The Town That Was.

Warm summer evening. The wind knows abandon, craze, keeping time with the tired tips of blades of grass. We're driving down the only road this town has, this relic of a town that once was. Dilapidated structures fall deeper into history as the ashen landscape skips past the glass of the window pane. I'm thankful it's there, that transparent barrier between me and the corpse of a town that no one remembers. Glass armours, protection.

No one remembers.

We're children, and this is our great adventure. When you're 17 and hungry to eat the globe, swallow it whole. Driving around the galaxy of America, in a beat up truck, finding.. finding. This is the story of the day we found nothing. Nothing but smoke and memory colliding in the air, mocking our smallness.

M is speeding and I don't care. There's no one to hurt, to run over, here. Trees become a blur as we drive along, the vision out the window is a broken skyline. In my head I see the shining corridors of NY city, places we've been these last two weeks. Finding.. finding. And then I stop and look out the window. The coal of the sun burns a red hole into the sky. "The sun burnt this town, babe. Can you imagine a time when kids rode bikes down this road and shopping marts littered the scenery? This place must've had it all. Happiness and color and feeling. And then the sun burnt it. " He's thinking out loud. We're both making a map in our mind, inking the dot of this town an opaque shade of grey.

He slows down, drives along. I wait for a cat to pass us by, languid and calm or Tuesday morning drunks to throw stones at the car. I wait for movement and some sign of life. I wait for someone to tell me what happened.. where everyone is. You know that recurring dream where you're a ballet dancer and the world dies, over and over, around you? Controlled demolitions. You sit in a chair, tying your shoes while the planet slips off its axis . You sit in the passenger seat of an old beat up truck, tying your shoes, while the planet slips off its axis.

And then we whizz past it, the tombstone. Centralia, population:11. M turns up the volume. "Dig me up from under what is covering.." We trail past a pulverized house, and a woman is standing outside, smiling. We're comrades, this woman and us. Humans in arms, against nature and the deeply sickening dose of loneliness. Against the sense of loss you feel, when driving through a ghost town where 11 people live. A town that has burnt for the last 60 years and continues to do so. Centralia. So apt, the name. The center of the world, the core, the vast black hole that God drilled right through us.

And slowly, desolately, we drive on. Leaving the soot road behind. I'll switch places with him soon, and we'll get to another big city. Alcohol and cigarettes and mindless abandon. Wait till the memory of this poltergeist fades into a mass of hedonism. We're children, and this is our great adventure.

-------------------------------------

That half hour in Centralia is the only thing I remember about that summer. Education, life lessons. The death of the center of the world taught us everything. Every human face I now look into, is the face of a childhood friend I've never met. As I gather this strip of nostalgia into my palm, M peeps in from the crack in the wall and calls me for dinner. And at 25, as I start to lose faith in humanity and attach less and less value to life, play around with existentialism and post-modernism, the story of Centralia that warm summer night, all those years ago keeps me believing.

Because there's time and we're still here and so are they, all 11 of them. Finding.. finding.

Travelogue. Or something.

The summer of 2010, Orenburg, Russia. It's the quaint, sleepy town you've never heard of. The balconies with baskets of chrysanthemums, the shining horizon and no skyscrapers. Expanses of clarity. The warm sunbeams on your naked back, clear and watery, sans those golden flecks of dust. The parks and the walkways. Tulips everywhere. The houses, those structures you learn to draw in 2nd grade. The kind of cleansing coolness Ben Gibbard talks about. The air, clean and cold. Those evenings on the European terrace, staring at a part of Asia that sparkles in the distance. Right out of an Of Montreal song.

The museums, oh, they're pieces of languid history frozen behind glass doors. The people, so proud. "So how do you like our city?" I'd never call Delhi mine. Their soft voices, the streets devoid of conversation. Spasiba, which means thank you, resonates. So.. civilized. They talk in a neon blur. "Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear." Ye niye gavaryoo paruski, "I don't speak any Russian", becomes your new anthem. The place has it's own force, it calls out to art and literature. To creation. I've never drawn and read so much. The townsquare and the library, they transport and lift. The granite and the marble. The Russians revere their literature, statues of Pushkin at every other redlight. There’s culture in the cement and clay.

The Russian secretary. And her brother, her very hot brother. Who doesn’t speak English. Heh. The other secretary who passes out on my bed after 2 glasses of rum. The picnics and the strange food. The lines of bath and body stores, the salt scrubs! The pool. The super fast internet that downloads 8 gb worth of Star Wars in an hour! The live singing in the restaurants.

The Russian ballet and the opera.. oh god the opera. You know, how you read about it filling you with a deep sense of awe, pregnant with emotion? That’s a lie. It does, however, make you stop. And just stare. “Beautiful isn’t the right word but it’s the first word that comes to mind.” Such opulence, such splendour.

The war killed so many men. And now Orenburg is the feminist’s dream. Women run the city, you see them everywhere, in super markets and police cars, in the courts and the clinics. Women that look like supermdoels, make you want to work out. Their high heels and short skirts. An incipient matriarchy Virginia Woolf would bask in.

The deep seated communism. Where your dad's doctor is a taxe driver by day and your maid is a trained account on alternate weekdays. Where tiny tenements, brimming with families still exist. And on the other hand, the government gives you central heating and hot water, and medical insurance.

The bridge that divides Asia and Europe, with a river running through it. Bicycle rides, ice-skating and bowling. The nightclubs, with the dingy bars and the men who think I’m 14. Exotic but 14. Bollywood is popular. And for the record, I'm not Apu, neither is "jimmy jimmy aaja aaja" anythign CLOSE to a line. Pfft. They love your “tan”.

And what is this small town for a 19 year old, on the verge of entering what is going to be the hardest year yet? Time, so much time. To introspect. Character construction. Like those summer breaks in school when you discover music and art and literature that will define who you are for a long time to come. Complete seclusion, no phone. The leisure to draw, to sketch, find latent talents. To write. That idea for a book that will make you rich and famous, the easy way. All that underground music that will always remind you of this sombre, quiet time. Insomnia and catatonic fits. Late night conversations with the people closest to you. You know what I mean. The kind of soulspeak where all real epiphanies are made. Where you formulate opinions you will later use in those "intellectual" conversations with the ex.

The kind of vacation where you grow and feel older. That feeling you crave for every birthday but never experience? That feeling, right here, is tangible, you could wrap your hands around it and marvel.


..And in a week, Delhi will happen. In a week, everything will change. And I’ll go back, with Russian songs on my new Zune. And the sort of languorous maturity that makes you stop being a child, finally.

Second-hand.

His room's just little pieces of imagination strewn everywhere. Books, canvases with impressions of Impressionist art, music from the 90's, music from the 80's, music from the 17th century, music from Denny's basement, music from New York and Bellingham. Movies, mute movies, foreign films, post- modern plays. Every Sunday afternoon, we go over our.. list.

I have this habit of lying across the floor, the bare, cold, deliciously cold marble floor and looking at his half-painted ceiling and trying to fix the Rubik Cube. No painted, glow-in-the-dark stars there, nothing cheesy. He is trying to copy Manet's Olympia. It's really just a naked woman with a cat staring at you, though he hasn't painted the cat yet. The cat's weird, it would creep you out.

We're tired teenagers, is all we are.
We have big dreams and we want to be cultured. We want topics of conversation. Common interests. We're as original as a dead ant. But we get by. We drink from other people's goblets and pat ourselves on the back for "getting" it. For appreciating all this.. art. So vicarious. Sam Beam made a great record but who cares about Sam Beam. I'm the artist for having heard it and you're not because you don't even know such genius exists. Muscle flex.

We're just tired teenagers, is all we are.
He's sprawled over my sofa, his shirt's undone. " You know, dear, dear.. dear. You and I are worse than the rest. We KNOW we ape. Those kids don't know they ape. They're happy being sponges, at least something goes INSIDE and remains there, you know what I mean? You and I.. well. We're looking for education in all the wrong places."

I'm not really interested in this piece-of-crap, overplayed broken-record conversation. We have it everyday. But I play my part. " I'm not looking for education man. I'm just looking for.. an outlet. Don't wanna be a mouse with just one hole to escape from. Those stupid humans could shut down the hole, cover it up. Then I'd be a dead mouse in a covered hole. I'd rather just be a mouse. With reality and another "ism" to escape into."

He's sort of.. right though. This Sunday afternoon scavenger activity, looking for literature and poetry to wolf down, glut down is no education.

It's no second hole either.

It's just us 21st century, tried teenagers wanting to say a new word. And realizing that all the smart words have already been said. That there are no "isms" left to start.

He’s twirling a pen between his fingers and he’s drifting off to sleep. An old Cut Copy song’s playing.

“But we’re better than that cat I’m too afraid to paint, we’re better than mice... we are.. We have to be. ”

Emo rant.

I can deconstruct and then demolish anything you give me. At least in my head, I can write off almost anything no matter how great it is, how thought provoking it is. What is deep is also pretentious, what is light is way too superficial. The mainstream alternative on the radio is too "commercial" and sell-outy, the indie that is made in the basements of Austin, Texas is too half-baked and wanting-to-be-different. This.. incredible capacity to hate. It's worse than nihilism you know. They seek to "clear the ground" because they're a force that needs to account. Force without matter.

This brand of.. absolute loathing or contempt for every intangible idea and concept, every breathing entity. Its purposeless. We're not seeking to clear the ground, we're not seeking to establish a new order the way those 19th century realists were. We're only seeking to hate.

You see it everywhere, in those case-taking sessions in college where it's a who-can-hate-more competition thinly garbed as humour, in class where you hate the feminists for wanting everyone to be a lesbian and you hate the sexists for being sexist. It's a gift.

OF course, I'm not saying that I'm some emo kid who hates everything, naw. Just lamenting this capacity I have. It's POSSIBLE, you know. Like I COULD be an all-loathing emo kid so easily if I wanted to.

And that's a super-power I don't want.

Communal.

This canvas here, I'm going to smear it with his words, his hands and the smell of his skin.


Hang it up, slit it through and drench that strip of memory in the morning sunlight.


He stands across the room right now. Squinting, he wants me to escape outside with him, make him forget the curls on her head and the poetry hanging on her neck.


At least, for a while. She's in the smoke from our cigarettes, curling upward after he frees her from his mouth and traps her in mine, the air in my atmosphere thick with her. " I'm a visitor here, I'm not permanent." She's mine too, I'm sharing her with him and she's mine. All mine? His and mine. We're just a couple of kids fooling around. She's his rock, and my standard. You know, that bar I want to reach.




The stars in her eye can sparkle my fibre and corrode his existence.


He's never going to find out what saving him means.


I don't need his conversation, his touch or his breath on my throat. All I need is knowing that she once was. And that she remains. And that she's his bloodstream, his personal detox. His blanket and favourite book.




..and that I walked upon the same ground as her.


He's the only thing I'll lose after the barman throws us out.


There's some comfort in treating the symptoms and denying him the cure. I'm just medicine to him, bitter, distasteful and unavoidable. He leaves me on the shelf when he gets better.


And keeps coming back. Keeps bringing her back to me. We're just starry-eyed poets, him and I. Writing the same poem, sniffing the same ink.

Stone and Bread.

Statues, so many statues. Cemented, chiseled, sculpted, they glisten when the sun shines on their old, Gothic faces. Signs of life, you know? Mark is 23, he's ambitious, he's going to rule the world in a couple of years. Playfield, this land, its all his, his alone, territorial. This particular Sunday afternoon, we meet his long, sinewy body standing erect in appraisal of the City Centre. Every quaint little town has one, hidden somewhere. The City Centre, where heritage and history (however banal) collide and manifest as ruined buildings, or sculptures or just some milestone that says M.G.Road (built 1978).

Today is unlike all other days. Mark has had.. a shift in perspective? No, he's had his belief system collapse into gravel and dust, kind of like the ruins he's inspecting. They're the same, man and environment. The ageing statues have parts of them missing, a broken nose, or a stone gem from a cement necklace. So does he. His mind's a jigsaw today, you see, with all the leading pieces misses.

So tell us, enough with the mindless description, we don't care about that, get to the point, what happened to your boring Hero from Small Town, Third World Country.

Heh. Nothing happened. This morning, he changed his regular breakfast routine of cereal and milk to bread. Just that. Bread. Bread, incidentally tends to mould, green and crumby.

Kind of like life for a 23 year old who wants a lot, tries a lot and doesn't know where to begin. And the statues that withstand the abrasive pressures of time but only breathe when the sun shines.

I'm walking away from him as I type this. He's still standing encompassed in that naked statue's shadow. They're kindred, the shade protects him and she shades him only when she's alive. And he needs to be alive today. Why? Well.

Disenchantment. And Disillusionment. When you're 23, there comes a day when the world is no longer a playfield, your territory and becoming its ruler is suddenly not "practical." And when that happens, you shift from healthy food to self-raising flour and start smoking.

And when that happens, you sneak away for a little bit and stare at beings, etched in stone. Beings that whisper quietly, in your ear, that this earth is big enough and kind enough. Big enough for you to have your own slice of kingdom.

…And that unlike them, you must stay alive even when the sun doesn't shine

Mine.

Green park bench, green over-mowed grass. Warm summer night. My skin was crawling along the lines of his cigarette's curling smoke. He's a real nutjob, one of those English pieces, dirty blonde hair, Oasis fan, sexy drawl. The works. Bohemian, nomadic poet, he would spend his days singing in a gondola if he could, you know? He scavenges around north London, that lazy face with arched eyebrows at every gig. Used to dabble with the guitar, he's written a few songs I guess. They're very good. He gets by. No one knows him. I do.

Me, I'm just a small town girl from a third world country who wants to be a groupie. We're both looking for The Beatles in the dark alleyways of London city. The architecture, the red brickwork oozes that 60's charm I want to internalize. Wide-eyed, starry-eyed. Drugs, sex, rock n roll. Cliched? Yes. Unreal? No.

That fateful night after a particularly grand The Holloways gig, we'd decided to crash in a park. His red wine bottle was rolling on the scant grass, little drops of blood everywhere. That band had bled us, made us robust. Healthy. Life in our hair. "You know you're only here so you get to sleep with one of them tardy guitarists. Its the glamour for you god damned villagers. Ride the band wagon of the talented. Ho hum." My smile wasn't going to lose out y'know. Its true. I WOULD sleep with one of them. Fuck me, but those sons of bitches can play.

"How's your lit course at the university going?" Meh, haven't touched those books in a long time. I didn't feel like conversation.

He got up, brushed his pants, flipped his red hair back. Smoked. Walked. The idle summer breeze was rocking the swing. So restless tonight, the motherfucker. There was scant melody playing from some house in the neighbourhood. Some poor kid trying to play an old Ben Gibbard song.

I got up too. Started swaying to the scratchy tune. The bolt of ember in my hand was about ready to burn me through and so was my head but I didn't care. A poet, a guitar, nicotine and the dream of music. I'm wasting away. The dissolution from being a person to being a character in your own imagination can be real fun, you guys should try it. That summer I WAS the character though. That night in the park was the rest of my life. And it was calm and pretty.

And it was mine.

Caught.

Silver strokes. Brush, paint. Oil and water." Of course, the shadows are always the most mathematical, precise and rational part of a painting. All else is just us, artists, crying because we're not creators but simulators." He'd often been cynical, knowing he liked the bohemian lifestyle more than the actual brushwork. The fabric of his life was colored with women, wine, good food. Animal. Basic. Sex, hunger, thirst. That summer of '63 was a good time to be in the art business. Music interlocked with the nomadic abandon of "obscurity". Being different. Everyone was doing it. Being different.

History's forgotten him, no one remembers his studio apartment in New York, or the magnificent potrait of Grapes in the Sky he once finished in 15 minutes. I remember watching him as he played with paint, late at night after wrapping up my part-time job at the University lab. He would splash around in the color, like a child enjoying his first warm bath. His fingers caressed the pigment like it was the ivory neck of a Petrarchan beloved. Have you ever seen Joy? Touched it, it's tangible solid contours and wrapped your hands around it? I have.

It was during that summer of '63 when I watched him paint.

I remember with vivid clarity that day in the park he told me I was immortal. That he was immortal. Because he could will it, he could create a universe of his own on canvas and live in it, forever. That the kind of people who do good things when no one's watching are the only Believers there are. The day he told me that to rule the world all I needed was a charming smile, a palette and knowing the way around my mind. Just that, a blue print of my mind.

That's the day he got up, shook my hand and left me, feeding the pigeons. The next day, as I rushed to his apartment, my stomach churned with premonition. Foreboding. The landlady told me he'd moved out, never to come back. That she didn't know where he had gone.

All she gave me was a charming smile and an old palette he'd left me. He'd often told me to not look for the things I've lost, every time I'd lose a tube of color or an idea that tipped off the tip of my brain before I could catch it. " They were just getting in your way anyway, those thoughts you keep losing."

Never was I to look for him, though I fancied I saw his shadow sometimes on an abandoned street in a quiet suburb or near a tree he used to love. Shadows after all, were the only real creations he ever indulged in. It fit.

Sitting in that same park as I type this out. The pigeons are still here, nothing has changed. It's '96 and they don't talk of art anymore, not the way they used to.

Me? I'm holding up a grape to the sky, recalling his smile and trying not to lose this thought, to catch it before it gets in my way.

The Keepsake.

A dusty summer afternoon. His head was inclined sideways, his scant stubble catching the tired sunlight. Gold and red. Like the mahogany table his tissue rested on, the ink on it still wet. A deep azure. We were never to speak, him and I. Regulars at that forgotten, quaint cafe. He always scribbled on those pieces of tissue, smiling to himself at some private joke, balling them up, aiming at the wastepaper basket on his way out. "We daydream too much, such cheap corruption. All our banal brain is capable of doing is modifying reality." He missed often. I was curious.

That day I stayed till past midnight, working on my 16th century theatre assignment. He kept a brown paperbag on the table, for 6 hours. Every few minutes, he would peek in, grin absently, nod a little and get back to whatever deep lyric he was working on. Whatever deep lyric he would throw away, again. Over the last few months, I'd developed the unconscious habit of flashing interested, intrigued glances at him from the corner of my eye, every few hours. We were comrades. We were both escaping the reality our brain could only modify.

After downing his 50 somethingth cup of espresso, his hand inched closer to that curious bag. He seemed to hesitate, fought a mental battle, lost, and gave into the temptation again. He looked in. That familiar hue of subdued glee seemed to paint his face, before he guiltily wiped the expression off his face. I wanted to give up all pretense of indifference, to go upto his table, pull out a chair and demand to share his fascination. I didn't. Our tacit code of brotherhood was too precious to be violated by even awkward hellos, and such an overt acknowledgment would absolutely shatter it.

The evening passed on. Growing frustration on my part, the same absent joy on his. I was struggling to dissect Restoration Comedy, the multitude of cups on his table grew in number with each passing hour. At some point, he nonchalantly reached over for the paperbag. My pen stopped mid-sentence, his established routine for that night was far from getting old. This time, he flattened the paper, and worked his pen into great swishes all over it. Anxious crossing. More scribbling. This, he followed by pulling out a weathered LP and balling up the paperbag. With one swift, disinterested motion of his wrist, what once held a world of attraction, now lay in a languishing, inconspicuous mess by the dustbin. He left the cafe, humming to himself.

I still have that paperbag, the years have deepened the creases on it, the ink on it is beginning to fade. It smells like parchment and coffee beans and decaying wood, like an Englishman's old piano. A relic.

The shy ink reads: "We're strangers and lovers, poets and brothers.
We're actors in someone's play, we're characters in a book someone is reading out to a drowsy child.
We will but be a hazy memory when this night dissolves into dawn.

Isn't that a relief?"

Grey.

Overt schmaltz perhaps, a story of hope, or love or hate or consumerism or communism or all of the aforementioned woven intricately into the autobiographical recapitulation of the life of old-lady-with-three-cats Mrs. Pinto and her objectophillic obsession with a particularly pretty digital clock. Imagination fails me. The clear dichotomy between yesterday and tomorrow. Between The Before and The After. Today, right now is the thin white line that separates the two.The exact second when the dark tresses of night break into dawn. That grey area inspires.

The Lady of Shalott will tell you that for a writer, reality must be divorced from life. That to be able to imagine, he must shut himself off in an ivory tower and avoid the transgression from the mind to the mundane, that the political and the aesthetic must be kept separate. We all construct ivory towers. Mine's bricked with The Shins, steaming black tea, torrential rain and William Blake as of now and that's precisely where the paradox emerges. My dilapidated ivory tower finds reality's cement. It transports, isolates and engages, as it lies corrupt. My psyche, it languishes in the greyness. "Four grey walls and four grey towers."

Another conundrum I struggle to unfold is the poetry of everyday life. The luscious mix of conversation, nicotine and walks around North Campus. That's art right there, not divorced, not independent but snugly knitted into the fabric of platitudes that constitute my 19th year.

The assessment leaves me restive. The mind remains shackled within the confines of Life and its bromides. Unsettling, disturbing, consuming. To produce a work of literature from the viscous, brown mass of inexperience, immaturity and a chained imagination.

Or if your glass is half full? To produce art from dried paint.

Torrential rain, a steaming cup of black tea, Hello Saferide and eyes made of sleep. Every six months or so, motion forces planted in my fingers guide me to type the living shit out of my keyboard and the blog normally bears the brunt of what results. The last half annum has been.. compelling. You know how every birthday you wake up and wish you felt older and you don't. There are those times and then there are times when every inch of metaphysical growth is tangible, when you can feel your maturity flourish, when you pass a finish line or complete your thesis on 16 century poets. Or listen to the rain interrupt the Swedish twee pop that's going to kill your ipod in two songs.
The clear division between yesterday and tomorrow. Between The Before and The After. Today,right now it's the thin white line that seperates the two. I'd like to pretend I have something consequential, revolutionary to write about. Heh. Overt shmalz perhaps, a story of hope, or love or hate or consummerisim or communism or all of the aforementioned woven intricately into the autobiographical recapitulation of the life of old-lady-with-three-cats Mrs Pinto and her objectophillic obsession for a particularly pretty digital clock. Imagination fails me.
So I'm just going to tell you about this fun thing that happened to me day before. Person A (who would probably castrate me( oo parantheses within parantheses oo! anyhow, in brutal, tribal ways) if I told you who he is)

Haze.

Every shining fortnight I leave my new, nebulous life in north campus behind and return to the seemingly inanimate life of rural confines. Seemingly. There's something that holds me here, snug and warm. My own little dream world that I escape into every two weeks when college becomes too real. A dream world that took four years to construct, to adorn, make it homely. Less gray, less ivory, less cold. Less tower, less wall. More home, less house. Music. My personal little cubby hole. Most people would regard this.. reverence.. for music as juvenile. In more hipster terms? Wannabe. Needing to be cool, a part of it. A vehicle that carries my leo trait of ostentation? Most people would be wrong. Its something else. Something different, perhaps, something stronger, shakingly stronger than the normal, healthy respect most people harbour for melody and harmony. Reverence. Gratitude. There's something very tangibly identifiable about indie. About Gibbard and Mercer. It takes possession. And it's hardly normal. This blind-eyed.. losing. Transportation. Losing. Dissolution of reality. My personal fire-exit. Like the earth is not a cold, dead place after all (and if you point this one out, I'll consider marriage =) ). Like the first breath after coma (hah, yes, repetition). As I type this out, I have a sinking feeling I'm not doing the adulation justice. To put it simply, after a whole year of losing touch with this one best friend, these voices, these pieces of melody, it feels good to be back. Like therapy after withdrawal. Or like the rush of adrenalin after you first inject in the drug after a long period of restraint. A frenzy begins. A chaotic, all-consuming pandemonium that expresses sheer bewilderment. "Wow, how did I stay away for so long?" Music. The word doesn't do justice to everything it encompasses for a small town girl. When reality doesn't offer you the fluctuations in emotion and feeling that you crave, when you're 18 and in Faridabad. You turn to other people's higher experiences. To live a little, vicariously. And that's what music is, really. My feet planted in underground New York and my ear an inch away from Kevin Drew's guitar. Acoustic and easy. Heady and relieving. Most of all? This.. intoxication.. gives me reason to believe my made up world could be real one day. Because its made by real people. They're just a few continents away. But it's their world. And it could be mine.

Air.

" Dude, please wax your freaking legs once in a while. This after-shaving stubble business is okay for emergencies, but I'd like to feel like I'm dating a girl. Once in a while. "

He's not a jackass. No. He's not. He's the progenitor of the fucking species.

Yawn. "I love you too, M. Fetch me a newspaper?"

He's lying in bed, rolling his eyes, trying not to come over some new bike that I don't care enough about to remember the name of. Quite a prince, my jackpot.

"You know, I like fighting. I've decided. You're boring. This keeps it ALIVE. You know? Like spices it up and all that jazz. Drama is good." Very southern-American drawl there.

Its his I'm-gonna-be-a-cunt-coz-I-can-be day. Ah well. I'm adoring him today, its allowed.

"Yeah I heart drama. Willya fetch me the newspaper?" I'm trying to keep the smile out of my voice. And failing. Its infuriating the living muck out of him.

Mission accomplished.

"Fuck you too. "

"Gladly. Have you decided not to save yourself for marriage then? You're GIVING UP ON YOUR MORALS FOR SEX?!" I hid the insinuating chuckle behind a low cough, struggling to keep my face straight.

I looked up from my laptop to see if he was still bent on trying to be an asshole.

He was.

Dang. Something was up.

"Alright, out with it."

"I don't know. You're just annoying me more than usual today. "

"I'm supposed to be the girl remember? Tantrums are supposed to be MY thing."

"I'm supposed to be the boy remember? Body-hair is supposed to be MY thing. "

"GAH. K. No more body-hair. Now what's the real reason you're not letting me obsess over Edward Cullen in peace?" The adoration was definitely subsiding. I hate beating about the bush. And he knows it. Get to the point already nig.

His expression is serious now. Something is UP! And from teh look of it, its not going to be much fun.

He sighed loudly. Fought a mental battle in about 3 seconds flat, I saw the turbulence in his eyes abate. His hand was in his hair, it's this little worried scratch thing he does when he's rehearsing a speech or something, in his head.

He seemed to give up.

"Baby. You know this isn't working right? " He was kidding. I knew he was.

"Because I'm BORING. Yeah, that's real cute M." I chuckled. " Get to the point, Edward awaits impatiently for my reverence. "

"Will you listen to me for a second? I.. need you to. You're gonna hate me"

"Nice try, skank."

"Baby, please.."

The silent desperation in his voice had my stomach churning. I knew he was kidding. He HAD to be. But this was not good.

"What, can't we have a clean month without breaking up 18 times and getting back together?" We've been together for 6 years. We've never broken up. Not once. I knew I had to quit trying to make light of this. I just didn't feel like it.

"What if I told you I don't feel the same way?"

I was starting to not breathe. "Then I'd have to kill you in slow, painful ways, repeatedly. So don't make me. " Be serious, woman, be serious.

Silence.

And then I knew it. This was.. well. He wasn't kidding. He was being crazy, sure. I'd have to shake him out of it. But he wasn't kidding.

"Why? What did I do? What's wrong? We'll fix it, I promise. " See. Nice and easy and calm. We'll fix it, whatever I was doing wrong. And it would be okay.

"Nothing.. its not you. I.. goodfuckingLORD why is this so hard?" He took in a deep breath. There was a voice growing louder in my head. I was just going to ignore it, for a bit.

"Baby. I'm in love with someone. I've known her a year. I NEVER thought it would turn into.. this.. stupid..LOVE thing. You're the one. You're supposed to be the one. I don't know what this is about!"


Plug your nose, stop breathing. Hold it. 30 seconds. Breathe. Nothing like the oxygen rushing through your lungs, now, is there?


What if someone took the oxygen away, forever?

Wanna-be Haikus and Tankas. Burp.

Scribbling and such. This is freaking old.

Wry self-mockery.
-Film-
Pearl. Shine. Pearl.
A waltz of innocence, so pure a swirl
Cardboard cut outs with glued thread
A glitzy stage we slowly tread
Smile, sin, sigh, sail
Through a play, liquid life in a pail
Then spill it into the rust brown earth
Pearl. Shine. Pearl.



Oo, deranged wanderings of a 15 year old mind?
-To Rape and him-
Salt my tongue or sour my smile
Make me a harp, a puppet, a lie
Peel me apart, cut a jigsaw in my mind.

To break my wings and eliminate my flight
Plug my nostrils and seal my lips tight
My silent scream will bury your plight


And look at me, homosexual. This was after Raad-itis I think.

-Illusions-
He plastered me with cement
Then coloured me black
Scribbled graffiti on my skin
A song, an epic on my hand
He made me his art, a soliloquy in May
Abandoned his sun and flew seas away

The yellow chalkdust now stings my eye.
Corrode me for, I’ll never know why..

Colle. English. Debating. Hostel. Dating.

So normally I'd mock an autobiographical piece, malign it and consider myself above such blatant self-expression. Normally. And just remember that. = ) . This will be long, very long. I suggest you read whatever -heading- takes your fancy.

Hansraj College. There is nothing in this latent Haryanvi town of manicured lawns, affluence, ostentation, red cars, miniature castles and Punjabi infestation that could have prepared me for the last few months. College. Suddenly and without warning, every sappy teeny bopper movie I've had the conceit and the superciliousness to disparage is laughing at me, doing a little victory march, with drum rolls and confetti showers. Its a race between them and me. I'm second, they're last but one. =)

-The course and more-
With what I believe is an abysmal lack of information and knowledge about the English language, I've irrationally decided to spend the next three years trying to master it. I'm 18, its allowed. Teachers with their excessive name-dropping and a queer illusion that ewes fresh out of school know who Holmer and Browning are, the first month was one adorned with discovery, disappointment and ennui, at least on the academic front. Then Victorian poetry happened. And Tagore happened. And I'm building myself a monument for the mother of all good decisions. My status as the walking Dictionary has once again plagued me and I'm hating it just as I dd in school. You see, I'm no longer the idiot who used long words to hide the lack of substance. Touchy nerves? Touchy nerves. =) Evenso, messages at 7 in the morning asking for word meanings still hold the capacity to turn my day around.

-Eristics, debating and stuff-
The third week of college introduced me to debating. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm such a hot-shot because I did MUNs in school, no really, medals and trophies in my honor, I own all butt and more. NOT. Ever been humbled to a degree where everything you've believed about yourself starts ripping at the seams and you're left with the ashen remains of delusion? I hope not. Its restive, and makes your skin crawl with unease. I'm getting better at it, I'd like to believe. The whole winning-a-grand thing might be to blame, a tad wee bit, but what the hell. But that's just debating.


-The DebSoc-
The debating society is an entirely different story. After my village, where reading in the recess is blasphemy, Sigur Ros is "what? a candy?", and I'm Meha Kapoor's cavalier, arrogant sister who looks like butter won't melt in her mouth. You get the gist. The DebSoc, and for Yogi's benefit, no, the debsoc isn't a hot bong boy, is what makes college, college. Not just the on-going wonder of meeting people who know what I'm talking about, but sheer admiration. They talk about AFSPA in one breath and dissolve into quiet reveries about the scorching hotness of Robin in the next. In very plain terms? Fun defines it. Fun, so much fun. Take it from the racist village girl whose idea of a comeback is to put her hand in your face. Its fun!


-Hosetlhostelhostel!-
I'm missing a very important part here. My hostel, and those of you who're still reading NEED to know about it. Yes, you do. Ever lived in a room with five girls who're as different from each other as Satyricon is from Iron and Wine? Heh. There's a shrink in every room, I have four wardrobes to choose from everyday and who knew there exists a wondrous world of facepacks and uncooked maggi. I dance secretly to Justin Timberlake while getting ready in the morning, but don't tell anyone. Anukriti, Ishita, Shubhi. Three short months and I have friends who watch my back. Friends who listen to incessant tirades about a certain crush that refuses to go away, yelling friends who put up with the pig sty I've turned the room into, who make my bed when I'm down, coerce me into doing something about the lack of erm.. ass-ets(?). Its like being parachuted into alien territory. Like winning a lottery you didn't buy the ticket for. The singing ball of scintillating wit and humour, the cribbing, pretty girl who doesn't know it, the genuine Ajanta-Ellora who couldn't hurt a fly.


-Men, dating, bleh-
You know what else college is about? About dating and men. The world is dating and I don't quite know the meaning of the word. Come 10 and every second girl in my hostel sneaks behind the covers and starts loving on her cellphone, whispering, giggling, being generally homosexual and endearing. School was about complacency. Dating literature and music is quite a ride, and being surrounded by jaats who speak and you die a slow, painful death was a lot easier. People here, in this strange strange land have shed all illusions of romance and courtship. Dating is mechanical, convenient and often, a product of boredom. I've been told that a date and a shared rickshaw ride aren't any different. A first date apparently is no cause for excitement. =) And there lies the discrepancy between college and the sappy teeny bopper movie. In my rural mind, dating is about dressing up, long phone conversations, retarded grins, nicknames, and little puddles of mushy ew. Blame the severe lack of experience. A week-long escapade that ended before it began doesn't teach you much. Makes you wonder where you screwed up, makes you wish there was a way to fix it but doesn't teach you much. Ah well. Maybe sticking to books and music isn't such a bad idea after all. =)

I hope for your sake, that you aren't still reading this narcissist piece of self-recapitulation but if you are, my condolences and apologies. It isn't everyday that I abuse writing space with self-obsession but I'm allowing myself this one luxury and writing it off as a weak failing. To summarize though, muh lyf ryt now pwns maja ass nigguh! ^.^

The Crouching Snail. The Towering Atlas.

On the rare ocassion that I feel significant enough to grace sheets with the tired disconcertment of everyday banality, the resultant piece is quite interesting. Its a question I've often asked myself. Would a writer enjoy reading his own story? Living vicariously out of someone else's imagination is what constitutes the delight of fiction. So when an artist assesses the product, the construction of his OWN psyche, the piece must seem exceedingly trite, hackneyed and platitudinous. Its comparable I suppose to how one never re-reads his own journal or feels invariably small and deranged when one does. Following that stream of logic, the unease and solicitude that grips me everytime the mouse pointer hovers over the Publish button is plausible. To tag a creation you consider commonplace, with your own name, to impart to it your identity, requires astronomical courage, I suppose. But does it?

Egomania. In place of the aforementioned unease, an artist could also feel an empowering sense of megalomania. Ah, to be able to create, to sculpt into language, abstract ideas and notions. He could revel and bask in his own glowing aura of talent and dexterity. Astronomical courage is then redundant. All he would need to possess is a quiet belief that the piece is sublime, transcendent. However, we've already established that its near impossible for an artist to sustain such a belief. So what gives the egocentric creator the intrepidity to build and showcase? Within the confines of reason, it could only be a severe lack of reason and rationality.

The assessment leaves me perplexed and twistedly amused. I don't want to believe that Ayn Rand was an irrational megalomaniac. Just as I don't want to believe that she didn't quite enjoy Night of January 16. Because you see, I quite enoyed it. Which makes me an egomaniac. Ah well, revolving doors, vicious circles. Much love.

My fingers just threw up all over the keyboard.

Claypishtoo. 8 am, severe insomnia, too much old Hollywood, even more indie and a lubricious if not lascivious day dream involving Gregory Peck. It's a strange morning. My head's a blurry mist of jackknifed juggernaut that I can't quite knead into written dough. But ah well, its been six months since I obliged an e-page with the blessed words of a hysterically messy brain. No really, messy might be too polite. The architect who carefully designed the interiors of my brain must be turning in his grave. Yes, he's dead, when you create a masterpiece in Tanviville, you fulfill your purpose on earth and are put into a cold quiet sleep. -Insert evil laugh?- Anyway yes, the blueprint looks like this, and let me paint you a little picture. Compartmentalized thoughts, once neatly labelled and stored in little glass jars are swaying gently across the ceiling, barely scraping the muscled walls. Incipients of ideas, notions are crouching mindlessly (and excuse the pun) near the shelves that once stored a raving belief in Ayn Rand and Ben Gibbard. A yawning void of terse longing and singlehood is right smack in the middle of the now dilapidating room, carpetting the nerve endings, tender and warm. It's the time of the day. You know, when you want to do nothing but weave imaginary yarns about James Mercer, when Marten from QC takes on a real, fleshy existence, when words from random Porcupine Tree songs seem profound and meaningful, when you write little notes on facebook about nothing at all? Yes, that time.

Poetry is next, I can see it. Help. Sweet mother of jesus, I'm turning into a Chetan Bhagat. >.>
Being this drugged and happy is indecent. Ivory towers own major butt. I need coffee, lots of it.

Parasite

You know how sometimes one line in a random, meaningless conversation can send you into deep realms of introspection? Or anything, I don't know. The Ray Ban ad? " Have you made it up, have you made it up. "
On ostentation.
They say if you've done it, it isn't bragging. But how true is it? Isn't the purpose of bragging to impress people? Invariably, the average blows-his-own-trumpet or beats-his-own-drum if you're perverted = ) will be disliked and mocked by everyone with half a brain. Human nature is not very conducive to peer-appreciation. Or maybe its just the XX gene. But to be generous with one's compliments? Invasive, threatening, ominous. Also, its a public declaration of insecurity, on certain undefined levels. But we do it anyway. One's own voice praising one's own awesomeness is like flowing honey, soothing to the ear, to the ego. Or maybe you're just into it. In too deep, to care. When you're, and I hate to use the word, passionate about something, maybe talking about it is just pure adulation, pure hero-worship. Of what though? Of the object of that adulation or of yourself for understanding and being INTO something so grand? Its generally the latter. Disturbing.
We're vicarious beings, all of us. Talking about a great author or a divine band is quite casually a pat on the back. Like telling yourself that association makes up for the lack of talent. But talent can't thrive without an audience, can it? We're the lecherous audience. Like parasites, like the tapeworm infesting the stomach of a cow, a part of the cow but a crouching, sublime pest nonetheless. Vicarious. Living through someone else's glory.
Arbitrary trivia. Warming, comforting.
What did early man do will all the food he gathered? Did he put it up on a cave-wall and smugly patronize the other early men? Or did he quietly eat it, satiate his hunger and move onto better, more lucrative avenues. Could we do that? Digest the wondrous constructions of greater men, stash it away in memory, cover it with red velvet and move on.
What he did was, he made edible food out of raw vegetation. Not vicarious. Creation, art.
What I'm trying to do now is go on gathering, go on collecting. Till I can condense it into something bigger, something engaging. Something that can be called art. Or just gratify and quench the thirst for learning, for knowing. The question is, can I do it without being the wretched tapeworm?