quote

Came across this brilliant sentence today:

"Contact is the appreciation of differences."

-Frederick 'Fritz' Peris

language

Having read this over and over again on TUIB's blog post, I thought I should just post it here:

"There's something fishy about describing people's feelings. You try hard to be accurate, but as soon as you start to define such and such a feeling, language lets you down. When we really speak the truth, words are insufficient. But they're important to us, nonetheless, because they are what connects us to thoughts other than those belonging to us."- Iris Murdoch

hello

I'd like to meet you, who do you see?
Introduce yourself to whichever of me is nearby.

                        

-CSNY

the tap

I think in pictures nowadays. After I started doing the comic strip (here), I feel as though I've found my tongue in another language - I'm on my own trip. For those of you who want to check out what I've been up to, you may head over to the fb page while the website is being constructed. 

:)

oh the relief

There's nothing like a face-to-face apology.

1996 Everest expedition: In memory

Looking up something online, I was lead by a chain of links to the Wikipedia article on the 1996 Everest Disaster, which I was introduced to in Anatoli Boukreev's The Climb about three years ago. This book was written as a response to Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air, which attributed a large part of the blame to Boukreev. The Climb shook me up and I never did feel like reading Jon K's account of the expedition, in spite of seeing it lying around in the library all the time. But today, after three years, suddenly my curiosity was revived and just as I was making a mental note to read all the books available on the expedition, I saw the date of the disaster:  11 May, 1996.

If this is just a random coincidence, it is extremely eerie.

May the eight rest in peace.

levelling

a routine is the most irritatingly sane thing in the world. almost as irritatingly sane as the invention of time itself. there is a way out, but the way out would make one insane. it seems to me that most of us are caught in a yossarian-like situation, especially those of us who've been working for a while now, and are discovering that settling down actually marks the beginning of The Unsettling.

but even duronto has two stops to revive itself. for me, on a daily basis, the same old is broken by little things - currently, it's watching the progress of a growing plant in office. some things, albeit routine, i look forward to, for the relief they bring, the relief of constancy and the relief of paintings.

and then again, travel provides the breaks. the western ghats make me happy. and meeting new people exhilarates when connections are formed. conversations with people i barely know suddenly become heart-warming, lighting-smile-in-fond-remembrance-just-before-sleep somethings i hold on to for a long time.

the want for change starts fading away, and i find myself embracing straight lines, even if temporarily. the search for the spontaneous and the insane transforms into a period of easy acceptance of the more subtle and sane, which lasts longer each time.

once

There was hardly any movement - just the occasional stray breeze that lightly touched some strands of dry grass. Only open sky and open fields were. In between the two we sat, insignificant in the vast state of non-motion. The silence and the stillness painted our memories in careful detail; hours and days dismissed time.

But in the real world everything moves. Time moves, and so do we, succumbing to the movement, like clockworks in this mindless, inescapable routine.  And not just once have I had this sneaking feeling that we might never have time again to create memories as beautifully clear, crisp and vivid as those. Today's memories are coated in a layer or two of blur.

Ask me about yesterday, and I could describe to you the colour of the grass in different months, what it smelled like when it was damp, and the sound of the whirring dragonflies. I could tell you about the feel of the mud in between my toes...but then that you must feel yourself. 

I wish I could take you there.

But I don't know if I could stop a second time.

grumble

I've realised that much as I love Hyderabad for the comforting familiarity of home it offers to me, it is a musically (and, in most cases, culturally) dormant city. Having spent over a year here now, I am surprised that there is hardly anything happening on the arts and culture scene, compared to Bangalore and Chennai. If you're not a party/clubbing/movie person and are a funk/rock/jazz lover, Hyderabad has little to offer.

Sometimes I wonder if it's a grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side case.

But I do sorely, sorely miss the music.

into the great wide open

Having spent four years anchored under the canopy of friends, freedom and the steady backdrop of home, I think all of us were a little unsure of our place in the world post-college. It wasn't so much as finding jobs or courses as it was about feeling uprooted and walking around trying to fix ourselves in new soil. It fascinates me that what seemed like such a large and complex world was hardly a pixel compared to what we see stepping out, and it makes me sad to think that all of us will never be in the same place at the same time and under the same circumstances again.

I remember vividly conversations that I now know all ten thousand of us had at some point - conversations about love and relationships, about drawing lines and erasing some, about searching, finding and losing. I remember conversations about being and meaning, about purpose and ambition, about giving and owing, and about defining and belonging - when belonging was the last thing we had to worry about.

happy new year, everybody!

the answer

Its all so simple really. Once u stop thinking of life as something irrational that needs rationalizing. Everything makes sense. But doesn't make sense if you try to figure it out. But why would you want to figure it out if it already made sense. No?

Catch-22.

the birthday post - 23

I thought this birthday I wouldn't write one and nobody would miss it but then people asked me where the traditional mail is and orey excited I became!
So here it is.

The past year I have seen more of the computer screen than I have in the previous ones.
The past year has seen so much more love - it just keeps growing exponentially.
Aforementioned year has also seen me obtain driving license! Woohoo!
I still am a magnet for mallus.

I have made new new friends.
Old ones seem to renew themselves everyday.
I've gotten over old fears.
New ones have taken their place.

I've travelled lots! Orey.
Orey is the word of the year - it has taken over the whatay kingdom.

The Western Ghats. Period.
I used to be good at sketching.
Now I only draw stick figures.
I wish I had the same ability to simplify in thought.

IwantogotoAfrica Icantwait.
I love skirts.
I love kurtas.
I love shirts.
I love stoles.

Buy of the year: pink pajamas. Feel like a thirteen year old.
Some teenager called me 'didi' recently and I suddenly felt very old.

Piano has arrived in the life and I am inexplicably happy about that.
The trick is to find the constant to find permanent comfort.
Not look at something bound to change and then whine (though you may whiskey..).

People care.
But our lives are governed by immediate circumstances.
So what about sunrise and what about rain?
The man will never die.

I dislike people who eavesdrop.
It's easy to apologise.
You don't notice the love that's in front of you because you're too busy looking over your shoulder.

Editing is making me learn english and forget some.
I can't chop an onion without chopping a finger.

I love exploring cities.
Junk-jewellery-window-shopping is soul-satisfying.
Too many hyphens, too many hyphens.

I sometimes don't listen to songs that I know will make me feel.
But only there does lie manna.

I love birds' feet - yellow of mynas and pink of pigeons.
I love donkeys' eyes.
I'm terrified of anything below ground - caves, tunnels, even metros sometimes.

I love bookshops in airports.

I love in-flight magazines.

I get incredibly awkward when people ask me to read aloud my poems.
They're meant to be read, not listened to!
Shy comes.

Every birthday, I am awed, thrilled and touched by the number of people who call.
This post gets shorter by the year.
I feel younger.

Orey.

commons

You only had to jump across an arm's length to get into the terrace of the neighbouring house. But nobody ever tried. Windows faced windows in dangerous proximity, eliminating the slightest chance for privacy. One could hear low murmurs behind drawn curtains, and the mixed smells of everyday cooking drifted about on its morning rounds.

Inside the building, the staircase was narrow and almost always dark, the steps steep. The yellow bulb had long gone and nobody had bothered to replace it. Brownie, tommy, rocky, doggie - they all had different names for him- used to lay his heavy brown body across the third and fourth steps, curl up and sleep contentedly, oblivious to the many visitors who always almost stepped on him. He never budged.

Everyone came out to their terraces in the evening. Kids played cricket, stopping only after invoking the wrath of the neighbourhood aunties who threatened not to return the ball from their compounds the next time. Men smoked intermittently, and so did two black-eyed young girls; in the corner lay a pile of absently strewn stubs and a couple of old bottles. The starlit night sky watched over couples, throwing their long black shadows into a rough denial of embarrassment.

Afternoons were silent with clothes drying mutely on the washing line, save the lone caw-caw of the hungry crow.

samick

She was old. A little out of tune due to age, but her tone was rich from years of experience. The bass keys were deliciously low, heavy and guttural and the higher ones were full and shrill, but not unpleasantly so. They gave me the feeling that there might be two or three other notes lurking beneath the key I just pressed. The sustain was terrible and she was loud, very loud. Tones merged into semitones, semitones into tones. There was something curious about her- she seemed to be ignorant of absolute pitch, yet each note was absolute in itself. I lost my mind and fell in love.

on memories

I've always wondered where the phrase to know something like the back of your hand came from. I don't know the back of my hand one bit and I've never really taken out the time to examine it. If I close my eyes I would just have a vague idea of what my hands look like. I have a clearer picture of the hands that I've held though, possibly because there is so much more attached to feel than to appearance, and you can relate the former to the latter.

You see your hands everyday but don't know how many wrinkles are there on your knuckles. You don't know how many veins show on each hand and if they're the same number on both. But they're around, you know, you can examine them in detail anytime you want. I'd like memories to be that way - not really getting in the way, but just being around, so that you can pull them out and go over the details anytime you please.

There is no recollection that is effortless. Watch how your eyebrows come close together in intense concentration when you try to remember the details of an bygone moment which you clutched close to your heart and vowed never to forget. The one you carried around and thought of almost everyday, and then once in two days, and then once in a while, spilling a bit of the detail each time, till it became chiselled and sharpened to a few select features, nudging the others into the background, till it became a memory of a memory. You frown to yourself and squint at the picture, wondering which paint tube to use to reproduce this shade which you can see oh-so-clearly in your mind's eye but cant find in all the pantones.

And then you reconstruct the original moment by putting all these bits and pieces of memories together carefully, telling yourself that this was how it was, this was what it felt like, because - without even knowing it - you've already forgotten.

vellore calling

I've found that I'd rather revisit a place that I've been a part of than visit a new place. There's no place in the world I want to go to more than I want to go back to vellore. I can feel it so strongly. Sometimes you just know. (Whales in the wild, wait for some more time.)

Firstly, Kasam beckons. I remember the kids - loud, shy, curious - their smiles, their endless stream of questions. It's a calling. There's a magic in their spirit which is contagious. There's a certainty in my wanting which I haven't felt often. Out of the gazillion feelings that make up life - Kasam roused a feeling that I can cannot replay in my head. It was only when I went there with a friend of mine who agreed to teach photosynthesis to a class of ten-year olds that I realised, as I stood watching, how much I loved the place. And the children. And their blissful, naughty-happy faces. I recall clearly the cheeky boy in class who got tired of me talking about the states of India and tried to convince me that he's from Africa instead. It makes me smile every time. I know I have to go back to Kasam and fulfil the promise.

I discovered in Vellore my love for long walks. Morning walks, afternoon sun-scorching walks, evening walks, walks in the dark, rainy walks. Grassy walks, highway walks, happy walks, angry walks, teary walks, lonely walks. Walks to Brahmapuram, walks on Gandhi Road, walks to the station, walks to nowhere in particular.

I think of the cows sometimes - the one with the big red horns that I'd fondly called Red Bull, the small frail one under the dark-leaved tree, and the one with dark circles around its eyes. I think of the beetles - even those became special after I learnt that they were harmless and only pretended to be intimidating. I think of the hills and the secrets they harboured - from bird's nests to broken bottles. The dry summer fields, the morning mist and biting chill. The unexpected ponds during monsoon which always surprised even though I knew where exactly they were; it always felt like the first time.

I'm not in love with Vellore for the memories. There's something in the air that is addictive, something that got me hooked. It was a place I knew. The brown of its soil, the green of its grass, the blue-grey of CMC. I want to know what it would be like to go back there as a different person, feel like the same person, and come out differently again. I want its change.

he says

It was that oscillation between feeling traumatically low and excitedly high that sank me in gloom, making me sceptical about living out life with an emotional gas regulator, always checking on how much feeling to let flow, how high to keep the flame without burning other people or burning out, how much of myself to express without feeling vulnerable, exposed, misunderstood.

- from Death by Music by Rukun Advani

earthy

He was extraordinarily sensitive and his reflexes were always quick but not sudden. Outdoors, his energy never ran out; indoors, the weed and music kept him going. Life warmed to him - dogs, cats, birds, mice, lizards - they seemed to speak his language. He climbed hills with ease, and liked to wrap himself around a tree branch and swing upside down. He wasn't in the least bit shy - sometimes I felt like he was closer to early man and thought to myself that this boy couldn't have eaten the apple. There was something raw in his manners, yet there was grace. He was clever, though not very strong; he could work out the physics for better efficiency. He found his way mostly on foot and I suspect he was slightly uncomfortable with other modes of transport. He understood directions by following the sky, the hills and his intuition. He learnt through experience and experiments of his own, through feel, touch, taste, smell, sight and sound.

flip vs scroll

Kassia speaks:
http://booksquare.com/the-future-of-print/#more-3682