Pancakes

Some days start with pancakes.
And, long stretches of procrastination.

Music.
Feeling lonely.
Staring out of the window.
Some more pancakes.
Tea.

Today.

I'm finally home.

Four months. Three countries. Seven cities.

It is finally starting to feel like I am doing what I want to be doing. And, I am where I should be.

No, it has not been easy. And, no, life is not perfect.

But, yes, I am happy. And, grateful.

This year I make no exception-- I wear my brooding pajamas and keep that tub of ice cream very close to me; it's the year end and this is what I do. But, this year I feel more content in my brooding. It feels like finally I'm home.

Longing.

I once had a friend.

Sometimes when we spotted rain clouds, we would pack our mobile phones and some change for an ice cream or a burger from Nirulas in a plastic pouch, tuck it into our pockets and walk to the park across the road from our hostel. We would sit on the grass for long, waiting for the rain and talking. Most often it wouldn't rain. And we would walk back, secretly hoping that it would rain soon and we get to enjoy it on a quiet holiday like this, before the winters set in. Perhaps it drizzled on one of the days, or may be it did not - I cannot be sure now. What I remember vividly is our longing for the rain and how we would ceremoniously get ready for it.

Today looks like one of those days that we would have packed our mobile phones and some change in a plastic pouch, tucked it into our pockets and walked to the park across the road. To wait for the rain.

Oh, rats!

A cat chases a rat. A rat runs from a cat. There is intrigue, the chase is real (almost always), and all the chasing-and-running-and-chasing clearly has a consequence. I have never been much of a believer of opposites-theory. Or, rather, not been a believer of much of anything. But, I guess I am beginning to see reason in the cat-rat chase. One has to like to chase, and the other has to like to be chased. Put two cats, or two rats together, and it couldn't work. Not even if one of the rats pretended to be a cat - you should know that wouldn't last too long!

Folie à deux.

Too weird if I said it's a beautiful thought? Romantic, even?

Folie à deux.

Dear you.

Dear you,

Thank you for believing that you ought to make your rules, choose your experiences, define your comfort zones, and pick your indulgences wisely, including company. For cherishing the similarities in these choices in another's company and for helping yourself to new thoughts, attitudes, and creating new experiences together. Believing that in true companionship, you trust another, and your choice in another, to open yourself up to newness and to growth. Knowing that trust, newness and growth ought to be mutual. That there are things you do together - you share, you learn some and you unlearn some; and there are others you must do on your own - on your own terms. And, for not being afraid to make that choice. And, thank you, for this life of  no regrets that started on the right side of that choice!

Much love,
me.

Soundboard.

I haven't heard from you for a while now.

I grew anxious when I first noticed the change.
Was something wrong? With me? With you? Between us? I couldn't be sure. But, something must be wrong. We did not talk about such things. We did not talk about feelings. Well, at least not the ones that directly concerned either, or both, of us.

Anxiety turned to speculation.
Was something changing? With me? With you? Between us? I couldn't be sure. But, something must be changing. We did not talk about such things. We did not talk about changes. Well, at least not the ones that directly concerned either, or both, of us.

Speculation turned to acceptance.
Was this a new beginning? With me? With you? Between us? I couldn't be sure. But, this must be a new beginning. We did not talk about such things. We did not talk about beginnings. Well, at least not the ones that directly concerned either, or both, of us.

I haven't talked to you for a while now. Why haven't I? 

Closure.

'Is there closure?', he asked.
No. 
I wish I'd stopped there. The more I tried to think, or talk, the more inconclusive it all started to seem. That's why I knew it had to remain there. In the past. The questions. The what-ifs. The howevers. It had to stay there. At the line that I'd drawn when I decided to accept, and to stop thinking. The line that I'd drawn when I decided to stop caring.
I wavered at the question. I would be lying if I said otherwise. 
But then, may be it's true.
"There is no real ending. It's just the place where you stop the story."
And, I believe, knowing when to stop and trusting that choice is your best shot at closure.

Negotiating jam and tracing silver linings.

It can be quite unnerving when life starts to feel like a series of yesterdays.When you notice that nothing around you changes - everything is the same as yesterday. And, when you've lived in it long enough to know that it will be the same tomorrow. You get confused. Or, you laugh it off, and start to have some fun with the idea of never having to deal with consequences. Everything that you did yesterday has ceased to be, and you get to do it all over again - exactly the same as yesterday. Or, not.

It can be frustrating, the protracted wait for continuity, and/or change. Life isn't easy, even yesterday! So may be nothing changes. But there's always something you keep wishing you'd have done yesterday. Meeting a deadline. Or, a friend. Guitar lessons. Finishing a book. Scuba diving. Painting your toe nails. One way trip around the world. So well, here it is - yesterday!

The hand twin.

She called out to me excitedly, 'Can you believe this!'

There, under the light from the street lamp, I saw it. The identical palms. And, her hand twin. Oblivious to the traffic a few feet ahead, or the crowds flocking the pavilions behind them, they sat on the sidewalk for a long time after - talking and smiling.

It was also the day I laid my eyes on a beautiful Phanek, and thought I will own one someday.

Sometimes on a solemn day as this, I imagine the beautiful countryside that you have so often described to me, with the same flaky and ridiculously contagious excitement that I saw in your eyes when you introduced me to your hand twin. I imagine walking down the streets lined with shops selling the most beautiful Phaneks, and running into you and your hand twin.

'I am not a concept.'

The movie was mediocre. The underlying concept- of an artist's view of his world and his muse in 'A Frozen Second', both the idea of freezing time at your will and unravelling a person's being in that frozen second - was intriguing. Was it a violation of their privacy?, the protagonist wondered, and I did too. Unlike when you sit down for a portrait, your physical and emotional being at that moment being a deliberated attempt at what you choose to freeze in time, the frozen second catches you in an unguarded and a possibly private moment.

The relationship between an artist and the muse has always fascinated me. For the artist to seek meaning and beauty in something with its own temperament, one that may be complimenting or contrasting to the artist's own, yet continually inspiring and challenging; and for the muse to let another perceive the reflections of one's unguarded thoughts and vulnerabilities, and allow it form - I believe there is immense trust (and often a shared passion) in such a synergy. How does one find it, or grow it, I have wondered many times.

I reckon it is in many ways similar to love. Unless you are willing to give a part of you, you do not find the other part.

"I am not a concept. Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive. But I'm just a fucked-up girl who's lookin' for my own peace of mind; don't assign me yours." 
- Clementine, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

That is oftentimes my state of mind. And, I think I am my own concept.

But every once in a while, may be you do want someone to see you. Whether you choose to create the painting or be the painting, you want to put a part of yourself out in the world.

"I wanted to be the muse, I wanted to be the wife of the artist, but I was really trying to avoid the final issue- that I had to do the job myself.” 
- Anaïs Nin

A post-it roundup

A year that wasn't mine, The Weepies, and turning things around!

Learning to ask, why.

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

A few hours at a book store generally leaves me exhausted. On most occasions I walk in with no agenda, wander the aisles, read the titles, rearrange a few books, make random draws, flip through pages, read some, dust a few others, pretend to have found writing that interests me, sit down, read some more, wander the aisles, and make random draws. The final pick may seem like a deliberate result of this long and seemingly methodical process, but it almost always is not. Sometimes I'd find the titles that have been on my to-read list forever - ones that made it to the list after hours spent reading reviews and excerpts. And, yet, I'd leave them behind and pick something that I may as well have liked for the author's quirky intro, the book cover or the title font!

When I picked Ma, He Sold Me For A Few Cigarettes, it was intuitive. I had heard of neither the book nor the author before. I probably picked it from the shelf for it's name. That it was stacked among memoirs was an incentive - and the title had tickled my curiosity. I hadn't seen the cover until I'd drawn it out. When I started reading, I liked the indeginous voice and colloquial style of writing. I knew it could turn out to be intense and may be even depressing. When I made the pick, I did not evaluate the rationale behind it, I went with my gut. This isn't the first time I have been drawn to narratives of individual struggles or social atrocities, but this is the first time that I've asked myself, why.

What makes people do wrong - do they not see what the society sees?; where do people find the strength to fight and never give up even when there are more reasons to give up than not - do they not tire of this constant struggle?; are people ever bad, or their circumstances poorly dealt with, resulting in poorly thought actions? - in life these are questions one struggles to find absolute answers for. Often there are no back stories offered, and the characters are sketchy. We construct more hypotheses and jump to 'dealing with the situation' than understanding the motivations. I find it amusing how a writer carefully constructs the premise- for the plot and its characters- and makes it convincing for the reader. Oftentimes in life we are happy to leave things in the obscure.

Things that mostly seem uncomfortable and grim, it takes enormous strength and insight to even attempt to understand or describe it, let alone live through. And, in my heart, anyone who has ever tried to do either has earned my respect. And few among them, a place on my book shelf.

On dancing, space and running out of coffee.

I love to dance.

Anything from the poised tapping of my feet or strutting while in fact enjoying an astral tango, or grooving to zippy bollywood music on the tv and occasionally managing to perfect that signature step, to letting my hair down on the dance floor and dancing till I drop - some such occasions ending in happy hugs from random-strangers-turned-best-grooving-partners! A dance floor has been an exception to my ostensible love for open spaces and the 'I-don't-wear-my-heart-on-my-sleeve' arrogance - the claustrophobic dance floors transform into my eden of dreams and possibilities. The constant act of embracing, interacting and reinventing, between the body and the space -it amuses me how, the beauty and meaning of the dance is not complete without the body in relation to the space around.

I ran out of coffee. I wore off my words. And then, I found me dancing.

12 before 13

Fighting year end blues (and yellows), drowning in the misery of untouched bucket lists, marathon reading and being an ostrich. Every December has been true to it's promise to me in the past couple of years, no matter how differently the rest of the year played out. So I decided to play it up a bit this time, with to-dos for here and now - 12 things to do before '13. (The thought struck me when I was idling online, pipe dreaming and reading Stephanie's Europe for Three Weeks, and stumbled upon her 25 before 25.)

We make (and remake) lists all the time - and say, someday! A fortnight to 2013, and 12 things to do - that seems more determinate and doable. Until now I have four things on the list - Four. Talk about checking-off of a list that seems harder to make! Am off to finish the list and get going. (Ummm. May be that should be #1 on the list, taking the listed-total up to five.)

The near extinct writer’s tool.

Not thoughts. Though it's very close in line to the frontrunner today, the pen.

I suffer the creative’s privileged disease of sulkiness. Humbly, I call myself neither a designer, nor an artist; neither a thinker, nor a writer. I indulge in little of all whenever the alternative moods set in. And these days, on the rare occasions that I conquer my laziness.

Yesterday, adorning my writer’s garb, I sat down with the smartest invention by mankind after the wheel and most constructively destructive by far after the guns and the bombs - Man’s smartest machine, and the most powerful today with every man with an average IQ being its slave - the computer.

I had been reminiscing about my childhood. A certain friend in particular. And the lovely times we shared. Then came the unstoppable urge to string these fragmented thoughts with words. I started typing. Leaping through the waves of my emotions I got farther with words than I had expected to go when I started. Trouble began when the power failed. I did save a copy of the draft before the battery gave out. The cause for the frustration was the inability to proceed with my writing towards its completion. Exhaustion, forgotten in the midst of an enthusiastic stunt with words, set in; heightened by the afternoon heat and the sumptuous meal savoured earlier. A quick nap put this restlessness to temporary rest. I had a strange dream. Nightmare, while I was still in it. My computer crashed. With it, my intellect. And communication. I woke up to a comic reality. Honest thoughts do not need a brush of fancy words generated by the thesaurus. To write all I need is a pen and paper. And my thoughts. Not MS Word. Not a web dictionary.

I concluded the ‘Autobiography of a Pen’ eleven years back, with its broken nib earning it a place in the corner dustbin. It wasn’t penned as an obituary to this marvelous writing tool. In today’s scenario, however, it’s metaphoric to this impending death.

(A page from 2009. Was compelled to pack it in with the rest of the stuff here!)

Melancholic.

The reading had left me so about a decade back; the movie did much the same. To a degree where when my four-year-old nephew declared, 'I feel sad, for the boy', instead of trying to convince the preschooler of 'the happy ending', I told him it was alright. It was alright to feel sad.

And then I slipped back into my own thoughts, about closure. And, about communication. Wondering about words that should have been said, but never were. How it is sometimes the hardest to articulate the most basic emotions. To say, I wish you well. Or, good bye. So you shrug it off, or, simply disappear.

'What a terrible thing it is to botch the farewell. I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things meaningful shape. It is important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse. That bungled good bye hurts me to this day.' (Life of Pi)

'Just as far in as you'll ever be out.'

A rhapsodic way of saying stuck in the middle; that was my first impression when I first heard the line. And the logical thing to do is to keep moving. Grow the distance from one end, in order to get closer to the other.

Or, could it be?

What if you didn't start from one end, but somewhere in the middle? And, what if you didn't know how you got there, or, which end you were making your journey towards? What if you haven't been travelling in any one direction all this while, but back-&-forth and forth-&-back - vacillating - undecided on which end out you want to choose? What if this isn't about that one precise preordained moment of being in the middle, after all, but of all of the journey? And, what if, just when you pause to consider this, the tunnel is altering and you will always be just as far in as you'll ever be out.

I bet you know this one already!

'Today is the first day of the rest of my life'. It's a beautiful thought, yet stifling 'cause of the weight of 'the rest of my life'. Carpe diem, yes! Make it good; make it count. But, let me not overshadow the promise of today with the responsibility of it being good enough for tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after the day after. I want to tell myself instead, twenty-four hours should never be good enough to be played on loop. For the rest of your life. Improvise. Don't settle. And, take the chance to be you, a renewed you, everyday - for the rest of your life.

'Thinking, tangling shadows in the deep solitude', writes Neruda.

Some moments, if you put them away long enough like pressed leaves, turn into an obscure musing from the past. Veins remain, as a pretty painting to the soul, without the fragrance or the wind that it once soaked into its being. And the wind, the winding path, the tree, the park bench - you start to wonder if they may only have been a figment of your imagination after all.