all wit and high wisdom--but grounded. Naive and a cynic all at once. Daughter of kings, freer of slaves. Proud but unprejudiced. Full of music and laughter, light and cruel passion. Danger, safety, home.

I will never find you, child of contradiction. You are the shade of my dreamtime.

I bite my cheeks and spit at the rabble. They fill me with bile and loathing. And I tell myself I am not like them, all the while being far worse than most.

If there's one special talent I have, it's finding fault with others. It's what makes me a good critic and a bad poet. It is hard to see one's own faults. Grant me a stepladder, god, that I may rise out of my littleness and become a good man like my father.

Incitement to Diss Course

2011-11-21T23:21:00.004+05:30

As I struggle tediously to check and recheck every fact, every assertion, in the essays Prof. Paranjape sends me to edit, I am struck by the tragic fact of what Foucault calls the 'incitement to discourse'. Everything in our world is put into discourse. Studied, catalogued, demystified.

What this means for the student post the "turn to theory" (1960s onwards, I believe?) is that even a humanities student has to stand against a mountain of "studies". Which are hard, theoretical, argh, nauseatingly pseudo-scientific at times. The art has gone out of the arts. The humanist tradition is dead. A pity. And my sister believes that doing humanities is easy. That's it's "not a science". Haha HOHO I tell you. I wouldn't be spending 6 hours a day sifting through Jstor and Googlebooks, bibliographies and footnotes if it was.

On a more general note though, the world itself, space itself, indeed everything is put into discourse. Every pre-scientific is in effect, dead, despite revivalist movements and New Age gurus. New Age gurus are just capitalism dressed in robes. In tourist destinations, myth (actually dead) and spirituality (now just a word) are packaged, bottled, and sold. In 'sacred' Australia, Uluru, once Ayer's Rock has been 'handed over' to the aboriginals. What did the aboriginals do? They sold it back to the state for money! And now, although the rock is supposedly once more under the 'ownership' of the aboriginals, behold--http://www.environment.gov.au/parks/publications/uluru/pubs/visitor-guide.pdf--the ubiquitous incitement to discourse, the inescapable web of the modern, desacrilized, desanctified space has woven a plastic web around it.

This world is not for me. I run to my fantasy books.

Yesterday Le Guin's "From Elfland to Ploughkeepsie" made me realize exactly why we love fantasy. The best fantasists writings are genuinely untainted by the touch of modernity. Even stylistically speaking.

Dear god, if I end up doing a PHD on fantasy fiction, will I kill even my last, blessed space of escape?

Gah

2011-11-18T02:52:00.002+05:30

You know you're fucked when your ex has THIS WOMAN'S dimensions and is of course a REAL PERSON. Not to mention classier and smarter than any woman around for miles.

This Bird Has Flown

2011-11-10T17:29:00.004+05:30

Coming to JNU has been the best decision I've made in years. I finally feel a semblance of order, direction and purpose in my life. The atmosphere here is wonderful. It takes a lot to make an escapist like me politically aware, but JNU has it. You can't escape it. Politics is in the air here, rife, buzzing, proliferating, as all-pervasive as the lyadh in JU.

I spend two hours a day reading papers these days. It's my favourite time of the day. After lunch, I go to my balcony with a cup of hot, strong, coffee and rifle through the important pages of The Hindu and Indian Express. To be honest, it was a struggle at first, but then it catches on, like a good story. You need to find out how the stories develop, what happens next. And it changes things. You find yourself coming out of yourself. Out of your bubblehead world. Conversations you hear mean new things. You notice your environment in a different way. You understand more. You realize there's a whole world out there--a real one, sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrible--outside your fantasy books and videogames.

I have always lived my life under various kinds of rocks, running into various holes, as far from reality as possible. As a result, my general knowledge and awareness has suffered. Which is a pity, because I will never make a good teacher--and that's really my 'goal in life'--if I don't have a broad knowledge base. I've always known I have the faculty, the skills. But not the content to fill the vessel. I hope, and I don't want to jinx it, that at last I've begun to fill the vessel.

So to recap. Why I like it here. I'm awake at last here. I have my own space, my own room, which, despite being a shared room, is my own in a unique way. Nobody needs to holler at me to look after it. I fold my clothes, I sweep the floor, I keep things tidy, all of my own accord. Because I feel it's mine, and I love it.

I have things to do here. I have work--real, productive, remunerative work--everyday. As a result I have money, and I can enjoy my free time more. I'm in a department that is up-and-coming. Not stellar, but definitely rising, with at least 3 excellent professors, of which one--Prof. Saugata Bhaduri--I rate as highly if not more highly than the very best at JU, and this includes giants like the Chaudhuris and ADG. There is work done here. Research, projects, seminars. Every week we have one visiting scholar lecturing. In short, I don't feel the JU lyadh. This of course, may be just my subjective experience. But it is what I feel nonetheless.

I'm reading here. One thing I miss is the fantastic JUDE library, but nevertheless, I try to compensate. There's enough to read anywhere. I'm deep in this mad pop science phase where I'm reading books like The Tao of Physics, The Elegant Universe, In Search of the Multiverse, A Brief History of Time, The Theory of Everything, and Einstein and the Philosophical Problems of the 20th Century. On the other hand I've downloaded a ton of Ebooks for my research. I will try to get CES to buy me some of them.

That's all for now.

2011-11-09T15:53:00.002+05:30

NOoooooooooooo! They've blocked Facebook in the library! What will I do now? Noooooo.

Damned Facebook.

Shall I get internet in my room?

But then... the panu, the procrastination.

Decisions, decisions.

Also, MAD number of term papers and assignments coming up. Let me count. 3 assignments for Research Methodology, 1 term paper. 1 term paper for Literary Theory. If my CES abstract gets selected, then one full length research paper to be written, by the end of the month. Plus Paranjape work.

Library closes at 12. So I'm gonna have to start waking up at normal times and coming to the library to work all day.

Excellent. Productivity, usefulness, studies. Here I come.

Write About Your Room

2011-11-04T20:28:00.002+05:30

It's time to write about my room.

I live in Room 124, Narmada Hostel, Jawaharlal Nehru University. It is a pink room, but I like it. I spend a lot of time in it. I like my bed, I sleep on it loads. I generally wake up really late, and I dilly and dally and lie around in bed and flip over and dream some more and generally do anything I can not to get up. I like my chador--it's soft and thick and warm. I like how the cold is creeping in from under the balcony door these days. At exactly 6 am, there is this drafty period when it gets quite cool. I sometimes put on my jacket then.

I like my room, and I like my hostel. Even though I don't know too many people. I'm not over-friendly, but I'm ok. I tend not to talk at meals at the mess. But everyone else seems so conversational! I like to eat in silence.

I like my roommate. He is very well-behaved and shobbho. But a tad unclean. He hasn't changed his bedsheet since I've come (2 months). He is a leftist, and has an impressive collection of left literature and theory which he tries very diligently to read, with limited success. In any case, he's a nice quiet fellow.

I have now put up posters--tons and tons of posters (14 to be precise)--all over my wall. My wall now speaks of me. When I wake up I have Yeats and Tolkien peering over me. And pictures of particle tracks from CERN. I have shifted my clothes into the very spacious aalmari. I like folding them and keeping them very neat. My table is mine now. I have a family photo--baba and didi and a young me, laughing about something in a train. Ma is missing, but then, Ma is ubiquitous in my life, so I don't need a picture. All the stuff in my room, ma has given me, and it helps me a lot. I don't miss anything, I have everything I need. Spoons, cups, knives, a coffee maker, antacids (yes, I'm bong), mouthwash, deo, balti, speakers.

In short, I am more materialistic than I realized. I am also a neat-freak. And I like to decorate. Today I bought a yellow bulb and this makes me very happy indeed as my room will now look warm and cosy as I sip my cup of rum and warm water, on cold winter weekend nights with friends, as Bach plays warmly on my little speakers.

Sometimes I like to stand in the balcony with my cup of coffee and look at the peacocks. They peck at stuff and generally walk around. Dry leaves slowly fall and collect in the balcony. I like to shovel them to one side. It's very peaceful here. I sit with my newspaper and do my knee exercises in the late afternoon. My balcony is my little peace place.

In short, I like my room.

Driftwood

2011-10-29T12:40:00.005+05:30

Home is where the heart is

But your heart had to roam

Drifting over bridges

Never to return

Watching bridges burn

You’re driftwood

Floating underwater

Breaking into pieces, pieces, pieces...

- Travis - Driftwood

A friend once told me that her experience of studying in JNU and coming to Cal for holidays is like feeling perpetually without a home. I now understand what she meant.

It's been a week and it's almost time to head back already. It's like, for a brief dream I was back here, back to the old life and the old friends and now I'm going back to some strange and alien place. What I'll miss the most is feeling like a square in a square space. Delhi is still strange. I still don't have any close friends, though several people are now more than strangers. As a friend wrote in her blog recently, Delhi is a cold place--people are strange, the culture (for lack of a better word) is harsh and alien, people on the streets tend to be brusque and unhelpful. JNU is different, but it's still not the close, intimate safety of Calcutta circles.

Sometimes when I watch the twilight fade from my balcony in JNU, I feel like I'm at the still center of a deep pool of silence. Like the last man on a lost planet; the last vessel of absurd consciousness. Then a roommate enters and potters around in the darkness. "Kya Paryag?", He hails me and, the words fall quietly into the interminable silence between us to sink without a trace. Lights come on slowly, blooming like flowers in the inky night. The warden's maid starts to sweep away the dead leaves in the garden below my balcony--an exercise in futility. The next day the same leaves, the same struggle. The same dull scraping of a broom against leaves.

I fold the newspaper and step into my room. Neon-washed, I feel frail and thin. I am driftwood in a sea of silence.

2011-10-25T01:52:00.003+05:30

I've noticed that most bong girls fatten up during their mid twenties. Mostly the results are tragic. Pretty faces turn mashima, arms start to thicken, and general jholaness happens. Mostly they're prettiest at 18, barring a few late bloomers. But soon I will be too old to say that without sounding like Creepy Kaku.

2011-10-22T00:52:00.002+05:30

:) Aaah, I missed you, inner true self.

To My Desktop, With Love

2011-10-19T19:47:00.003+05:30

Woohoo my computer at home is SO SEXY I am just bojbojing in my pants right now. Fuuuck. Did I take you for granted or WHAT, baby? What a machine. Superduper fast, brimming with RAM. HUGE fucking screen. HUGE. I am going watch Star Wars again after months and just cry, in a couple of hours. The net is blazing, too. The speakers rock. There's huge amounts of space. Oh baby I just want to jump in joy.

Edit: It is SO hard to sit down to work when your sexy machine is asking you to have sexytime with it.

2011-10-18T15:55:00.001+05:30

What a fine nose you have. I wish I knew you better. :P

And Yours, Madam?

2011-10-14T18:52:00.003+05:30

Blue glass night
Was it last fall,
That she asked me to the dance?
Of course, of course,
I could be wrong.
They thought it was romance.

To dance the dance
Of nothingness,
Pure symmetry and form;
To tap away the
Haunting silence
Left by days of storm.

Pumpkin, peach
And chandeliers,
Candle light and dew
It was a place
I’d been before
When I believed it true.

Your name? Your name?
And yours madam?
I take your gentle hand
And close my eyes
Till I’m alone
Then motion to the band:

Strike up the chord!
This snowflake,
This belle dame,

Your name?
Ah yes, of course
I do forget.
But are you not the same?

With whom but yesternight
I clocked,
We turned,
A measure two, or four,
Then said goodbye,
And dimmed the lights,
And shut the wooden door?

No, no, it’s clear;
You’re quite another
Creature, yes, I see.

Ah well, madam
Yes, do forgive
Will you not set me free?

That night? Ah yes,
The matinee;
When all was glitz and gold
Yes, by the strand
Midst laughter canned
You found my hand was cold.

So what? So what?
Read the script!
It says:
Now kiss.
Now talk.
Now silently,
(But hand in hand!)
Down to the café walk.

I took you, shook you,
Didn’t I?
We shook a jaunty leg.
You on slippers made of glass,
And I my sailor peg.

Then silence fell,
And all was well;
I dropped you by the door.
But tell me ma’am
And truly say,
Have I seen you before?

This face,
This place,
This dirty street...
But yesternight,
No?
Midst fog and sleet?

Alright!
Alright,
That’s not your name?
You take me for a cad?
Stop holding on
To permanence
And give in to the fad.

It’s just the times,
It’s how things fly:
Fast and low and cheap.
Hordes of fools
In ostent jewels
Prance and jig and creep.

Me? I’m oldschool.
I like a drink
And browbeat deadpan love.
With trousers rolled,
And all shares sold,
I'll slink from world above.

I’ll settle down
By a fireplace
To sit and reminisce,
On blue glass nights
And fairy lights
And the twirling of a dress.

Ah was it not,
But yesterfall
When she asked me to the dance?
And all the prophets
Said it was,
Or could have been romance?

Piling Piling Up

2011-10-13T19:37:00.002+05:30

AAaaargh. Piles of work. Piling up. Don't know what to do.

The 500 page romance novel written in gibberish English I was meant to have finished already. It will take me at least another 14 days of working 6-8 hours a day.

Each day Professor M sends me more work. The earlier ones aren't finished. I am incredibly frustrated because I have cancelled my Spectranet account (it was too shitty, I need to switch to MTNL) in my room and so I'm compelled to come to the computer room in the library and work. My laptop is so shitty it can't pick up Wifi so I can't use the laptop in the reading room either. I'm stuck on machines that use Linux, in the computer room.

These are SO frustrating to use. There's a shitty word processor called OpenOffice which is very different from Word and has compatibility issues as well. I keep losing comments and edits I've made when changing formats. Also, I need to edit a PDF using Acrobat Reader and of course, I can't do that on Linux.

Also, the net here is weird. Sometimes it just freezes up. Sometimes Jstor and Wikipedia open but GOOGLE won't (?!).

So that's plaguing my RA work.

Plus I've got two presentations in the first week of November. One is on a FIVE HUNDRED page book of very hard philosophy. I was trying to read up on it, and my incredible ignorance of philosophy hit me like a rock. It's like a language I don't know. And it's so FUCKING BORING. AAaargh. Karl Poppper, die.

The other presentation is on a bunch of essays by Foucault, which I was rather looking forward to. But I'm not getting time to read it.

So that. Work work work work. Frustration. No time. Not being able to do work. Aaargh.

Mostly, I Am Lost

2011-10-08T21:26:00.003+05:30

This year too, is passing;

It ushers in the next.

Then that too shall fall,

Like leaves in sterile winter.

I am wistful in the mornings

Lonely at night

I am dust

For mostly

I am lost

There are only bricks in this dead world.

Bare, unpainted.

Hard as truth and prose.

One night I watched the airplanes roar

Lying flat upon a rock

They pinned me down and caged me,

Trapped in solid sound.

But then I vanished,

Thin as a wisp of smoke

Innert, incandescent

For mostly,

I am lost.

They say the world grows colder

For certain, I am older

As the galaxies spin by.

As webs of darkness

Spin across

An ever darker sky.

Catlike from a perch I leap

Down to the forest's edge.

A cold breeze blows the leaves all around

I see them settling

By the wayside

And then silence

Falls.

Leaf, lake, my lonely lady

Leave me here to sleep.

Shingle on some sandy dreamer's shore.

Leave. Believe,

I have forgotten

Your lamplight lonely eyes.

Your promises of eternal gloom

Shared in silent sympathy.

I dreamed you were a mermaid

In a million miles of blue

Singing songs that bloom in bubbles

On the ocean floor like dew.

Could I take them to my desert world

Encased in golden shells

Perhaps you'd bring the rain again

And sound the desert bells.

Forget not that I live in prose

Though my words have turned to rhyme

Still waiting just to live again

Before the end of time.

Till then

I wait,

Berate myself,

Write,

Dream,

And Yawn.

On the rooftops dawn is breaking

Cloud on cloud is tossed

Believe me, I can float away

For mostly

I am lost.

Rant? No, Wail. Deathrattle.

2011-10-07T01:15:00.003+05:30

I want to say I miss you home and I miss you ma and Nandini and Satra and Ronojoy and Sreemoyee. I want to cry really, because last night I cancelled my Diwali tickets on an impulse. On an impulse because I'm fighting with ma over money.

I have to be independent. Come what may. I may be miserable, I may have no friends, and I may be holed up in Narmada 124 all fucking day throughout the holiday season, stuck between procrastinating and mindlessly editing, but I will have my own money. I will not hear crap about drinking with ma's money. I will not have to account for disappearing cash. I will not be made to feel guilty.

This is not what I signed up for. Not at all what I had in mind. I wanted to read, to study, to be free, to wander, to go on holidays, to make friends, to socialize and maybe fall madly in love again.

And this is what it's come to. I'm here, for weeks on end, in front of this shit laptop which doesn't even pick up Wifi at the library, and with a cracking screen, editing, editing and procrastinating on incredibly slow internet. SO slow. 1 byte per second. One picture takes about 2-3 minutes to open. FB hangs. Mail hardly works. I'm stuck here, dear God, in another hole.

I sleep at weird times. I find myself waking up here, waking up then, waking up with my mouth dry, with the damned tubelight on and the peeling wallpaint. I wake up with two fools lying on the floor smiling at me. I find myself drifting off at weird times. I find the pages of books swimming before me, I can't read any more. I find I can't write academically any more. I find my seminar paper a struggle. When, dear God, was writing a paper ever a struggle for me??!

Why, why, why? Why stuck here? When there's a beautiful world all around me, so many people, so many new experiences waiting, why why why am I back in a hole, my mind unravelling, fear, frustration, anger, hopelessness, loneliness swirling around me and everybody is fucking evil.

Money. Money, money, work. Work. Growing UP. Fuck all this. Fucking hell, I want to shrivel up and die.

On a Highway, the Wind in My Hair: The Best Three Days and Four Nights I've Had in AGES. :D

2011-09-24T14:07:00.005+05:30

HCU was wonderful. Truly, truly fantastic. It's very very hard to capture three days like that in words, but I feel I should make the attempt, if only to preserve the memories better.

It was a gruelling 26 hour train journey. I didn't sleep much. When I landed up, I found a dark and lonely cityscape awaiting me. The Hyderabad I've seen is very open, very spaced out. It's liberating in a sense, but can also be lonely. The local train ride to Lingampally was lonely.

I took an auto to the campus. Long, open stretches of night-highway. The campus, lit by dim blue lights, and I was sleepy. Security at the gates made me sign in.

HCU is space. Open space, dark forests, huge empty streets, wild, ancient rocks, gleaming lakes reflecting city neon. The guest house was a big open circle of hostels facing hostels. No guards anywhere, an odd sense of silence. I was introduced to the organizers and they gave me a room. The Participants' Hostel. Huge echoing halls, very modern and trim, but empty. I was sharing a room with a gentleman from South Africa named Gilbert. I later made friends with him, but the first night, I slept.

I shall not report in full. The next day the conference began. Introduced by faculty, but run entirely the students, raw.con was on. I learned not to snort at the name after a while. It rocked. Speakers in general had interesting ideas. The atmosphere was relaxed. Question-answer sessions stretched on into tea-breaks. Everybody was into it. I ditched post lunch and went to the cyber cafe to work.

I'd made some friends already. Sushmita, Rajarshi's girlfriend who I feel like I've known for years. It's weird. Very easygoing, very fun. Quirky. Love her hair and the way she walks. Totally chill. Befriended two girls from DU--Tanveer, from Punjab, and Anu (that's her whole name), a Jat. Tanveer is sweet--a quiet sort, very kind and gentle, good conversationalist, very erudite and scholarly. Anu is a character. In a good way. Jat girls can chew you up and spit you out before breakfast without batting an eyelid. Anu is bold, assertive, confidence, strong like Haywards 5000. Very, very friendly, very chatty and fun--she's already famous on the campus.

Jump, skip. First night. Backtrack. First evening. Walked down in a big group to Peacock Lake, on campus. Really a lake, not like the JU ponds. About 6-7 times the size of the proper JU jheel. Wild animals there, bathing--buffaloes. Peacocks in the distance. Wild sunset--brilliant pinks and oranges and blues, palmtrees making long shadows. Later that night, Bipin, Sudarshan, Zameer and 5-10 others whose names I can't remember, get us drinks. We sit on a big rock called the VC Rock, where apparently the VC used to cavort with his lover, and get smashed. Truly great time. Big group of 15-20 people, some outsiders, some HCU folks. We all introduce each other, share stories, sing, dance, and get hammered. Highlight of the evening--Gilbert, my South-African roommate, dancing and singing to a Tamil song.

Second day, more conference. Note on food--South Indian fare, but very tasty, very free. :P This is the life, I tell you--invited to speak, trainfare paid, thaka-khawa paid. I think my angsty phase is passed. Academics it is :D

The campus is so big we had a bus to take us from the guest house to the School of Humanities. More talks. Second day I ran to the cyber cafe early to tweak my paper. I get done at 9:30 and pick up beer for myself. Very weird booze shop. It doubles as an unofficial pub after 10. People selling bottles, others pouring pegs. Drunk people all over. Tanveer asks me to pick up a beer for her. We chill on the roof of the hostel--my idea. Others join us. Fellow called Arpan, rolls brilliant joints in 2 mins in biris. We get nice and high. Then the ride to DLF for a late dinner.

Faaak. Bike rides. Just faaaak. Gotta love em. Specially on open highways, slightly stoned, the lights flashing overhead, the seat warm beneath me. Wind in my hair, and total freedom. I thow my head back; for the longest time I can only see light and shadow, light and shadow. The sky and the streetlamps. And I just want to laugh from the bottom of my mirthful place. And it just sinks in. Here I am. I mean, really. Here I am--out of my hole. Free again. Unchained. Calcutta was a hole, and I was festering. Now I'm out and it's been difficult, no doubt, because comfort is familiarity. But I'm too much of a Romantic not to love this. To be out on the streets of an unknown city, on a stranger's bike, zooming through town at 1 am. Neon and shadows, trees and a deep chill as we rush along highway that cuts through a forest. New friends, new beginnings. The great Uknown.

Third day was my paper. I was relaxed. It's only scary the first time. I took it extempore. Fuck the paper, fuck reading out--it puts people to sleep. I just talked, as if it was a classroom. I asked questions while speaking. Keep the attention, that's key. I think it was well-received. At least everyone paid attention. I got a lot of questions.

In valedictory they made me get up and talk, impromptu :P I said I was blessed to have come, if just for the friends I made. Third night was the best.

First, we ate, and oh BOY did we eat. With the great Arpan as guide, we went on a slightly-stoned gastronomic tour of the city. Old Hyderabad was closed to us because of political troubles, but this boy knew his food-places. He took us to small little joints that make the best food. First some amazing kabab-type thing called something gosht. Then Hyderabadi biriyani, at a second restaurant--quite somthing. Spicy, tok tok. They give you a jhol to put in it. And LOTS of beef. Very generous servings. Third stop, an Iranian joint, where we eat something called Falafil Sandwich. Delicious, with egg mayo. Fourth stop, dessert. We eat three different kinds of fruit salad, and fruit juices. Stuffed silly, we buy rum for the night and return to the campus.

We were just chilling with some rum in Sushmita's room, when the HCU boys joined us. Someone suggested a walk. I had no idea what we were in for. First through the forest, a good 45 minute walk. No JNU forest. Not bushes. THICK, DENSE jungle. (Oh, I forgot to mention I saw a 4 foot long snake on the first day). We walk for a while, and we're on a dam. A real fucking dam, on a real river. Thin, thin, spur of cement to walk on, and water on both sides. Think the Bridge of Khazad-Dum, Gandalf and the Balrog. Then we reach a small waterfall where everyone gets wet. And more drunk. Dancing and singing. Slippery rocks. Many comic moments. The only light is cell-phone light.

Then the treck to Those Magnificent Rocks. I've forgotten what they were called. Think PSR on steroids. At least 4 times the height of Parthasarathi. Massive, smooth stones after a scramble through a thorny forest. I have NO fucking idea how these HCU guys find their way there and back. On the way there were these powerlines, and huge towers humming with electricity. I wish I had a picture. Neat, symetrical structures stretching far into the sky. We stood underneath one and quietly heard the hum of industrious humanity buzzing through cables, lines, cables. We climbed the rocks--quite a climb. Pulling, stretching, teamwork. Helps to be tall. Then, we were there.

Imagine being on TOP of the world. Magnificently free, everything petering out to noise beneath you. Cold, cold air rippling through your clothes. Everywhere is dark but the lights of the city. Nearby, a massive complex of buildings rises out of the darkness like Barad-dur. Dark, mysterious, with lights slowly changing colour like the dreaming eyes of some mythic beast. We, like explorers of a new world. These spaces will fade one day, when modernity kills all the darkness. Then, perhaps, we will turn to the stars to spread our neon deserts.

At 4 am we turn back. 5:30 the car comes to take us to the station. Goodbye, HCU. Goodbye new friends. Next year, I shall return, upon my word. Whether Raw.Con happens again or not. Whether they take my abstract or not. I'm coming.

Train ride back was with Tanveer, Anu and a couple of other girls I met at the conference.

Aaaand, now I'm back. JNU feels like home already. Funny how quickly we can unbelong and belong. And yet something is missing. Something. Just a little click to put the universe in a jazzy swing. Perhaps I'll find it somewhere, on a highway, the wind in my hair.

Flowers for This Wasteland or Lovesong for a Stranger

2011-09-24T13:34:00.004+05:30

Before all the variables spun into the embers of today, I knew you. I met you on a train perhaps, rushing through open fields, wrapped in silence. Perchance in a coffee shop, a corridor, a classroom, who knows? But I knew you. We talked to raindrops. And the raindrops knew you, knew me, knew us--soul in soul woven, beyond the bounds of self.

Will I never know you, oh wisp of my dreaming? Oh stranger soul I've shied upon and wondered, do I dare? Turning away, I climbed the stairs, our possible futures collapsing in impotent agony.

Once, in a dream, I kissed you, at a bus stop, in the rain. We spun like prayer-wheels. Your Cheshire-grin, your laughter, arms thin as silence, troubled eyes deep pools of darkness crying hold me. Hold me in dreaming, in dreaming only. No flowers for this wasteland, to bring the balance back.

Bury these hollow bones, these callow hopes, my friend. The earth is dark with the ashes and embers of all that was not, and all that will never be.

To Seek a Newer World

2011-09-17T14:25:00.003+05:30

Tell them, Damachus, how we beat the void into silence, receding, receding. Our infidel footsteps in the sacred stone temple, defiling. Tell them how the ships of torn cloth and canvas burnt like brown candles in the bay. Serpents of ruined silk, streaming from hulls burst asunder, floating through wreaths of holy flame to sink with a hiss in the Sarantine. Our swords plunged in flame and incense tore through worlds grown weary. Their dead float like lilies to another world.

Through ice and snow, we burst storm-driven, the heralds of a new world. Our voices made the four kings tremble.

Now silence reigns in the ancient house. Bones grow thin and hollow, faces gaunt. Swords grow weary in the dust of other days. I feel a darkness seeping through the cracks, through the silence. I fear it for I have known only striving. Cold, I lie in sequined silence woven, as the sun sinks ever Westward. Clouds roil red on the horizon, dancing a dirge to his radiance.

Then, the daughters of the dead king dance across the sky, beating the darkness into flame.

Light me a taper, Damachus. Decant the wine. Kiss me, before the stars fall from the sky and all is ashen. All things fall apart and are made again, and we eternal as a moment, burn brief.

Before the new day dawns let us be gone. They shall whisper in the streets of our absense--that the flame dies in the shrine by the tower. Let them wonder. This world is not for us.

Tell them, Damachus, we are gone. To beat the void into silence, receding, receding.

Then and Now

2011-09-15T19:34:00.002+05:30

So I'm in Mussoorie again after five years. Back in that same house, pretty as a picture.

I think of five years ago. I was fresh out of school and bursting with enthusiasm for everything. I remember sitting right here at this table, and chatting with Shaapla over Orkut. Her display picture showed her grinning from ear to ear, in a red top and jeans. I thought she looked Punjabi.

So much has changed. People are like clay, or sandstone in an artist's hands. You mould them, in your mind. Their image changes as time passes, but it never settles in a final form.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to that her and that me and that time. Life has lost much mirth.

Wordsworth is right. Places are never the same, over time, because we change. This house, these posters, the garden and the smell of trees--nothing is the same. Not without 'Otherside' by RHCP on my then-new Ipod. Not without my longish hair, and ma's blue jacket. Not without that bright-eyed girl in the red top and jeans, and her carefree, mirthful grin.

Paper-Writing Rant

2011-09-12T02:47:00.002+05:30

This has been the single most difficult paper-writing-process I have ever been through. 2 and a half days of sitting at the computer and I'm still struggling with it, and still not sure how good my thesis is.

Some conclusions-- 1) It is very difficult to learn anything substantive from the internet alone. The internet is inherently metonymic. A series of hypertext documents that create a vague, scattered understanding of any subject. ADD also means that I can't finish a bloody page before jumping to the next. Next time, I will GET books from before, I will READ the books, and I will use the net only for frills.

2) It is very hard to write a paper on something other than a single, canonical text. I'm writing on games. Many games. I have to generalize, and one has to be careful doing that. Also, there is a huge mass of things written by some very un-authoritative people on the subject. Power is authority, authority produces reliable knowledge. Give me a Norton, give me a Brittanica, give me sense, not nonsense.

3) I am very tired. Very tired of sitting at this laptop in this stuffy room all weekend long while people are out roaming this beautiful campus. People are out partying. Gah.

4) Thank you Paoli Dam for being naked in a Bengali film. You have been my only ray of sunshine today.

Das Kapital, or Some Stoned Thoughts on the Possible Connection between Capitalism and Postmodernity

2011-09-11T03:56:00.004+05:30

Post-modernity can be cured.

You need compressors and compilers. Working under an authority. (footnote--compressors are people who will work to summarize the incredible wealth of information being produced in our world. In each sub-subject, they will be the most widely read, and they shall compress their discipline-specific knowledge, to an accessible-by-a-normal-person amount. Compilers are the Chaudhuris (JU specific reference) of the world--people who shall read all the compressed thoughts from various fields and put them together in a COHERENT and building-a-larger-picture way. These Compliers must teach many, many people. They must have authority, because, frankly they know more. In this way, the inherent schizophrenic postmodernity that plagues our world, can be fought.

Authority means the demise of post-modernity. But is Authority good or bad? One extreme is fascism, the other, postmodernity (read: schizophrenia).

The problem as I see it, is proliferation of multiplicities. By this I mean, that the modern, cosmopolitan, multicultural urban consciousness, is fundamentally fragmented. Instead of single dominant socio-political discourses, our world, thanks to the internet, is truly democratic. And therefore truly postmodern, and truly fucked.

For it is my personal belief that without Authority, there can be no Meaning, and without Meaning, there is only schizophrenia.

Mass culture is schizophrenia. I cannot take it. I cannot take TV--it is a barrage of information my Luddite mind was never meant to handle. I cannot take marijuana--it is postmodern in its very essence. I believe my inability to concentrate has to do with my addiction to the inherently metonymic links created by the combination of cable TV and a TV remote. I believe that since the mass media serves (literally, economically), the big companies, in our age, resistance to Empire is impossible. THis is because They have created an escape world that does not let us think. It flashes our brains with constantly changing images that numb us with their ostentation. A human eye has to see something for 1/16th of a second before it can register in the brain. What corporate modernity and the culture of advertising do, is to flash the eye with images that last less, metaphorically, than that 1/16th of a second. They blind us with light, but we are dumbed. We learn nothing.

They seem diverse, these images. But they are an e pluribus unum. Sameness in diversity. This is because of their inherent metonymy. Before one image registers, we are onto the next. The brain does not learn.

The disturbing thing about capitalism is that even the Head Honchos, the richest of the rich, the sons of capitalists, are plugged in to this Matrix. The ones who realize the Truth, are too deeply breastfed by barbie and Kellogs to care to throw bombs. Those who do throw bombs are either controlled by the people who make the bombs, or are outgunned by the people who make the bombs. In any case, everyone is plugged in. The system is self-propogatory. There is no choice.

Perhaps, as Lord of the Flies would have us believe, this is inevitable, because human nature is bad.

What do you believe, is human nature bad?

In any case, the first chapter made me think a bit.

2011-09-11T03:32:00.003+05:30

someday I shall sit [with] you for hours and tell you

that's why this is unequal

2011-09-11T00:41:00.001+05:30

I am deeply asshole-ic. And boy, do I love it.

Steel

2011-09-06T21:18:00.004+05:30

Life is a constant flow of frustrated expectations.

Why do I still persist with my hopeless Romanticism? Why do I dream? Why do I hope? I should be the bitterest cynic on earth by now.

I should taste bile in every bite, meet every laugh with a grimace, mask for mask. But always I am hapless.

Something tells me I haven't hit the bottom of the barrel yet. That one day I'll totter and reel and some blind hand will batter me down till I'm face down in the dirt with the sordid stench of humanity reeking in my nostrils. Hurting worse, still worse than ever.

Or maybe by then my skin will be made of steel. Hard, harder than diamonds, harder than the cold light of your eyes, harder than your lips set in resolution and the brutal curve of your jaw. I'll glimmer in the sun, impervious. Behold, he feels nothing. Behold, here is one, lost. Karna, kavacha, kundala, adrift.

There is so much beauty in this world. If I could breathe it all in, I would burst into a million peals of light and laughter and dissipate into the sky.

The Epic, Rambling Chronicle of my First Month in JNU

2011-08-29T16:52:00.004+05:30

It's been almost a month now, and I haven't posted anything. So much has happened. So this shall be an epic update that I don't expect anyone to read.

The first few days I was at Tanuja aunty's, catching autos to come to JNU for admission work. That went smoothly enough.

Eventually I decided to move out of T aunty's. I thought a few days with friends would be nice, before I moved in to campus. But my JU friends have been swallowed up by a hole called Pearson Education. The day I met them they looked dead beat and could only talk about office. Staying with them was not an option anyway, they've hardly managed some rough accomodation themselves.

So I went to CD's house. The place is a bachalors' pad, and I know they're meant to be messy, but this was something else. No dustbin, no spoons or utensils, broken bottles lying in the kitchen, DEAD RATS and dead-rat-smell, and all electrical devices giving electric shocks. Grateful as I was to CD and co for taking me in on such short notice, I could only take one night of that.

The next day I moved to campus. Aviroop had given me the key to his room. Turns out his roommate Tashi was out for a few days, so at first I had the room to myself. The first few days was lonely. I had only Srin for occasional company, and for the most part I was alone in this forest of a campus. I strove to make some friends though. Met BDC's inimitable friend P, and hung out with her at a blessedly empty Parthasarathi Rocks (highest point on the campus -- beautiful hilly spot from where you can see a lot of the campus. Everyone gets drunk here). Met her other friends Mrinalini and Ria too.

A word on the campus. Massive, beautiful place. Trees everywhere. I'm gonna like it here -- it appeals hugely to my inner Romantic. Wild animals! I've already spotted peacocks, porcupines, cows (which I mistook for Nilgai) and innumerable birds. Rambling, as Srin pointed out, is fun, but getting from Destination A to Destination B when you have to, and you're pressed for time is a pain. I need a bicycle.

Food is everywhere and quite cheap. I like 'froots beer' and golden brown mushrooms at Northeast Dhaba, the greasy Punjabi food at 24/7 (open all night!) and the cheap 'biriyani' (more like yellow rice) and chicken curry at the place next to Ganga Dhaba. Oh, and keema at SIS, and the samosas at Library canteen.

The hostels are disgusting. I've gone from Mandavi to Tapti (more on that in a minute) and it's gone from bad to worse. Dirty loos (Tapti is worse) disgustingly dirty corridoors filled with stinking rotting waste, bottles littered everywhere, strange and random smells. The rooms smell of the occupants. Thankfully Tashi was incredibly clean and neat, (and so am I) so our room was like an oasis in the middle of a desert of shit. Bathrooms rarely have water. Indian style loos (fine, that's hygienic). They make sense but I'm just not used to it. The messes make good food though. Tapti is better. Special dinner last night was delectable -- mutton curry like I haven't had in years.

One place I love is the Mandavi roof -- altough it's pretty unclean as well. It offers a great view, it's breezy and cool, and it's a wonderful place to chill. Things I've done there already -- got drunk with several people, on seperate occasions (Aviroop's gang, school friends, BDC's gang), struggled with Foucault (The Order of Things -- bloody French can be so obscure), watched the sun rise, watched the sun set, stared at trees for hours. I have no pictures of anything though. Bloody phone has a shit camera.

Ok, so back to the chronological narrative. So then one day Aviroop's absent roomie, Tashi came back. Turns out to be a wonderful guy -- quiet, clean, polite, helpful. A buddhist, from Ladakh, doing an Mphil in Sociology. I befriended him immediately by insisting I play badminton with his Ladkhi buddies. That became a regular diversion for the first few days. Baddy and TT with the Ladakhi boys -- Tenzing, Fidah and whatshisname. Tashi and I became good buddies. We chatted about his research (effects of tourism on Ladakhi religion and culture -- is it becoming merely a performance? Has modernity crippled tradition and made it a mere facade?), his love life, et all. Turns out Aviroop hasn't talked to him this much in a year of knowing him.

Then Aviroop came back. Aviroop is chill. I hardly knew him in school, we were acquaintances who talked sometimes -- he was a fellow fantasy fan and a prolific reader. Turns out he's a total dude in the History department (full of nerds, probably the best History dept in the country). He's an incredibly erudite scholar and a deep thinker. We've had some good chats, though he gives me an inferiority complex. He's also chill and a nice guy. Likes his ciggies and whiskey and won't say no to a joint or three. Met some of his buddies -- nice bunch -- Uponita, Vikram (colourful character) and whatshername. There I go again with my shit memory.

So for a while it was the three of us, Tashi, Aviroop and I, in their room. Then Aviroop had to disappear because he was no longer legal (he's waiting to get a room as well. Our names will both [hopefully] be out in the second hostel list, due before the 15th of September). Aviroop is currently bumming in Sutlej with two other guys in a single-seater. So then Tashi and I were alone for a bit and all was well, until one night, unexpectedly, at 12 midnight, the new occupant of the room shows up with a HUGE HUGE amount of luggage. 3 big black bags/suitcases, 3 crates of books, a backpack, and more luggage coming in the morning. It was pretty evident that I had to buzz off. There was literally not enough room to lie down on the floor.

So I made some calls and immediately shifted to the room of a senior in Tapti. Name's Siddhart. Nice, helpful, popular guy. SFI kore. He's been very kind to me, so I shouldn't complain about the messy room or the mishygiene in Tapti. One night he had a bunch of friends over so I slept with him on the same bed. New experience for me, but I made sure I was too drunk to care. Sid da's helped me get the dynamics of the Centre for English studies figured out. I'm in his room right now. And that's as far as the story's progressed so far.

This is a good time to talk about academics, and serious things in general, on which front I've made strident progress. Three classes so far. Paranjape (Research Methodology) I cannot talk about. We have a professional agreement. Yes, I'm employed by him. This is how it happened -- one day Abdul Hamid (very serious chap, takes studies very seriously), a classmate, pointed out a notice to me -- Makarand Paranjape had advertised for a Research Assistant. On a whim I applied. I was called for an interview within a few days and it turns out I aced it, so I'm his new Research Assistant. I tell you, coming from JUDE makes a huge difference. Everyone bloody knows we're the best of the best, so I don't need to feel guilty about having an ego. Plus my Edit-pub certificate and work experience with Jehanara Wasi.

Other than him, we've had Saugata Bhaduri (Introduction to Contemporary Literary Theory), who is good, though he seems to be aiming the lectures at double-doctorates in Literary Theory, because I had to struggle to keep up with him. Very erudite man though, no doubt. We've been given a fat reader, and I have a term paper and a presentation (I chose Foucault) to submit by the end of term.

Classmates, I choose not to talk about until I have something nice to say.

Right now, I should be working. I have three areas to be slogging on -- Jehanara's given me that unintelligible novel to edit, professor Paranjape has sent work, and I have a paper to write for the HCU seminar. The good side is, I should soon be getting six grand a month, plus the three grand stipend, plus whatever I get from Jehanara, plus ma's (minimal) contribution, so I should be decently off. A holiday looks feasable, but judging by my social ineptitude and general alienation, I'll probably go off by myself somewhere.

This is where I rant about alienation. I know I have a problem with this. People tell me I'm friendly and nice. Some even say I'm charming (erm...). But SOMEHOW, I never make proper friends. Never. They don't stick, or they have their own niches. I never fit in anywhere. I never hear a click in the universe as I snap into my social spot, some group of people with whom I truly belong. Srin says have patience. But still -- I've met enough people here, hung out, got drunk, had good times, but somehow, I don't seem to get... grafted in, you know? I feel like a hanger-on, marginal, like the lepers in Elizabethan England. Sometimes I feel diseased. In my five years of college, I've flitted between groups -- the seniors at first, and then my classmates' group. But it's always been Them + me. Fuck, I'm sick of unbelonging. I just want to feel like a square in a square place.

And on that rather pathetic note, I conclude. Watch this space.

Marie, Marie, Hold on Tight

2011-08-01T07:15:00.002+05:30

Today I'm leaving.

I woke up a few hours ago. I couldn't fall back asleep.

All this, that I have known and loved. All this I leave behind today. It's all been very abrupt. I don't feel I've said goodbye properly. Goodbye to my mom, my room, the girl I love. Goodbye to my friends. It's been very mad the last two weeks. I think I'm fairly sick of alcohol for one thing. But still, with visiting people, hugging people and doing pronam, it all feels very surreal. Where am I going?

Goodbye. I'll miss you. All of you.

I don't think I can write anything more now.

2011-07-26T16:25:00.001+05:30

Shob kota ew gross. List-e ekta bhalo dekhte maagi nei.

Bhaloi. Prayag Ray, son, you're going there to STUDY.

That's why you're doing this Mphil, remind yourself. To get to that level you know you want to be at. To bloody READ.

Keep your head on.

Anyway, shob kota ew gross.

Amar bondhura jake aarki 'Gillette' category dake.

:D

2011-07-26T00:10:00.000+05:30

'I received a message from my brother across the water
He sat laughin' as he wrote the end's in sight
So I said goodbye to all my friends
And packed my hopes inside a matchbox
'Cause I know it's time to fly

Come on, meet me in the morning, Meet me in the middle of the night
The morning light is comin', don't it make you wanna go and feel alright

I just jumped a train that never stops,
So now somehow I'll know I never finished payin' for my ride
Just n' someone pushed a gun into my hand
Tell me I'm the type of man to fight the fight that I'll require

Come on, meet me in the morning, wont you Meet me in the middle of the night
The morning light is comin', don't it make you wanna go and feel alright

Oh, mama, well I think it's time I'm leavin'
Nothin' here to make me stay
Whoa, mama, well it must be time I'm goin'
They're knockin' down them doors
They're tryin' to take me away

Please Mr. Brakeman, won't you ring your bell. And ring loud and clear
Please Mr. Fireman, won't you ring your bell
Tell the people they got to fly away from here

I once saw a picture of a lady with a baby
Southern lady, had a very, very special smile
We are in the middle of a change in destination
When the train stops, all together we will smile
Oh, meet me in the morning. Won't you meet me in the middle of the night, night, night
Everybody know the mornin' time is comin'
Don't it make you wanna feel alright. Ah, ah, yeah
Make me feel alright. Fly now, baby
Get to fly, yeah. Fly now, baby'

Led Zeppelin -- Night Flight.

Sunshine

2011-07-23T22:11:00.001+05:30

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zx27dP1mTg

Ode to a Nightingale

2011-07-20T17:09:00.003+05:30

I drink my drink, she hers. Between us, the silence is crisp. The curtains hang limply in this room, and the afternoon light suffuses the furniture in a dull shade of indolence.

She is veiled in silence. It dignifies her, wraps her in a purple gown of misery. Misery, her own – like a strange and alien land once known but now forgotten. A smouldering passion, beating, with a heart of rich, strange darkness. Touch me, and burn.

Only my imagination is alive here. It is spinning, spinning, spinning like a mad wheel in a mad fair, blurring past, present and future. Forgetting, denying, reliving, reviling. Painting, painting in a dark corner, bright things. Past caring, past thought, it sees not the darkness, not the void. It hallucinates that the darkness is tree, a bird, a waterfall. Out of the void, flows the shape of things to come.

And there is something else, a seed, a germ. If it grows, it can rip through the silence, rip the void, rip through all creation, becoming a link. A link in the great chain of being. A completeness ad infinitum. A melting away into unbeing, till all is lost and there is only the turning, slow, inexorable of time and tides. Like a great, mad wheel, like destiny and the revolutions of the stars in the cosmos. To be, for now, for ever.

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

2011-07-17T13:02:00.002+05:30

Life is strange and unexpected.

I spent a few days with an old friend/more-than-a-friend. Everything is so different now.

We are all like tops, spinning away from each other. Sometimes converging, colliding, but always spinning, spinning, spinning. Who knows where we will go next?

The thought makes me smile :)

'Are we human, or are we dancer'?

2011-07-06T22:22:00.002+05:30

I never realized how much I love you till now.

I miss you. Like you miss the sun when it's been cloudy too long. Like you miss a song when all is silent.

Outside my window, rain is slowly dripping, drop by drop from some cornice. The fan is whirring to my left, a table-clock ticking to my right. A phone rings somewhere, distant, as if from the bottom of a deep sea. Slowly, I drift into a silence that feels like delirium.

Lines from a Flaming Lips song haunts me. 'Do you realize, that you have the most beautiful face?/ Do you realize, we're floating in space?'

What's in Your Head, Zombie?

2011-07-04T03:09:00.002+05:30

This is going to a long post about the madness that happens inside my head when I can't sleep. It's been getting worse recently.

The night before my GRE, everything was going well. I gave an official ETS GRE simulation computer adaptive practice test (as close as you can get to the real thing) at 9:30. I did ok. After chilling for a bit, I went to sleep at 2. I had slept only 3-4 hours the previous night, and I thought I would soon drift off. But my uncle from Jamshedpur had chosen that night of all nights to stay over, and he fell violently ill right then. We managed to have him under control by 3:30. By this time I was hyper. The alarm was set on my phone for 9:30. I pushed it back a bit.

4:30. My uncle is SNORING, very very loudly. Tick tick tick. Time is passing. I'm riled up, I can't sleep. Pop. In goes one Alzolam 0.5. I shift to my own non-airconditioned room. Alarm pushed back more. With every hour less that I sleep, my marks are quantitatively decreasing. Ineluctable fact. The GRE is about speed, alertness, acuity.

5:30. Tick tick tick. Time is passing, I cannot sleep. It's fucking hot in my room. The alarm, pushed back to 11, cannot be pushed back any more. If I fall asleep right now, I will still get 5 and a half hours, which is fine. I even bully wank. No use. I go back to the AC room. My uncle is SNORING even louder. Ma wakes up. We have a minor brawl. My uncle wakes up too. Everything has gone to the dogs now, there's a fullon fight. Ma takes me to the other room and says I cannot be so spoiled, I should adapt, I cannot blame her for letting my uncle come that night, etc. I go back to my room and slam the door.

6:30. Awake. My eyes are heavy, my arms are tired from swimming, but I can't sleep. RILED up. Coiled up tight. Tossing and turning, like I'm being roasted on a spit.

7:00 am: I need sleep. I must get sleep. Even a few hours is better than no sleep at all. Remember Crime Fiction? That was no sleep at all. Stopping to think how to spell 'the'. Must sleep. Pop, in goes another Alzolam 0.5 By this time there is enough benzodiazapine in me to kill a large salamander, seventeen times.

7:30: Last memory of time on clock. Knock. out.

At 11:00, I'm dragged 'awake' by my mother. A zombie, my body showers, eats something, drinks coffee, and struggles to reach Minto Park in time. I fuck up the exam horribly, despite my best attempts to come to my senses. The score is a hundred lower than my lowest practice exam score.

C'est la vie? No. I was never like this. I am a regular guy. Hamlet has been taking over me, but never like this.

It's many things, I think. I'm single. Alone. Whatever else can be said about my relationship, one thing I always had is a profound sense of security. A sense that even if the universe ends tomorrow, I will not go alone into the dark. For four years, my mind was mollycoddled under this blanket. Now I am rudely awake. Awake to my alienation. Awake to insecurity. Am I so weak? Do I need a lord-the-shepherd to guide my life?? No. But the truth is, as a person, I will always be happiest as one half of a whole.

Again, things have reached new levels of uncertainty in my life. What if I don't clear the JNU interview? Vague hopes of a job in Delhi? Working here in Cal? Nothing certain. And if I stay away from academics for a year, will I not be pushed away forever?

If I do get in? I'll be thrilled, but I'll also be shit scared about all this change.

Also, I am a recovering benzo addict. I pop pills. I'll admit it. During the exams, I have Alzolam like chanachur. This time I dragged it on for a week or more after the exams ended, because I thought breaking up gave me that luxury. Alzolam is insanely addictive. I also sometimes take another drug, branded as 'Niterest'. I'm also a minor alcoholic. I'm addicted to downers. They help me relax and sleep.

When I can't sleep, I do weird things. I take classes in my head. I start thinking obsessively about my professors for some strange reason, and I torture myself thinking I'll never be anywhere near as knowledgeable as them. I play out situations, act out possible scenarios in my life. Obsessive thoughts, active thoughts.

I have a PROBLEM. A big fucking sleep problem. I'd go to a doctor but I'm fucking scared about shrinks. I'm not mad.

Am I?

2011-07-03T01:29:00.001+05:30

You are my whole universe.

Guess who 'you' is?

Me.

Isn't that a happy realization?

Forever Still

2011-06-25T23:14:00.004+05:30

"They know and do not know, what it is to act or suffer.

They know and do not know, that action is suffering
And suffering action. Neither does the agent suffer
Nor the patient act. But both are fixed
In an eternal action, an eternal patience
To which all must consent that it may be willed
And which all must suffer that they may will it,
That the pattern may subsist, for the pattern is the action
And the suffering, that the wheel may turn and still
Be forever still".

T.S. Eliot -- Murder in the Cathedral

I am so tense right now. Stretched tight like a skin across a snare drum. Ringing a clear C sharp when struck, but not struck yet. Waiting for the snare shot to open a doorway to the unknown. One way, or another, as I keep telling myself.

Why am I afraid? A snare drum has no thoughts. It is struck, it rings out, and is silent.

Today in the pool, I thought for a second, that I was drowning. Instantly, two images flashed through my mind. A baby stillborn -- coming to the surface and not being able to breathe, not clearing its lungs and crying, but choking to death on the treacherous air -- and the moment of death for a suicide hanging from a fan, finding that suddenly, he can't breathe. You know, I'm not certain, but I'm sure every suicide by hanging feels regret at the final moment. Not an intellectual regret, but a bodily horror at death, at not being able to breathe. "Oh my god, what was I thinking? Help me, help me, I want to breathe." Struggling, gasping for breath, but being unable to do that one thing taken for granted all his life. Finally dying in a blind panic, filled with fear, everything going dark.

You would know what I mean if you were in a swimming pool, struggling for air.

A foetus in a jar, its head a knot of worry. Such sadness on its tiny stillborn face. Perfect hands and perfect feet. Every digit, every nail complete, a mockery of the act of creation. Is this all life is? Sadness, eternal sadness frozen in flesh, a finger pointed at the maker, asking why? Not in defiance, not in triumph, not stretching to touch the finger of god, but an excuse me ma'am. Why this? Why life, only to be burnt and bruised, brows furrowed head bowed, stuffed in a jar to float in forever, a prisoner of flesh and glass.

Little saint, little sufferer, look up. Don't cry, for we are all like you, floating in formaldehyde.

Thicker than Water

2011-06-23T02:29:00.005+05:30

'Lugubrious'. A GRE word. It means 'Mournful, dismal, or gloomy, especially to an exaggerated or ludicrous degree'. Ie, for attention. This blog post is not meant to be lugubrious. So please, don't comment. This is not a plea for sympathy. This is about understanding myself.

Who was my father?

The other day, I was observing how the daughter of two people I know, bears such an uncanny resemblance to both the father and the mother. Not only in looks and mannerisms, but it terms of personality as well. It terms of mental composition. We can't help it, can we? We are the discourses that shape us. We are constructed. A certain base we inherit from ancient ancestors, and the rest is experience. The strongest influence is invariably the family.

But I have never known my father. At least not well enough. So how can I understand myself?

Sometimes, when I'm lost or confused, when I need guidance, there is this strange feeling of something very particular missing. My mom can't fill the gap, nor can any friend. There is this strange strength that a powerful older man emanates. Particularly to an admiring younger man. Even a man who doesn't pride himself on masculinity gives off this power. It inheres in age, physical presence, and only in the case of someone who loves you, the promise that you can stand on their shoulders. Or that there is ground beneath your feet.

Ma tells me stories of baba. Most are nice, some are not.

One time, on baba's birthday, my mother woke up to find a small chit of paper on his pillow which said 'I have gone away somewhere for the day, don't try to locate me'. That's all. My mother of course, was frantic. This was before mobile phones. Baba's side of the family, his friends, nobody knew where he was. It's not that my mother suspected him of anything. His character was utterly unassailable. But still. One doesn't disappear on one's birthday. Ultimately it was discovered that baba was in a suburb of Calcutta, promoting physics education for the underprivilaged. That was his ideal birthday. That was his 'gift to himself'. He knew his wife wouldn't understand it, so he decided not to explain. Silly man. That was my father. Utterly given to higher causes. Utterly given to physics, his work, and the benefit of others. All well and good. But I will never be like this. I have not known my father enough, because of this. And I will never forgive him for it. Every minute we spent was precious -- watching Discovery channel together, or playing cricket. But they were so, so few. He would leave at the same time as me in the morning, and return when I was going to sleep.

On the other hand, ma tells me about how baba took her to watch 'Star Wars' for a first date. That was his idea of romance. Obviously his eyes were shining. Ma, well, haha. Star Wars is so not her thing. He also thought choto maashi was the serving girl, because she's called 'Annie' (baba thought, rightly, that ma's family was weird and anglophilic), and he got whacked by a man dressed as a hanuman with a goda in a pageant (so much for masculinity), and he stuck his tongue out in this funny way when he made jokes.

Here's one them. Baba comes up to didi, who is a huge X-Files fan and mimes punching her. Complete with slow-motion swing of the arm towards her face. Then he points to the distance and says 'The tooth is out there'.

Funny man, bumbling man. Reminds me of me. I will try to be like my father in many ways, and not like him in others.

The last thing he said before he passed away, before he entered the bathroom that day, was "Blood is thicker than water". He had arranged the magnets on the fridge into an M, and a P. He asked ma what it meant. Ma couldn't guess. I was asked. Immediately I said, "Mohana and Prayag, of course". Baba did his muchki smile, looked at ma and said "Blood is thicker than water". Then he went into the bathroom, and then, his last message delivered, he was gone.

Blood is thicker than water. It's so sad then baba, that I shall spend the rest of my life looking for you.

The Void

2011-06-20T17:09:00.004+05:30

Deep, dark, black hole,

Void inside us all.

Walking down the rain-washed roads, you watched the evening fall. Sipped tea and watched it grow in the gloom, darkly. Everything was as ever -- the tea-stall, the rain, the roads. Orange lights seeping onto grey and blue, all smeared out in a rain-wet Monet. But something was different. A profound silence had grown inside you, so still, so deep, so dark. It was a void. A yawning void. A cave. Stalagtites of silence, formed drip by drop in darkness.

The void. That void inside you. In the evenings, it waxes, growing full and broad. Misty, it seeps through your being till it wraps you like a coat, the void. That void inside you.

Anaesthesia felt like this. Yes, you remember. In a blue room, the pain would throb away. And there was silence, broken by the distant creaking of doors, footsteps hurrying down blue neon passages. Everything was hushed. Someone had said something, some secret had been betrayed. Now with the needles, the handwash and the silence, something must be buried. No, no, don't get up. Don't rise. Lie down. Hush.

Deep, dark, black hole. Image of yourself, your silence. No-one told you where it came from, or how. One day you just felt it. It lay there, inside you, inscrutable. Watching? No, just sleeping like a cat. Rising, stretching, yawning, it malingers. It will never go. It is yours, your void, your darkness. Pet it.

Inextricable, the shadow of your soul. Pretend it's not there, ignore it, push it back. But it will not leave you, will never leave you. It will follow you to the furthest corners of the earth. It will possess your heart. Eat your joys, and smile, glutted. Wherever you go, wherever you run, it will follow. You turn around and it's there, the void. Look inside and it's gaping, tearing through you, black hole in your breast, beating.

I am the enemy you killed, my friend. I knew you in this dark... Let us sleep now.

Slut Walk

2011-06-18T15:23:00.003+05:30

I'm being vociferous in support of 'Slut Walk' on Facebook. But my opinions about the name of the event are divided. One the one hand, I realize that the strong connotations of the word will raise a furore, grab attention, which in itself, for obvious reasons, is a positive thing. On the other hand, I think it's futile to 'reclaim' a word like slut. 'Reclaim' as I understand the term, means to strip a word of its negative associations so that it can be used freely, not as a term of abuse. But the word 'slut' is irrevocably, a term of abuse. It cannot be used positively as long as prostitution is frowned upon, or until promiscuity stops being looked on in a negative light. The word in itself carries strong negative connotations that are too deeply embedded in the language to be entirely erase. The word, 'queer', for instance, can stop becoming a term of abuse. This is because the word itself carries less strongly negative connotations. At the most, what can happen, is what happened to the term 'nigger'. It is no longer widely used. But has it been 'reclaimed'? As far as I know, it is has become acceptable, and not pejorative, for black people to call each other nigger. In that sense, it has been reclaimed for a community. Perhaps that much can be done for the word 'slut'.

But I think something far more positive can be done with the word -- something that will change more than the usage of a word. Something that can change the attitudes underlying its usage. What can be done is to make the term gender-neutral. Start using it to describe promiscuous men. That, in fact, is the problem. The inequity in sexual mores. Men can fuck around as much as they want, they can wear little or no clothing -- witness the cult of Salman Khan -- and yet, they are not 'sluts'.

As far as I see it, the important thing is that women in India acquire the unqualified, unrestrained right to choose what they wear. I am hoping that this is the idea at the heart of the 'Slut Walk' campaign. If men in India get used to the fact that they cannot dictate sexual mores to women, and if they realize that a woman showing some skin does not by default make her loose, available, or promiscuous, that will be a positive achievement.

If I am in Delhi at the end of July, I will attend the even in person.

Unhomely

2011-06-17T02:12:00.004+05:30

It is SO bizarre talking, even IMing many people again. I feel so awkward. It's hard to know people's registers, where they're coming from, what they're thinking.

As I said on FB. How do you re-acquire multilingualism, when you've grown monolingual?

Trust one person, talk to one person. All good. Safe. You know what to expect. You understand. You're speaking a shared mental language.

I don't know younger people these days (yes, I feel, sadly, that I've grown that much older [not necessarily more mature, just older, more far from the human race]). I don't know the lingo. I don't get the SXCS-LMB gang, I don't get Dev D/Delhi Belly culture. I don't get the yo man trippycool letspaintwalls culture. Loathe. Disrespect.

I don't get aantels. I hate fucking aantels. They're worse than the UMM crowd. Pretentious, fullofit, and usually fake.

I don't get the people I truly respect -- my professors. People who know so much it scares the hell out of me. I respect them, but I don't get them. I don't see that assiduousness, that seriousness in anyone of my generation. I have this sick feeling that our attention spans have been destroyed by television at a young age. Throw away your televisions, really.

I don't get randoms. I can't fit them anywhere. Maybe I just don't know them.

See? I don't get anyone. I got you. You got me. Now I've got lost.

I like this picture. The road is straight. That's destiny. Or causality, if you want to be a cynic. We have no choice, either way. There's snow on the margins, because it's cold where people don't go. The beaten track has gaps in it. And everywhere there is this silence.

Welcome to the Brothel

2011-06-16T16:54:00.003+05:30

Nothing is innocent, nothing.

http://www.wetanz.com/stone-pendant-the-white-tree-of-gondor/

Even beauty is produced, homogenized, branded, marketed, and cheapened. Two things here -- 1) Nature, packed and sold. Marvellous, wonderful, primordial, (insert more hyperbolic adjectives describing the supposed raw, untamed [the irony! the irony!] power of nature) environmental forces -- in your pocket! (Metaphor, metaphor, hello!). 2) The Lord of the Rings. Descanctified, produced, sold. Ah yes! THE LORD OF THE RINGS! The ultimate commodity. Spawning billions of $$$ and ### (why is there no goddamned 'pound' sign on the keyboard?! Fuck, America is taking us over insidiously, so, so insidiously!). Peter Jackson, your grandchildren shall be rich! Maybe they'll make the next great aantel film, eh? Art film, not your influence. Children must try to be different after all. Break new grounds. They'll be 'avant garde'! Yes, BEHOLD! Avant garde! Brilliant! Buy the film! Watch the film! DVD! Blue-Ray! High Definition!

My Lord of the Rings? My baby? My world? My sacred space? My wonderland? My escape from death, mortality, temporality, decay? Et tu, whored? Of course, of course. New Zealand thrives on the LOTR industry.

What does this mean? It could mean many things. But why am I angry. I am angry because when I was small, after I read that book the first time, I went around my neighbourhood looking for a piece of wood. Then I took a sharp instrument and hacked at it, and tried to make a sword. It was shit, but it was my sword. I MADE it. No ALIENATED LABOUR went into it. Nobody had a sword like that. That sword was about me, and a book. It was my love, carved into wood.

These stones are not love. These stones are HATE. Greed, profit, capital, excess. These stones are turning people into stones. These stones are killing love. They are offering CHEAP goddam alternatives. Everything in the modern world is like that. Goddamit. You want love, eh? Go to a bar. LOAD your wallet with lots of CASH. Buy a HOT girl a B-52. Nothing cheaper. Bas. A couple of B-52s and some industrially produced dhik chik dhik chik music blaring over JBL speakers, and voila! You're alone! In a room! Her pants are coming off! Behold her toned ass! Yes, she gyms at GOLD'S GYM. Her ass is made of GOLD. You want to tap that ass.

The Lord of the Rings has become a golden ass. No, YOU, who buy that etched stone, are a golden ass. Because the point of the The Lord of the Rings, damn you, is to resist becoming a machine, a materialist. It's an ESCAPE world, get it? Tolkien hated modernity, hated machinery, hated industry. He was a HOBBIT. Resisting change. Those are the values of the book. And HAHAHA, BEHOLD. That too is now bubble-wrapped! Only 32 US fucking dollars. US dollars, mind you. Not pounds. Could the British film industry have the money to make that film? No.

I hate you Peter Jackson. Fuck you and your descendants for all of time to come.

Everything is whored. Everything.

THE ONLY THING THAT IS GENUINE IS THAT WHICH IS NOT SOLD.

You are ONLY genuine when you are ALONE. Completely alone. Even a mirror fucks things up.

As my favourite T-shirt says -- DIE INTERNET DOT COM MILLIONAIRE SCUM. (skull symbol). Oh wait. Wait, wait, wait. The t-shirt is mass produced.

Kill me, now.

Interregnum

2011-06-15T03:08:00.004+05:30

Waiting, waiting, waiting. 'What then? Sang Plato's ghost'.

Maybe waiting is the best thing. I'm waiting for a little holiday to come through right now. I so want it. Hills, ah, hills. It will all depend on fortune.

Everything depends on fortune now. Well, many things. I can still make a difference to the second test, if I use these two weeks well. The first, I've done my duty. Now I can only wait.

All I know is, in a month, my life will be profoundly different from what it's been over the last five years, one way or another. Five years. Fuck, that's a WHOLE lot of time. Equivalent to class 8, 9, 10, 11 AND 12. Holy shit. That's like two whole phases of my life. Did I spend that long mentally stagnating in this cesspool? Where has the time gone? It's gone because the memories are blurry. The memories are blurry because every day has been like the previous, in the course of these five years. The memories right now don't even seem very fond. I am so irritated with this stagnation. Even the faces are seeming evil right now. It's just me, it's my mind. I need new.

I want a new drink. Old monk and coke/water, is tasting stale. I begin to enjoy whiskey. Beer is fine any time. Ah, lovely cold beer.

I want a new address. Badly. A new room. This hole depresses me. The yellow light trickles out of the little alcove where the computer is, and just depresses me. Depresses me so much that I don't know how I'll spend the next two weeks cooped up here. The yellow light has to be on from the morning, because my room is in such a weird position vis-a-vis the wind, that it becomes like a hotbox during the day with no ventilation, and I can't open the windows. Darkness, cooped up, yellow light. This little alcove and the yellow light are relatively new. I associate my post-operation depression with them, they've been here since October last year. I want to get. the. fuck. out.

I want a new/old body. I grow tired of the tires. 44 lengths in the pool a day should soon get rid of that. I want my leg back. I want to be able to play football again properly. But I can't seem to be bothered to do the damned weight lifting.

I want new friends. Five years of the same bunch. They're ok. But I need to broaden my social horizons. I got into this little rut in the last few years. Talking to all of three people or less. Ie, about three real friends. Total isolation/alienation, to tell the truth. I need to re-socialize.

I want new zeal. I want to see myself become more like what I see of myself in the future. I want to be productive, useful, dear god, I want to feel useful.

Right now even the prospect of being jobless seems excellent. Oh, I'll do something, if they don't take me. I'll find something to do. I'll work. I'll grow. Change, ah, for some change.

2011-06-11T14:59:00.002+05:30

Monsoon is coming, and I am coming back to life. How was I dead for so long? Where were my songs, my poems, my heart? Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud.

2011-06-10T13:42:00.002+05:30

Light of my life, it has been good. I have not regretted a single moment of the last three and a half years. I have been warm since the night you gave me your green jacket, that December. Now that life is changing, I have only memories, but the memories shall be fond. Shine on.

2011-06-06T15:11:00.002+05:30

I know myself. I am characterized by intense and savage bursts of energy. The rest of the time I slack off. But they happen.

Now here's the thing. This exam. I've been ignoring it. I can't ignore it any more. God, give me one of those bursts.

I must do it justice. This is my entire future here.

Come on man. One more burst.

2011-06-06T01:16:00.002+05:30

Summer is so sticky here. So wet. Stuck to your skin. Sickly sticky sweet stenches. Sewers, parks and benches. Heat. Horrible heat, horrendous. Harangue, clamour, noises from the bridge. Voices from the mirkpit in your mind.

My face is itchy. I wish I could peel it off. Put it in a jar filled with ice, to cool. Today I was sitting on a bench, and there were flies all around me. Sick flies. Buzzing flies, dirty flies. Flies on the dog. Flies on the surface of the jheel, lurking.

Tick, tick, tick. The clock. Buzz, like the fly, the fan. Maddening. No sleep.

Septimus Warren Smith. Shrapnel.

Red Wine and Water: A Villanelle

2011-06-03T16:24:00.002+05:30

This is a poem. Not very good, but I wrote the first few lines in my sleep. Sounds bizarre, but it's true. When I woke up I remembered three lines which I jotted down. The rest I composed now, and forced into the somewhat difficult form of a villanelle.

What would I sell her

For a few songs of love?

Red wine and water?

Dustking, wore gold fur,

Shook stars above.

What would I sell her?

Light me a taper

For I fear I shall love,

Red wine and water.

Soft pottery shape her

Cup curve her love.

What would I sell her?

Lip, light, line, blur

Longlost, did we reek of

Red wine and water?

Now that I've touched her,

Lot marred above,

What would I sell her?
Red wine and water?

2011-06-01T17:13:00.002+05:30

I need a senex. A wise old man. A Gandalf, a Dumbledore, a Merlin. Someone who will pick me up and tell me it's all good. Show me the way.

Where are you? Set me on the track, some wise old man? I have no father-figures. My uncle is a shadow of a man, and he's the only one I'm close to. I don't want to become a shadow.

2011-05-30T22:51:00.002+05:30

Aar porte iccha korche na. Aabar? Shotti? Not now. Blah. Curses. Muttering.

It's been madness for lets see, how long? Early April. String of tests, term paper frenzy, more tests, end sems. That other thing. How much can a man take?

Ma's after me coz I've consumed alcohol on four consecutive days. Bleh.

Bleh to everything.

Chained to my room again? Aaargh. What the fuck was I thinking when I scheduled the bloody exam?

Pulse

2011-05-28T18:29:00.002+05:30

With gut-wrenching frankness, we step onto the final mile. Pull out the stop signs, there are no rules here. The evening's empire has returned into sand, left me blindly here to stand, and still not sleepy. Mr. Tambourine Man, will you play a song for me? In the jingle jangle morning, I'll come following you.

With a rush and a skuffle, with a throb and an old ache, the blood flows red again. I hear its throb, I feel its hum like a magic chant. Live, live, live, it begs me. Burn like a phoenix and rise again. Live.

This is all I have to answer the emptiness with. The tick in my pulse, the beat ineluctable. The absolute truth. Memento mori, remember me always. She loves me, loves me not. Flowers turn to sand, and still the beat is steady. Live, live, live. Course through my blood, time testament.

In faery land an elven chime shivered like a leaf. A drop of water fell in a pool as still as thought. The deathless sailed into the West. Under the eaves, fairy lights spread out like fireflies, mute in the gloaming deep. The footsteps still whisper of a time out of time, the leaves are still silver. Live, live, live.

Once upon a time, a gentle man used to wake me up every morning. He would kneel next to the bed and run his course hands through my hair. Wake up, son, wake up. At night I would hear the keys jingling in his pockets as he came to the door. Live, live, live. I remember with shock, the stillness of his heart, the day the world changed. How was I to know then, that he would always, live, live, live?

Why?

2011-05-26T14:35:00.002+05:30

War. I don't understand it, I don't know how it happens. Every time I watch that video on Youtube about the atomic bombings, I feel this deep disbelief that something like this actually happened. How can one person take another person's life? He's just like you, he has a family, people he loves. He may like to cycle in the rain or dream of flying fish. He smiles and laughs just like you, he hurts when you hit him, he bleeds when he's cut. How can you kill your brother?

Perhaps I am naive. No, I am naive. Someone killed someone's father, someone took away someone else's land, someone insulted someone else's gods. That's how it happens, no? I won't understand because I've lived all my life in a bubble where all of this evil is just a myth.

Perhaps we're all just animals, fighting over limited food, limited land. Killing each other to survive. But then why do we have these thoughts? Why do we love? Why do we dream and give, and cry and kiss? Why do we feel? Is not feeling the very opposite of violence, anger, hatred? Can't we just love each other? Why is it so hard? Why?

Auroboros

2011-05-24T18:39:00.006+05:30

Nothing ends, nothing ever ends.

I found out in a dream.

Nothing I have ever experienced can explain it.

It wasn't like waking, it wasn't like being asleep. It wasn't seeing (though there was colour), hearing, touching, or tasting, though it began with them. It was extra sensory. The only way I can describe it is pure knowing. Whatever I concluded in that dream, I knew to be true -- beyond all logic, beyond all human thought.

I was lying on a bed, in the dream. My sister was lying on another bed, next to me. We had been eating some pink ice-cream with dark streaks of purplish liquid in it. After a while we began to talk. I can only remember that Baba somehow came up. I think one of us said we couldn't remember how he felt anymore. By felt I don't mean touch. I mean the feeling of having Baba around. Of knowing he's there. His presence. His soul?

Then didi said, "Let go". It's weird she should say it. She's more inhibited than me. But she told me to let go. In the dream, I knew exactly what she meant. I let go. From here in this world, I cannot say what she wanted me to let go of -- perhaps fear, perhaps sorrow, perhaps the memories I had buried. But I let go.

It seemed I was levitating -- we both were. Something had opened, somewhere. Like a channel. Like a faucet. Something was leaking into my/our mind. Suddenly there stopped being a didi and me. There stopped being a me at all. There was no I. There just was. Or perhaps is. I don't think human language can adequately express what I felt/knew at that moment/eternity. These dichotomies are irreconcilable in language. It is how we make reality, cutting chunks -- signifieds -- discreet categories of meaning out of a continuous and formless Real. At that moment, these petty human things, these categories of meaning stopped existing. I knew things. I was part of something, or someone (there was no difference between the two, no differences at all, in fact. Just unity) greater than anything I had ever known. I don't want to sound like a spiritual guru, but I felt like I was part of a cosmic consciousness.

I shall use an analogy to describe the experience. I'm not sure this is how I saw it, but since waking, I have come closest to explaining it using this analogy. I lay on a field of grass. Long grass, dark, green grass, waving like an ocean all around me. Over my head, through my fingers, waving, waving. Everything was alive. Stones, trees, everything. It was night time. Above me, oh god, above my head, how can I explain. Stars. Dear god, stars like I've never seen, never heard described. Stars -- just endless, endless stars -- the uttermost reaches of the cosmos laid bare before me. Only, there was no me really. I was the stars, I was the grass, I was the cosmos.

I knew certain things then. I am finding this hard to write because of the profound scorn I feel for just the kind of people who say these things. But such is how it was. Baba was there, somehow, even though there were no entities as such. Just entity, singular. But I somehow felt baba's presence. Such antinomies – how can there be no entities and an entity at the same time? – cannot be explained in human language. But Baba was there, like a mediator, perhaps. A screen between me and the force of the realization. So then I will say he told me certain things. But there wasn't really a 'he' (forget gender, there was no person), nor was I told anything. I knew. But still I will say he helped me know:

There is no death. In many ways. Firstly, because the dust we become is no less alive. I cannot explain this statement, but I knew it to be true, then. Secondly, there is in fact no Ego to kill. There is only a return, no, a mingling -- like a sugar cube in water. Still the same, only a change in form.

There is someone/something watching over us. Not over us, but all around us, part of us, but greater than the individual. The universe is sentient. Is this God? I don't know. Human categories were, as I have said, irrelevant.

There is no I. No you. No this, no that. No subject, no object. Just unity. Totality. Individuality is an illusion. A manifestation of an aspect of the universal.

I didn't learn. I had always known. Actually, tense irrelevant. That experience, that time there was no before and after that time, that experience. That is why, it is actually pointless explaining these things here. They have no meaning in this existence. You can judge me, because I judge it myself. Scientific, skeptical, atheistic me has struggled and struggled to come to terms with it. You see, it was no dream. It felt like nothing I had ever experienced before, nor have since. When I woke up, I knew this was utterly profound. I got out of bed and started pacing around -- telling myself, this I must not forget, this I must not. And indeed, I haven't. The details have faded. I mean the narrative is now hazy, if narrative it was. The sensory experience (if sensory it was) is lost -- I can only give an analogy -- the field and the stars. What is worst is that the realizations are not valid here, not tenable. This is the world of logic. Of dichotomies and distinctions. Of knowable things. To say I know the answer to the question of death is utterly ridiculous. Farcical even. To say I know there is a greater being -- a 'God'? (my inner atheist shudders) -- is impossible. To say that stones, trees, leaves are not essentially any different than us seems utterly counter-intuitive. I do not know anything. I have returned, to this incompleteness. But I knew then. Perhaps I will know one day again.

Nothing I have ever experienced can explain it.

I found out in a dream.

Nothing ends, nothing ever ends.

Ask the Storm

2011-05-24T10:44:00.003+05:30

On cloudy days like this, echoes of times past. Beatrix Potter, before my exam, and suddenly I am in an old house, a dusty corridor, above me a stormy sky. The school field, in a corner. The grass greener, darker. The sky dark. Inky, turning blue-black, an easel for the Gods. This was long ago.

My father, in the college. My mother too.

My mother says that when she walks down the corridors she can still see him, lurking somewhere. Adjusting some equipment, adjusting his glasses. Smiling, wryly. Just like I do. My father.

Ghosts. All ghosts now. The stormy sky outside my window answers.

Echoes from olden times. A library, a dusty book. Green railing, blue badge. The sky turning inky, dark, black. Buses, rows and rows of sleepy buses, waiting. No storm, just silence. Not memories. A floating, a wafting through time. Taken, transported for a minute, you feel lost. Where has it all gone, and where are we going? Shall I ask the storm?

Dust and Starlight

2011-05-21T20:29:00.004+05:30

Home is behind, the world ahead,

And there are many paths to tread

Through shadows to the edge of night,

Until the stars are all alight.

Then world behind and home ahead,

We'll wander back to home and bed.

-- From The Lord of the Rings

In a few months, my entire life will have changed. Everything I have known and loved will be a story. Time turns us into myth and stardust.

Once, I was a little boy. I played in the road outside. My hands were always dusty. I was just like the kids I see now, outside my window, running in the storm. That passed. It is a story now.

I was in school. It was home. I knew the corridors, the faces, the heat. It is only memory now. If I go back, it pains my heart to see my footsteps in the dust, my memories inscribed on every wall. It is only, now, a story.

College. Love and friendship. Books and dusty nooks. So old now, everything changed, utterly changed. I am standing still and the world is a blur around me. This too, shall pass.

And whither then? I cannot tell.

But home. Home is where the heart is. Home is where the heart is. Where are you, dear heart? Why do you weep? The fire burns and the bed is warm at home. The fire burns, red embers mellow with a crackle to ash. The bed is warm. I shall keep you in my heart, locked away and safe. Deep in my heart, deep down, away, and safe, where no-one can hurt you. And in the dark, I will remember you, and you shall shine like a star. Perhaps one day I will return. Open the door and find the bed still warm, the fire still alight. Perhaps. Till then, home, be the light that guides my way.

One night, in a dream, my father told me that nobody really dies. We turn into dust and starlight.

Disintegration

2011-05-20T12:28:00.002+05:30

Margaret Atwood, reading my mind, line for line.

He stood, a point
on a sheet of green paper
proclaiming himself the centre,

with no walls, no borders
anywhere; the sky no height
above him, totally unenclosed
and shouted:

Let me out!

ii

He dug the soil in rows,
imposed himself with shovels
He asserted
into the furrows, I
am not random.

The ground replied with aphorisms:

a tree-sprout, a nameless
weed, words
he couldn't understand.

iii

The house pitched
the plot staked
in the middle of nowhere.

At night the mind
inside, in the middle
of nowhere.

The idea of an animal
patters across the roof.

In the darkness the fields
defend themselves with fences
in vain:
everything
is getting in.

iv

By daylight he resisted.
He said, disgusted
with the swamp's clamourings and the outbursts
of rocks,
this is not order
but the absence
of order.

He was wrong, the unanswering
forest implied:

It was
an ordered absence

v

For many years
he fished for a great vision,
dangling the hooks of sown
roots under the surface
of the shallow earth.

It was like
enticing whales with a bent
pin. Besides he though

in that country
only the worms were biting.

vi

If he had konwn unstructured
space is a deluge
and stocked his log house—
boat with all the animals

even the wolves

he might have floated.

But obstinate he
stated, The land is solid
and stamped,

watching his foot sink
down through stone
up to the knee.

vii

Things
refused to name themselves; refused
to let him name them.

The wolves hunted
outside.

On his beaches, his clearings,
by the surf of under—
growth breaking
at his feet, he foresaw
disintegration

and in the end

through eyes
made ragged by his
effort, the tension
between subject and object,

the green
vision, the unnamed
whale invaded.

-- 'Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer'

Madness

2011-05-15T16:35:00.004+05:30

I've gone two nights without sleeping properly now. Night before I slept three hours, tonight I slept four hours. This is not because I'm studying or anything. I get into bed by 2 and stay awake till 6 am just going insane. I don't know why this is happening. I try to control it. I try not to actively worry about the future while I'm in bed, and I don't think I do. But something keeps me awake, even though my eyelids grow heavy.

I feel bad, because I've certainly fucked up at least my first paper. This is a pity because I really was in the position, even a week ago, to rock this paper. I had stacks of background books, many Jstor essays, neatly annotated and well-introduced texts, and photocopied classnotes in the neat handwriting of Doel Bose, all waiting to be read. I think I've finally managed to read about 10% of that material. These last two days I've studied, but it's like studying after someone's drugged you. I'm swaying in my seat, my head is drooping, my thoughts wander incessantly. I drift into reveries. And yet, when the time comes to sleep, some neurotic sits in my head and cackles. Reality breaks down as the hours pass. The birds start chirping outside, and slowly, steadily, I go mad. Everything stops making sense. Then at some point I do fall asleep. By 8 am someone's ringing on the doorbell, phone-calls come, I'm half awake. By 10 am, I'm up. Sleepy, groggy, but unable to lie down any longer, knowing that the precious hours are running away.

Why? Why is this happening? I've always been slightly neurotic during exams, but this is not that. At least, not just that. There are the other two factors. The big questions. The gaping holes.

My mother told me today, that no matter what happens, there is no reason to worry. If I don't get in anywhere, I can work for a while. I'll find something. I can go work at Sidh, an NGO run by my mom's friend in the mountains. I really liked it when I went there once, and it would be nice to work there. But what happens to all my plans then?

I have no more time to write. And I can't organize my thoughts with my mind in this state. I shall take on the insurmountable task of Volpone now. God be with me.

The song has just begun.

2011-05-14T04:45:00.003+05:30

My worrying has reached new heights. It's five in the morning, and I should be sleeping. I have an exam in two days, and I'm unprepared. I need every minute I've got left to prepare myself, to even get close to my usual standard. But I cannot sleep.

I have a dream again. Fervent, mad, it burns.

I've never wanted anything so badly. I want to go. I want to fly. I want to leave this place behind. I want to know myself. I want to be tried. I want the unknown, the thrill. I want sleepless nights, I want mist on a cold morning. I want to make. Myself.

I want an unknown shadow on an unknown road, the unknown tree singing an unknown song to the air, where I respire, breathing myself into the land. Give me freedom.

Give me the truth, let it hurt if it will.

I know it will hurt.

I want to RUN AWAY. I want to feel like a Linkin Park song again. I want not to cringe at capitalizing whole words. Why be restrained? Why be proper? When did they put me in chains, when did I grow old, proper, politic, polite, deceitful, dishonest, vile, dead. Fuck, how long ago did I die?

Before the song starts, the chords are struck. Give me resonance. This is my song. I am making it. Give me magic.

And yet. How will I leave this? Have I not grown into it all like a root into the earth? Has it not, Antaeus-like, made me strong?

Not now. Don't remind of death, not now when the song has just begun.

The song has just begun.

Run

2011-05-11T21:35:00.002+05:30

I am on the sea, alone. Tossed and turned, the waves climbing high overhead, the world sliding beneath my feet. My hold on the known, fading.

Somewhere, an anchor drags itself off the sea-floor. Sea dust billows around it.

Change cometh. Five years is a long time to stagnate. I hope I can find my feet.

I hope, first, that I reach this sea I yet but dream of. As yet it is but a distant roar. But it beckons.

I feel things I haven't felt in a long long time. Fear, excitement. The prospect of a completely new world to come. It is time to spread my wings at last.

2011-05-06T00:00:00.001+05:30

Love = pain

2011-04-23T02:16:00.001+05:30

All you need is love.

2011-04-14T04:21:00.000+05:30

Come on hold my hand,
I wanna contact the living.
Not sure I understand,
This role I’ve been given.

I sit and talk to god
And he just laughs at my plans,
My head speaks a language, I don’t understand.

(chorus)
I just wanna feel real love,
Feel the home that I live in.
’cause I got too much life,
Running through my veins, going to waste.

I don’t wanna die,
But I ain’t keen on living either.
Before I fall in love,
I’m preparing to leave her.
I scare myself to death,
That’s why I keep on running.
Before I’ve arrived, I can see myself coming.

(chorus)
I just wanna feel real love,
Feel the home that I live in.
’cause I got too much life,
Running through my veins, going to waste.

And I need to feel, real love
And a life ever after.
I cannot get enough.

(instrumental)

(chorus)
I just wanna feel real love,
Feel the home that I live in,
I got too much love,
Running through my veins, going to waste.

I just wanna feel real love,
In a life ever after
There’s a hole in my soul,
You can see it in my face, it’s a real big place.

(instrumental)

Come and hold my hand,
I wanna contact the living,
Not sure I understand,
This role I’ve been given

Not sure I understand.
Not sure I understand.
Not sure I understand.
Not sure I understand.

Volpone

2011-04-09T21:05:00.003+05:30

A merchant, Corvino, seeks to make a fortune by whoring his wife out to a wealthy gentleman, Volpone. His wife, Ceilia, is unwilling. The following is his reaction --

'...Heart, I'll drag thee hence, home, by the hair;

Cry thee a strumpet through the streets; rip up
Thy mouth unto thine ears; and slit thy nose,
Like a raw rotchet!--Do not tempt me; come,
Yield, I am loth--Death! I will buy some slave
Whom I will kill, and bind thee to him, alive;
And at my window hang you forth: devising
Some monstrous crime, which I, in capital letters,
Will eat into thy flesh with aquafortis,
And burning corsives, on this stubborn breast.
Now, by the blood thou hast incensed, I'll do it!'

-- and they call this a comedy. A comedy. Fucking Englishmen. No wonder they conquered half the world.

2011-03-04T00:30:00.002+05:30

Every day I wake up and feel like I am sinking. Like the bed opens up and I drop into a pit, from which I can only see a small patch of a faded sky, where the sun turns slowly and drops with a hiss into the horizon. I don't feel like getting up. I just keep tossing and turning and delaying the alarm on my phone. I don't feel like eating. I don't feel like doing anything. My mind is slowly becoming blank, like a field filling up with snow. In the distance, there are fires burning. But they are so far away.

When people are talking it sometimes becomes an indistinct buzz. It doesn't matter what they are saying anyway. Nothing matters. Nobody matters. It's all just static.

Sometimes, I get this feeling I've never felt before. Like there's some kind of film over my eyes -- like a membrane. If I just pull it off I will return to the real world of normal people again. Or I could just close my eyes and ignore existence, pretend to be inanimate. Grow into the walls. Vanish.

Scipio

2011-02-18T11:45:00.002+05:30

Great thoughts have been thought by men for millennia, as I discovered today. These are fragments from The Dream of Scipio, Book VI of Cicero's De Re Publica. His dream echoes much of what I dreamed that one night, when the mysteries of the universe had opened up before my eyes in sleep.

'"Strive indeed," said he, "and be persuaded of this: it is not you that are mortal, but this body. For you are not that which your bodily form presents to view, but it is the mind of any man that is the man, not that figure which can be pointed out by the finger. Know then that you are a god; since he is a god who possesses force, feeling, memory and prescience, who directs, governs, and moves that body, of which he is the master, just as much as the supreme God of all moves this universe. And as the universe which is in some degree perishable is moved by God, who is himself eternal, so is the frail body moved by an immortal soul.

For that which moves all the time is eternal; but that which imparts motion to something else and itself receives its motion from some other source, must have a limit to its life because its motion can end. Therefore that only which moves of itself, because it never abandons itself so it never ceases to move. Moreover this is the source, this is the original cause of motion to all other things that move.

Now an original cause has no origin; for all things originate from it, but the original cause itself cannot arise from anything else. For it would not be an original cause if it had originated from something else. And as it has no origin so it never perishes. For if the original cause once perish it will neither be itself reproduced by another nor will it create another from itself; since all things must necessarily spring from the original cause. Hence we see that the original cause of motion resides in that, which is itself self-motive. Now that can neither be born nor die; otherwise the whole heaven and all nature would collapse and come to a standstill, nor would it find any power to give it the first impulse of motion.

20. Since therefore it is plain that what is self-motive is eternal, who can deny that this quality is an attribute of our souls? For, whereas everything is soulless that receives its impulse from without, that, on the contrary, which has a soul, moves by an inward motivation of its own. For this is the natural property and essence of the soul. And if this is the only thing in the world that is self-motive, assuredly it has had no beginning but is eternal.'

Change

2011-02-17T00:14:00.003+05:30

2007. I was reading my blog posts from that year, and I've realized, that although I am still the same person, and much about me remains unchanged, a lot has changed.

For one thing, I find myself always thinking twice before saying anything that anyone else can read or hear. Again, I often have my foot in my mouth, but in general I have learned to open up less in public spaces.

I have lost my inner poetry. There can be no doubt about this. I don't know why this has happened, and I don't know if I grieve for the loss, because in many ways, I am better now.

Would I say happier? I don't know. Perhaps not.

I am older. Back then, I was filled with a sense of energy and agency. Anything was possible. The future I thought about a lot, just as I do now, but growing up wasn't staring me in the face like it is now.

What am I doing writing this? I have 'important' things to do, don't I? Yet, what can be more important than remembering how to feel alive? Why do I feel so goddammed dead and dry these days? It is utterly, utterly frustrating. I just want to feel the rush of being alive again.

Perhaps I need change. Well, change is coming. One way or another.

Static

2011-02-12T16:55:00.001+05:30

http://www.arthist.umn.edu/classes/ah3401/propaganda/readings/berger.pdf

Slowly and imperceptibly, I am becoming a leftist. Yet, I find the fact that I live in collusion with the capitalistic world, impotent and unable to react, a tacit act of consent. Hypocrisy, even. What can I do? History, it seems, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. Can I reverse the tide of history and go back to some pre-lapsarian state? Unlikely. Will I, worse yet, like the hypocritical practitioners of post-colonialism in eletist English departments, be absorbed into a little niche in the system -- a safety valve in a pressure cooker, a dissenter's corner, a voice that is muted by being allowed to speak? Has the illusion of freedom in the modern world killed free thought?

Mutter, sputter, hum like static and fade out.

2011-01-10T01:45:00.001+05:30

'cos they know, and so do I
The high road is hard to find
A detour to your new life
Tell all of your friends goodbye'

Broken Bells - The High Road

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G96e3o4wFIg

Cold Comforts

2010-12-13T00:39:00.002+05:30

Everything is colourless

Today.

Drip drop,

And an old piece of newspaper

Clogging up a drain.

I am folded

Into little curls and eddies.

Lost.

Embryonic,

In a shell-world

Gazing at beams of ancient light

Barring my thoughtless way.

Many pasts, many futures,

Coexist,

The wizened cloakman said

Sagely

And then twice

Lo, he nodded his head.

Behind him all his many pasts

Lay folded, bleeding, dead.

The future to a blind man

To a prophet in the rain

To the floating paper boats

Clogging up the drain.

To each his proper dark

We go marching straight and blind

Never knowing where we're going

Or what we leave behind

Like a boat upon a lonely shore

And the flaneur standing by the door

I'm waiting, waiting, don't you see?
This was not, no, not ever, how it was meant to be.

The oracle at Delphi

Could not tell me where to find

The blind man who would show me

What is his and what is mine.

I don't know where I'm going

I don't know who I am.

I don't know if this time has passed

If I can make it stand.

Everything, the Mechanists said

Is probable, never there.

And all the atoms after all

Are mostly less than air.

I never touch you,

No.

The electrons on my fingers are

Repelled by those on yours.

Human beings are beasts,

We're really crawling on all fours.

Dreaming that our little dreams

Are something to admire

Watch us build up tall and strong

Our insubstantial fire

And then we whip

We chain, supress.

Conquer, brand and mark.

And all the world is plunged into

A howling savage dark.

Savage, savage, bitter, beast

Cold and old and frozen feast

Fucking, fighting, put away

The thought that yet another day

Is all that follows from today.

Stop.

Somewhere I have to stop.

Put all the crap aside.

Pick up all the plastic rules

And put the world beneath my stride.

Higher, higher, like a kite

I'll fly, I'll soar, I'll weave

Snap, the last umbillical,

To cold comforts shall I cleave.

2010-11-20T21:23:00.001+05:30

I went to the Delphic Oracle. (http://www.delphicoracle.net) This is what I was told -

You have asked: Should I pursue academics?
I respond: You are naked upon a path through the thicket. On one side are dense and twisting thorns. On the other is bog and cold mud, dead and rotting wood. Behold: a hungry creature approaches. It is searching for you. You must leave the path and wait for it to leave. You are advised to choose the thorns.'

Blah blah blah

2010-11-15T17:14:00.003+05:30

Exams, and no exam-post? Cholbe na. So here's one.

Weird sem this has been. I've spent most of it off campus, so I'm a little detached from things academic. Other than Subaltern Literatures, I've hardly attended any classes. Subaltern was fantastic. I learned a lot, and realized the importance of social responsibility. Also, now I have one more way to diss people who know more big words than me. I can attack them for being 'Ivory tower' :P The Subaltern syllabus is beyond massive of course, but I've read most of it. Thanks to reading journals - which is a brilliant idea. Other stuff has been, well, ok. The rock course has been interesting, but too scattered. The syllabus is way too huge, and right now, with a week left I'm swimming in songs I've never heard before. Biographical details/ context is another matter altogether. Plus, Dr. Lal is very stingy with marks. So I'm a little fucked.

I had a surgery. Kinda weird to mention it here suddenly, but well, I haven't so far. Tore my ACL, couldn't play in what's probably my last AFSU Tournament (gah!!!). I pretty much coached the English team to the FINALS, yes, believe it or not, and got nothing but polite appreciation and memories of standing outside the field to show for it. Never been this frustrated about anything before. This was our moment, and it should have also been my moment, but it wasn't.

Landed up in the hospital 2 months later, and went under general anaesthesia for the first time in my life. It wasn't all that bad at all. I mean the operation. I didn't feel a thing, duh, and when I woke up it was bearable. I wish they had doped me up a bit more for the first few days, but since they gave me only paracetamol, I had my own shit (loads of alprazolam hidden in my bag) to knock me out. Got jolly depressed for the 6 days I was in hospital, because other than Nandini and a few honourable mentions, nobody, I repeat, nobody I consider amongst my close friends showed up. Everyone is unbelievably self-centered. Let just say I now know who to call if I'm on a sinking ship.

Since then it's been compulsory imprisonment at home, followed by string of term papers, tests and assignments, and now exams in a week, which has meant voluntary imprisonment. Been doing the usual, procrastinating. Every night I'm struck by a sudden (though not unexpected) panic/anxiety attack which keeps me up till 6-7 am. I go to sleep early in the morning and wake up after 1 am. I can't figure out the procrastination/anxiety dichotomy. It makes no sense. I know I should be doing the right thing during the day, but all my promises turn to smoke and dissipate in the daytime.

I've stopped giving a fuck about competing this time. Aar bhalo laagche na. Porashona chere dite iccha kore. Nothing is fun any more.

And worst of all, with every passing day, the anxiety about what to do with myself in the future grows. I suppose I've settled on one thing, but this means growing the balls to be disciplined and to study without any exams or externally imposed deadlines pushing me. Cest la vie. Goodbye blue sky.

2010-11-03T21:00:00.003+05:30

I am beginning to think that the universe really came into existence at the moment consciousness was born. The moment presumably human consciousness first said "I am". Because, what matters if the physical universe, I speak of matter that occupies space, existed before the mind did? They would be like a painting to a blind man. Until eyes exist to see, darkness is all there is.

Also, I am once more utterly mindfucked by a Modernist. This time Joyce. The inherent hypertextuality of Ulysses led me into exploring the philosophical implications of mind boggling concepts such as transcendental numbers (pi, for example, whose *exact* value, just cannot, cannot be calculated, ever), the uncertainty principle (that there is a fundamental limit to knowability at a subatomic level. You cannot, just *cannot* know both the position and the momentum of an electron. The universe will not allow it. Also, that electrons exist only in a cloud of probability, ie, they don't really exist in any, stable, Newtonian sense until you turn and look at them, ie observe them, at which point they suddenly take up a fixed place), ego death during acid trips, the possibility of reincarnation, the unexplainably verifiable reports of those who have experienced out of body experiences in near death situations.

Modernism is messing with me. I start wondering things like, am I the only thing that exists? Is reality only a movie I'm watching, ie, is this all a dream? Aaaaargh!

Nandini said, this is the Matrix. Take the blue pill.

Shall I? Carpe diem, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, drinking, hedonism, escapism, self delusion, best not to think at all. Sex. ?

What choice do I have? But I reiterate. I hate the fucking Modernists because of what they do to me. I am one of those vulnerable idiots who sits up at night actually thinking about these things, where most people just say, oh what a bunch of tools, fuck them all, mug the notes.

2010-11-02T02:09:00.003+05:30

I really need some inspiration in my life right now. Sometime to help me become more than I am. Something to fire me up, lift me up and set me sailing.

And every day I despair at the shortening of my attention span. Do I have a disease? Will it ever be cured? Will I merely fritter and waste, fritter and waste, till I find it's all gone, and I've done none of the things I've dreamed of?

What have I dreamed of? I forget, or they stir. They are shaken as images in a mirror of water.

Drip drop. That the wheel may turn, and still, be forever still.

2010-10-25T03:05:00.001+05:30

Mellow yellow is a nice colour to sink into.

2010-10-25T02:43:00.001+05:30

Unease, my old friend. I've come to talk with you again. But will I? Or will I just swallow you up.

Everything is disappearing in a cloud of unease.