Woke up with a horrifuck cold and aching head. My nose is still leaky and I have a Christmas party at Tnt this evening where I have to be painfully chirpy. Met Ankush for coffee on Wednesday. We have to meet once every 2 months or so since we both suffer from the Syndrome of Acute Randomness. I tried to steal another of his shirts (he was carrying this huge pile of freshly-laundered clothes) but he wouldn't let me :(

I picked up some Penguin Pocket Classics at th TnT sale. Currently am reading 'Summer in Algiers' by Camus. I'm also half-way through 'Conscience Deluded' which is a gorgeous collection of stories by Russian women. I recommend all books published by Kali which is the first publishing house run by women in India. Look out for 'Relationship' which is a series of letters between writer Nayantara Sehgal and E.N. Mangat Rai.

I've been meaning to write about some Bernardo Bertolucci movies I saw in Cal this time. 'Last Tango in Paris' and 'Stealing Beauty.' I didn't watch them with as much care as I should have, but what I noticed was that there is no mere object in his movies. Everything has a purpose, a reason for the camera to slither around it, caress it, worship it. Everything is raw, thrown open. Nothing is too sacred for the camera...in fact it is the camera that makes it all sacred with its touch. I loved them.

Enough name-dropping. Aami ghoom dite jachhi.

The Advertising Slogan Generator

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Just One Ahana - Give It To Me! Death Is Our Middle Name.

Where Do You Want Ahana To Go Today? Ahana - It Looks Good on You.

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Get sloganized

The Infinite Teen Slang Dictionary

Ahana (adj.) likely to shout at school."Check out my Ahana pet animal!"

The Infinite Teen Slang Dictionary

Dr Unhemlich's Disease Registry

Bad luck! You are suffering from Ahana's Syndrome.
Cause: bee sting
Symptoms: embarrassing noises, bulging eyes, gastrointestinal bleeding, vague leg pain
Cure: electroshock therapy

All you diseased people click here

The Prior-Art-O-Matic

Ahana: Ahana is a toothbrush! It makes amusing belching noises.

Get yours here.

NOW HEAR THIS!!!

Today I walked into an enormous room and fell in love. There were rows to choose from. Some winking coyly, others rugged and deep. I turned to one only to nuzzle another only to breathe in a third. I wanted them all. But I am fickle. One intense session of attachment and love-making and I am done. There are few I can return to. Ah well. I should get used to it.
I never was a book-virgin anyway.

P.S. A confession. I went to the Indian Classical Music section first. Grinning to myself the whole time. Fuck, it's fun having a crush!!

?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!

So another cop-turned-rapist article in today's newspaper. Reaction: People will draw their womenfolk closer to home and remind them of their vulnerability. Plenty of outrage from feminists. Marches and walks and awareness campaigns all waving signs saying 'FOR WOMEN.'
Just a question here. Who are the men we are generally warned about? The driver, the construction worker, the security guard...the blue-collar public. How much of this awareness reaches out to them? If it's education that colours the collar, why not educate them? In fact, why not educate all men-folk? What's the root of rape? Making a patriarchal point? Repressed sexual urges?
I want to know. I want to know if rape is a clear, concise 'to-do' in a man's brain or a reflexive assertion of his superiority. I want to know why, if women are shedding the burden of being silent, men cannot see past centuries of drummed-in culture. There are women who have stood up and said 'I have been raped. It is wrong and I want justice.' Is there a man who will stand up and say 'I have raped. It is my right and I want it legalized?' They don't care if it's legally wrong. Would they say it's traditionally right? What's their story? Women feel defiled, humiliated according to sexual norms. Does the rapist feel satisfied, secure as per his 'maleness' requires him to? I don't know if there's a woman alive who would say she enjoyed being raped. Are there men who think-'Well if one can express anger, frustration, hunger, insecurity, need...all through the penis....why not?'
The ones we're warned against probably don't read newspapers or slogans. The ones we're not warned against probably do. But nobody talks.

I walked away:

A blue shirt
where the collar leaned into
jasmine skin

A little green bulb
Bleeding racous beats
Sawing into sound-proof corners

The gleam of razored sunlight on railroad tracks
I heard the hiss, saw steam
Remembered...

I walked away
With heavy arms
And a breath I could not exhale.

Finally in touch with Roshni! I was really wondering if she'd taken one look at the college...or maybe been accosted by the head of the ISU...and decided to become a dog-trainer in Alaska.
All she says is that she missed me the night before last and that it is snowing where she is. Wherever she is!!!
I'm getting increasingly itchy as my time in Spain comes to an end. My only purpose has been to spend time with my mother...and it is a very nice purpose. I don't want it to end. My mum has grown to be the only person in my life who does not want to shape it. Being apart for almost 4 & 1/2 years has taught us both the importance of small doses. Neither of us are inclined to 'live with.' Aloneness is too fragile, to possessive. And therefore I fight passively against learning to 'be with.' The one choice I made when my brain had prickly heat. I am rude and rowdy and apathetic towards those who might have mattered. I had no conditions for togetherness. Perhaps that is why I now feel the expected conditions pressing on me. Familiarity. Disabled conditions that will allow me to be the saviour. A struggling rag of the 'prince-charming' concept. And above all a need for complete independence from need.
Hugs to those who have loved me/become victims of my ignorance.

I won a prize for Arithmetic in Kindergarten. 'The Musicians of Bremen'...a Ladybird Classic. What I remember most is the word 'Arithmetic' written inside on a card. In broken letters. My love for addition and mental multiplication came up to that word.
Later, when my marks decided that English was to be my chosen path, that I was perpetually the best arranger of words on paper...I did not flinch. I who forever shrugged off labels no matter what the cost, accepted that the written word would be my facist hacksaw, would chop pieces out of me, hang menacingly over my head if I dared to pull away. I chose to choose to obey.
Then came the phrase 'just words'. I foolishly ignored it and down swooped the Dementor Dictator. Just words....JUST words, just WORDS, it was said with a shrug, with palms outstretched signifying disregard, helplessness, comfort...the 'just' with soft stress on the 'j' or the 's', 'words' amplified as much as possible. When I ignored it, I had the pleasure of mass-understanding, once I singled it out, I didn't know what to do with it.
My 16-out-of-20 and 21-out-of-25 marked essays, my mawkish, over-sentimental journals, the fragmented scribbles I consider my forte....words.
Expression, medium, language.....words.
Arithmetic didn't bring me to addition and mental multplication. They brought me to 'arithmetic.'
When I touched the keys of a piano, I thought of the word 'touch.' I couldn't listen to classical music because there were no lyrics. Then I started making up music-word associations and writing them down.
I had 'lyrics' for every composition I heard. When I played, I thought of 'precision' and 'wrinkles.' I loved my 'metronome.'
I don't love words because they give me images. I love images when they give me words.

Now, every situation, no matter how personal is story-material. Not for marking. For arranging and playing with words. I love word-ambigrams. I adore the tight, toxic distance I have with a guy I love because I can juggle adjectives about it.

:)
'smile'

Masquerade

Are we really happy with this lonely game we play,
Looking for the right words to say?
Searching but not finding -- understanding anyway,
We're lost in this masquerade.
Both afraid to say we're just too far away
From being close together from the start.
We try to talk it over, but the words got in the way
We're lost inside this lonely game we play.
Thoughts of leaving disappear each time I see your eyes,
And no matter how hard I try
To understand the reason why we carry on this way
We're lost in this masquerade.
We try to talk it over, but the words got in the way
We're lost inside this lonely game we play.
We're lost in a masquerade.
And we're lost in a masquerade.

- George Benson

If Albee had been a romantic....'Virgina Woolf'...might have been thus shaped.

I bought 'Unless' by Carol Shields today. Paid a ghastly amount for it but since I was locked out of the house...and consequently out of my half-read material...
I'm half-way through it and it typifies my reading preferences. Plentiful use of metaphors, some form of intense, psychological 'wrongness' and for all its rich verbosity...strangely matter-of-fact. Seriously, in most of the books I read either someone ages backwards, or sits on a street corner wearing nothing but a sign reading 'goodness' or whatever.
I also have this thing for extra-marital stories, instances being 'The Bridges of Madison County', 'Lolita', 'The Maid's Request'. The first is a bitter-slightly-sweet romance, the second a gorgeous narrative on obsessive romantic and sexual ideals and the third is a silent, attentive awareness between an ageing artist and his maid...apparently having tangential reference to Da Vinci.
The anonymity of these relationships attracts me. They are extra-marital sometimes in the sense that neither party is married, sometimes where one is or one marries merely to be close to the real object of desire. I abhor unfaithfulness and not even in 'Bridges' is that word mentioned. It isn't glossed over either and it pleases me that neither character refers to marriage while discussing the outcome of their own relationship.

Another day in Nerja with lots of meat and cheese and alcohol. The local cigarettes really suck. I am as yet receiving e-mails which promise to increase the size of my penis by 3". Perhaps the senders are eminent psychologists who are convinced that I am suffering from an extended Electra complex.

I just checked out some artwork by Dave Mckean. Let me confess that I am no art connoisseur. I find images in words and am rarely able to do the reverse which is probably why symbolic art attacts me. I love swirls and shapes and wonky stuff. Mckean is wonky. Scary-wonky. I was looking at some images he created for the Skybox Master series. I'm putting up the link so have a look. My personal favourites are The Bee-Giver and The Scary Man.
Adios.

The room was tiny,dimly lit by red-shaded lamps, inhabited by several Vague Human Characters. I was seated on a chair attached to the top of a steel pole about 8 feet high. My head touched the ceiling and when I looked up, it too was steel and my reflected face was huge and puffy, daubed with soot. All I could distinguish was a little, white scar cutting into my right eyebrow.
The VHC's asked me why I was there. I told them it was to make up for being with other people the rest of the time. They never looked at me or at each other...instead they looked at the reflections in the ceiling.
I had no shoes on...my feet were wrapped in dirty, mummy-like bandages and then re-wrapped in sheets of steel. The chair was a swivel, but it only worked when I looked upward at my reflection. The faster I spun, the more the VHC's disintegrated. Or at least their reflections did. My own face blurred. All except for the scar.
Sometimes it looked like a fingernail.
I decided it was a foetus.
My fingers were smooth, polished steel as I raised my hand to stroke it. The eyebrow curled and grew moist around them.

Hola de Espagna

Apart from nearly being arrested in Paris, I managed to reach Malaga without too many hitches. Had my first meal at Oh Calcutta! last night. Lovely mussels and some version of an Italian stew and chocolate mousse. As of now I am wrapped in a woolly pink robe having my hair vigorously towel-dried by Mum.

Nerja seems an idyllic paradise. The only businesses here are shops, restaurants and bars with the odd bank thrown in. No hotels...instead people rent apartments or cottages for vacations. This is actually my second trip here, but the first doesn't really count. I left 98% of me in Calcutta that time. This time I'm here completely. The strange thing is that there's no consciousness of being 'away.' Last time I gazed at the sea, upon sunsets. I gloried in soaking in the bathtub (which I still consider the ultimate luxury). I was the ultimate tourist. Ok, I didn't have any paella and this time I've deigned to 'be introduced to the fine art of wine-drinking' which I vetoed last time....but it's completely casual. No thrill at flying 11 hours or being on the Continent. I might as well be the bored businessman next to me on the flight who spent his entire time reading the Wall Street Journal and making copious notes on his air-sickness bag.
This time my thrills come from the electric mattress-heater in my bed, being put to sleep by Mum...oh and Mum's new pink-framed glasses.

A Toast

To J...and all the possibilities you are.
Congratulations!

The Sibling Diaries

E (kissing me on my temple) : I kissed your brains. Now you'll do well in your exams.

Me: You might have done this a week ago. My exams just got over.

E (thinking it over) : You'll have more exams won't you?

A minute later.

E: Tia Didi, I'm making my own skateboard. If you don't disturb me I won't disturb you.

Ode

I love my feet. I mean really love them. They're clean and size 5 with short, uneven toe-nails. The veins show up clearly and there's nearly always a blister on the little toe. The heels are usually dry. I've given up wearing nail-polish and now they just look strong and well-used. And they've served me pretty well so far. They've kicked vulnerable male genitalia, walked on mud, animal excreta and the roads of Pune...all while wearing shoes that are the opposite of polite.
I've been decorating them a lot of late. Right now I have a pair of thin, silver anklets and of course my magic toe-ring in which resides the wise, two-headed elephant-genie. Thank you again, Pigwidgeon!

Question: How do things stop mattering?

I went pujo shopping yesterday and finally bought some skirts. One outfit is totally Bunty aur Babli...or in dad's words 'jhakkas'. Anyway they're both lovely and I'm in one right now. I'd almost forgotten what it was like not to have my legs separated by layers of denim...and more recently in cotton linen. Feel skin on skin.
I'm getting 'short-tempered' according to my co-worker. I do blow off steam on him. Hee.