Monday, September 27, 2010

just


another one :)

Thursday, September 23, 2010

getting ready


make up is a mood lifter i think. the days i feel particularly shitty i apply make up and somehow it feels a lot better. then i take a few pictures because i'm rather vain. so here's one of them. and oh i stopped writing again.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

A lovely beginning

So I finally started writing my story and honestly it feels good, not so scary anymore. I convinced myself that I never have to show it to anyone if I don't want to and suddenly the pressure lifted and two lovely lines flowed through. I'm happy and I feel light because I know it's just a matter of making a beginning and the rest will fall in place.

There is such a world of difference between writing a blog and attempting to pen a story. The former is spontaneous and the latter so deliberate. Both have their own 'rasa' and I love both. So a pat on my back for finally makinmg an attempt.

Thursday, September 09, 2010

Sallu Bhai

Just saw Dabangg and I must say Sallu can actually be quite funny at times. I expected a truly terrible film but it surprised me by being just about OK. All is quiet around me because when I switch off the TV from the main switch no one can be bothered to switch it on again. Silence is nice. Everyone should have at least some during the day.
I'm sad to report that I am yet to write the second page of my story. I longingly look at the first page every now and then... that's it I just look.
Ninna is asleep. Dogs sleep a lot I must say. She is refusing to eat anything today. She does that once in a while and then I have to feed her by hand literally. I know I spoil her but then she spoils me rotten with all the love and general entertainment that goes along with having a French Bulldog. I luuuurve her.

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

The Anshuman



The Anshuman is a peculiar man. He has long conversations with himself about future conversations he might have with people I about whom I have no clue. He reads at least three books at a time but my guess is what he really enjoys are the Amar Chitra Kathas that I buy for him. He is extremely intelligent which makes it extremely difficult to manipulate him. It works for him but sometimes doesn't work for me. It certainly works for his clients and thank God for that.
He loves animals and knows the names and general habits of many birds. Many a time he points out a bird and tells me it's name and if it's boy or a girl and somehow I find that very romantic. I have been to two tarot readers and a psychic who have told me that we are soulmates. Everytime I come home and tell Anshuman what they said he replies-'I could have told you that.' But you see it's nice when someone else tells you.
Anshuman loves his cricket. It's a passion. Not a day goes by when he doesn't declare to himself-' Aaaand Anshuman hit six sixes!' and then goes on to hit a six in the air with a flourish. It never fails to make me smile. Sometimes I think that may be he should have been a cricketer, at other times may be a wildlife photographer or even a travel writer.
I love his stories and he tells them so well in the printed as well as the spoken word.
Some time ago I used to have trouble sleeping at night and most nights he would spin a new yarn for me. The stories were always funny and I relaxed and fell asleep.
He is generous to a fault and loves to feed his friends some excellent biryani and other animals. His energy is infectious and it never fails to lift me out of my darkest moods. No matter how much I resist he has the tenacity to make sure I get over my silly fears and learn stuff like driving and swimming. I'm always thankful for that.
He always gives me a pretty stone everytime we go to the beach and says-' with this I thee wed' I like his sense of romance. He's innovative and surprising and wonderful and do I have to say it? I love him.

The story

I wrote one page a few years back. I loved it. It was supposed to be a long project. A long story and I never got beyond the first page. I have imagined the second page thousands of times. There are various scenarios in my mind and none of them sound as good as the first page.
I am not a big fan of my own writing. It's ok. It's not bad but it's not great either but I love this one page. I believe it is really good and everytime I read it I get excited and I am itching to write the next one and yet something stops me. Some invisible force tells me I'll never do justice to it. I get a little scared and then I get petrified and then I freeze and that one page sits still in a folder within a folder so that I would not come across it easily.
This time I have put it on the desktop so that may be I will someday have the courage to proceed further than that one page that will mock me everyday when I open my laptop.
Why do I not write? what is this invisible force? Where is my self confidence? Do I need a self help book? Jeeez!

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Sunday night and water

It's not too late. Ninna is asleep by my side and I rest on two pillows. The laptop rests on Anshuman's special fat pillow. Knopfler sings in a lazy honey soaked voice. Some nights are perfection itself. So peaceful the glow of the nightlamp soothes the tired eyes and spreads a glow all around. It's Sunday night and everything seems to be at peace. It is in my world.
Recently I got over my fear of water. I can almost swim now. It took a lot of courage to get from not being able to stand in chest deep water to now being able to swim without any aid for at least half the length of the pool. Anyway if I hadn't learnt I would have missed out the feeling of being submerged in water. I love just lying free and watching my limbs move with such grace like they never do on land. I feel like I belong in the water and somehow I feel it heals me. I feel calm and I could float away forever.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Romancing Knopfler

I have to admit I am in love with him. My favourite album is On Every Street and my favourite song is On Every Street. For a long time I didn't pay attention to the words and believed that it was a love song but strangely it's not at all. It's probably a cop looking for an absconding perpetrator. Wierd huh! But I swear when I hear the words-' And it's your face I'm looking for on every street' I'm convinced the cop is a man in love with the woman thief and is looking for her as much out of love as duty.
Ninna just farted. She has an upset stomach so it was particularly deadly.
Actually it's very difficult to say which song of Knpfler I love the most. Brothers in arms used to make me well up and I heard it over and over and over again till every note and intonation and the sensuality of Knopfler's voice was etched in my memory. I want to see him in concert. I pray that he has along life and his music lives on even longer!

Friday, August 27, 2010

been a long time

I've been so caught up with watching television and using the ipod to check my mail that just haven't got around to blogging for the longest time. But the fact is that I want to write and very badly so I make a solemn promise that I will write regularly. In fact will try to write a few lines at least everyday.
Today I'm writing on my spanking new Dell laptop that my father gifted me. He is an extremely generous man and his daughters take advantage of that fact whenever possible and honestly he doesn't even mind.
I haven't written in so long that my typing speed is considerably low and my fingertips are tingling and my arms hurt.Really I promise to write everyday. I have to! My fingers are buzzing honest!
So what have I been doing all this time? Everytime I ask myself that question it leaves me very confused. I spend time as though life is going to last forever. Staring out of the window and thinking about alternative realities satisfies me greatly. The one thing I have started doing is learning French. My teacher is an old Frenchwoman who wears a tie for a belt and matching shoes.She has her own sense of style and she is a very good teacher although I am far from an ideal student as I never get around to memorising the various verbs. I make excellent tables and organise information beautifully but when it comws to remembering it the light bulb goes off. How did I ever pass out of school I have no idea.
So to the one and a half people who read my blog. I'm back baby!

Saturday, May 22, 2010

one of those days

sometimes i get very tired and i havent been doing anything at all. And sometimes I feel as though i want to say something and i have no idea what the words are. I try to remain reasonable and i try to do the rational thing but that makes me even more tired. The only thing that gives me solace is that I will get into bed and be able to concentrate on how my feet get from being lukewarm to hot till i have to stick them out of the comforter.
This is one of those moments that i dont want anyone to read and at the same time i want someone to say- i feel the same way sometimes.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Getting comfortable

There's always a process,a ritual if you will that is involved in getting co
fortable in your space. For example you get up in the morning and you always have the hangover of a dream. I do. And every once on a while you just cannot remember what your subconscience was trying to tell you last night. This leaves an emptiness in the mind space and hovers around you in the bathroom mirror. You open the door to pick up the paper and on that particar day the Thursday entertainment magazine is suspiciously missing. You realize the paper insists you are one day ahead of the scheduled day. It's only Wednesday and the weekend is much further than you thought. You make tea. The milk boils over. You try to clean the stove. The paper towels catch fire. You manage to douse it out with a dish towel before the smoke alarm goes off. You take your too strong tea and sit down. You have to get up. The paper is still on the kitchen counter and the very small act of getting up makes you so very tired.
The point is that there are days when you will spill the coffee on your favourite shirt or on your boss's favourite shirt. They will discontinue your favourite show on tv. You will fail your driving test and you won't get that call you've been waiting for for two months. The whole world will seem to go to shit.
But at the end of the day it's just a day and it will go away.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Life is a journey

(this was a title given to me to write a page about life in school. Here goes)

It sounds lofty and tedious but really it’s like a dream that goes by before you have the time to wake up and lock it into memory. I think most of us were about seven years old when we joined the school at the edge of Delhi and UP. The principal an ex-military man never tired of telling us-“ Jesus was born in a barn and our school was born in a godown.” Those were the days when we would jump out of the school bus and run to our favourite swing with our favourite friend. Sometimes the bus was late and someone else had your precious swing but the disappointment didn’t last for more than a few seconds because you still had your favourite friend by your side.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of you have that elusive childhood friend that you just can’t find now despite google, facebook , linkedin and a plethora of networking sites on the world wide web. Once in a while you catch yourself thinking about those childhood games like iggo duggo, pitthu phod and ice pice(eyes spy) and you wonder if your friend is married with children. Do you remember a special school bag that you carried? I had a small green attaché that I used to carry during exams only because it wouldn’t hold my regular load of books. The most wonderful thing about exams was the fact that there were no classes afterwards and the moment an exam got over there was a riot that was hard to contain.
Then there were break time. Food and water especially in summer were of great importance. A lot of us finished our food in the 10 min short break and then raided other people’s lunches shamelessly. We drank cool water in the heat causing the owner of a certain brown bottle to scream,”Who drank my water?” The thing is some people would actually not share their cool water and caused some others to make them pay for it. Then there was arm wrestling very often amongst the boys ofcourse while the girls played a game called elastic. Remember that game anyone?
And we all grew together and so did the school. All of us fell in love at some time or the other with someone. I remember a particular someone sitting in class on the 3rd floor looking lovingly at his special someone on the 1st floor with his back to the teacher. I think the teacher said something witty and sarcastic that I just can’t remember. It was all well if you were in love with your own classmate but if you liked your senior you had to keep going around the hexagon in circles till you got a glimpse of the loved one or even better if he/she said two words to you in which case you smiled like an idiot the whole day for a very good reason. Our school was really quite hard on love. It was a bad thing and our hormones were to be kept in check at all times. We could play sports, do dramatics, study, sing, run, write articles even poems but God forbid that we should fall in love. Parents were called and punishments were of a wide variety.
Well I have come to the end of the quota given to me to write this. I would have liked to include names but I don’t have space. The point is when I look back I realize that we were all unique and together we made a fantastic and extremely interesting lot. Some of us excelled at sports, some at studies, some were wonderful actors and some were just wonderful people. Nostalgia should be indulged in small doses so let me say that I am so fortunate to be in touch with all of you and I wish your children would be in schools where they study, play, act, run, kick, laugh, find friends and fall in love, so when you hear the teacher complain remember there’s a small scared kid standing outside. He’s just like you.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

The iPod is an an Amazing thing !

I love the touchscreen technology and I love the fact that they keep finishing
my words for me. I am sure that they can't be right all the time but amazingly it
has not been wrong even once. I love it.
I saw three idiots today. It's pretty good entertainment. aamir khan is as good as ever. I almost always like his films. And now I am tired of typing with one finger. so good night and good luck.love clooney.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Ninna and Pintu

Saturday, January 02, 2010

the unbearable loss of anger

there was a time when i was about 12 or 13 when i would lose my temper terribly frequently. Those days are gone. Now I lose my temper very very rarely. My temper has not disappeared. It has taken the form of mild irritation wih the world in general. I'm wary of people and their biases, opinions and expectations.
May be I don't understand them very well.

People have an image of how other people should be and this has nothing to do with the way they themselves are in their own life. This leads to free advice and this causes a burning anger within me and I want to slap, scream and kick all at the same time.I flew into a rage yesterday over something like this after the longest time. I yelled and screamed at someone and if my darling husband hadn't come to my side and flown into a rage himself at this person, I might have slapped and kicked. In any case my darling husband also screamed and was ready to punch an kick himself so I calmed down and promptly ended up confused because I had forgotten how angry I could become given the 'right' stimulus.

I was quite surprised to see anshuman this angry. He almost never loses his temper. In any case I wish people would leave me well alone. I don't know if I was always a loner or circumstances turned me into one, the fact is that I am one. I like being a loner. I like eating alone, reading alone, having tea by myself, listening to the radio alone, riding the train alone, just being, just being alone. I am comfortable. Why do other people have to walk into my space and then get uncomfortable and then cause me to be uncomfortable.

Somewhere deep within my being I'm angry as hell. Honestly I prefer my dog to most people.

Friday, January 01, 2010

and so it begins

went for a party last night..woke up in the afternoon today..the day is quiet almost serene...there's no one outside...anshuman sleeps...ninna sleeps...I'm having tea and looking out of my window at the trees swaying ever so gently...the sun is hiding behind the clouds...just spotted two little children a girl and a boy walking hand in hand...there's no one playing basketball in the court...i feel as though I'm the only one awake this afternoon...a seaplane flies overhead...birds swim across my window...another year has gone by...another one begins...and so it begins