The Unadulterated Cat

Click here for the website

2011-10-18T13:31:00.002Z

Longlisted for the Montreal Poetry Prize.

Fingers crossed for the shortlisting.

Sips That Make A Poison Woman

2011-09-28T23:01:00.003Z

My first book of poems is published!

Available on amazon uk. Follow the link by clicking on the title.

More publications/prizes

2011-06-01T10:39:00.003Z

Well well, Poetry! Who would have thought. I wrote and sent a few poems off last year, and won a prize which means my first book, a collection of poems, will be coming out this year.

http://www.ravenglasspoetrypress.co.uk/entry2010.html

Also cannibalised a chapter from the defeated first novel for the Asham short story award. Here is the hooray-inducing result:

http://www.ashamaward.com/

Watch this space for release details of my first poetry collection from Ravenglass Press.

Poems I wrote at 18, as the Pioneer of the movement “Gibberish”

2011-02-12T13:47:00.002Z

SUMMER

Burning coal black gold

Sleeping in the afternoon.

Eyes shut, streaming with light,

Eyelids closed against the glare,

The rotating blades drag their wings,

Chopping the swollen air,

Cutting strips of heavy heat

That unravel gracefully spiralling

Down on the supine form

(on the body on the bed),

sweat beads glisten and roll down,

breath hot moist the pillow heat,

the light turns white to yellow to orange

as the clock hands creep toward six.

Waking up is hell, the head swims groggily,

The mouth coated with bitter slime,

Eyes water down the stored up heat.

Bloody Sunday afternoon.

PIECE OF DIRT

It lays lightly, covering your skin,

A grey coat greasing clingily clad.

Drag a finger along the skin

Like furrowing a fertile land,

The straight black line forms

And thickens under the fingernail,

Flick it with the sturdy thumb,

Out comes a beautiful crescent moon.

There’s beauty even in the black grime

That touches but a tender eye,

Look and observe, and you will penetrate

The secret of the creation of the gods,

That there’s beauty even in a piece of dirt.

LECTURE

Swollen eyelids shutter down every

Six and a half seconds

(droning voices all around).

The dragging pen scratches forlornly,

Wandering away from the steely lines,

To be brought back to place with a jerk.

The top of the head separates and swims

Upward and away, slowly,

While the droopy eyes watch,

And slowly settles down again.

The head then nods losing its

Centre of gravity, strains the neck

Threatening to snap.

It grows like a Jurassic baby,

Heavy and ponderous, has a

Magnetic attraction towards the

Book on the desk.

Fatal attraction.

Thump. ZZZZzzzz.

ZOMBIE LAND: the idiot’s box

Turn it on and it takes over life,

Spewing sights and sounds on a rote,

Monotonous in its continuity,

Never fatigues, never dims its fiery colours,

Keep at it, the brain turns mush,

The body mashed potato served on comfy couch,

The dish garnished by slender remote.

Staring zombies stare deaf to each other,

Meals untasted, books rotting away,

As minds dip and immerse in fantasy land,

In the bottomless pleasure pits of Hollywood,

Or the slimy spicy cauldrons of Bollywood,

Or other stuff all far removed from reality.

Seething sanity buckles under

The muddying pressure of cheery crap.

A DYING CAT

The last of the leaves fall

In the autumn dusk.

The last of my days trickle past

Slowly slowly . . . crushing, moaning.

Snaps of memories

Fade in . . . fade out . . .

The first scratches . .

The first kill – a limping rodent,

The scald from the first hot milk,

The stinging laughter of the kid,

And my revenge . . . shredded leather deat.

The first female – virtual lioness.

I peer at a raggedy cobweb

Through rheumatic eyes

And try to feel toothless gums

With a slow, curling tongue.

I look out the window again,

At the last autumn leaf,

Grey and wrinkled,

Teetering on the sinewy branch.

Publications

2010-09-14T17:50:00.004Z

Well, well. Never mind the novels, the first one that is sleeping in the dusty cupboard, and the new one which is sitting at the desk, half hanging out of my head.

My short stories are getting about in the world.

First, last year, 'Bhai and the Manager' was published in Riptide Volume 4

Second, this year, 'Kite Season' a story from my MA submission, is shortlisted for the Riptide Short Story Competition, and will be published in Volume 6

check out http://www.riptidejournal.co.uk/

Spring Comes, The Wind Comes

2009-05-23T15:56:00.000Z

Spring comes, the wind comes

To rustle and heave,

Uproot little shoots

That Spring whispers into life

Sprouting and flowering,

Raptures in all colours,

Sunworshippers, soildwellers

Sing praises on spindly legs

Bending and breaking

In the wind that comes

When spring comes

The wind to remind

That the sunshine is but

Here now, scattered soon

By bullying clouds

Those friends of winter

And autumn that wears hues

Of steel, iron, aluminium

The light of spring is no metal

It is the wing of a butterfly

Blink and it flutters away

The sunshine scatters

Like fey green dreams

In the wind that comes,

With the clouds it brings

When Spring comes

Review of Slumdog Millionaire

2009-01-13T18:15:00.002Z

Sukhdev Sandhu calls it ‘a hugely important film in contemporary cinema.’ How do I take this film seriously, when in spite of all its merits, it fails utterly when it comes to female casting?

The reviewer Kevin Buist suggests that Danny Boyle couldn't decide whether to ask his actors to be realistic, or overly theatrical, as the film is a homage to Bollywood. It is one of those strange entities, a realistic homage to Bollywood. So I can take it for what it is, enjoy the film, and then dismiss it from my mind. But the thing is, this film is being compared to Charles Dickens novels, and as being in the cusp between art and commerce. So people are taking this film seriously. So I’ve to say, I’m sorry, but would you sit up and take notice of the women? I mean, really look at them, and look at the men.

The entire male cast look realistic. Not one of them could be mistaken for Tom Cruise or Amitabh Bacchan (expect maybe the guy who plays the Beggarmaster). But the female actors? Jamal’s slum-mother looks like she walked off from the cover of a fashion magazine. Well-shaped eyebrows, ethereal beauty and slim frame (which looks achieved by diet, rather than lack of nutrition). Hey, whatdyaknow, she looks like some fashion model turned actor. Jamal’s girlfriend, the slum-girl who becomes a teenage prostitute? She could be the twin of the woman who plays the mother, if the length of their pouts and silkiness of skin are to go by. And their similarity of features, I’m sure, has not occured because of the Oedipal reading the director wants critics to do from the text of the film.

I’m not taking issue with the utter passivity of the female roles in this film. I acknowledge that this is a male-film made in a male-world by men. But this is the west, and we do not live in a pre-feminist world like most of India does, so hey Danny Boyle and gang, please pull your socks up and pay attention. I cannot take the character of Latika seriously in the film because, she is a) a simpering, vapid siren who belongs on a catwalk and b) she has no agency.

I did say I wasn’t taking up the issue of female passivity, but really, I lied. The final scene where Jamal’s brother Salim completely goes out of character and urges Latika to run away, giving her his phone, and immolates himself in a bathtub full of money (!!), really, it was Latika who should have grabbed the car keys, kneed the mafia boss in the groin, and made off with Salim’s phone. Salim was born mean and selfish, and so he should have remained. And if Latika had shown even that little bit of spunk, I’d have forgiven her ethereal looks and general vapidness.

And no, I’m neither a lesbian nor too ugly to get the guys.

Are you from Indias

2009-01-09T15:02:00.000Z

Are you from India?
No.
You look like someone I know from India.
Not me.
You’re not from India?
No.
Where you from?
Jupiter.
Are you from Bangladesh?
No.
You look like Pakistan-Bangladesh. Asian.
I’m not.
Where are you from?
From here?
Oh from here? England?
Yes.
You study here?
No.
Is this floor one?
No. The third.
-cling-

2009-01-08T12:33:00.004Z

Queen Elizabeth Hall
the tiger lillies & justin bond
Sinderella
Thursday 18 December 2008 - Saturday 20 December 2008
Review.
Where’s the story?

There were many things to enjoy and appreciate about the performance. The last time I was in Queen Elizabeth hall was for a piano concerto, and before that, a book reading by Salman Rushdie. It felt as though the sacred space (books and classical music, are closest I come to feeling religious) was profaned, and so delightfully. Men in drag are always fun, profanities release you from the dull chains of ‘decency’ in the social sphere, and the music: dark cabaret and operatic falsetto, was brilliant.
The first song set up the scene: Cinderella the crack whore, controlled and pimped by her evil stepmother and Cinderella’s expectation to meet and be rescued by a Prince Charmer, a famous rap artist. The next few songs, tell about Cinderella’s dead mother who was also a whore, more about the evil stepmother, and Cinderrella’s aspirations and dreams and monologues à la vagina. Cinderella also comes and demonstrates to a number of male audience members what her job entails. OK… then what? Then a song titled Evil, about the …er.. stepmother.. and then, lots of cavorting in the aisles and on audience (all male) laps, peruading them call the stepmother ‘evil cunt’. At some point, the stepmother’s skirt and wig unravel and Cinderella exhorts the audience to call her ‘ugly cunt’; this the men do enthusiastically. After the interval, there’s a song called, wait for it…. yes, you’ve guessed it: ‘You’re Evil.’ In Sinderella’s words, one may ask, ‘Where’s the fucking story, you cunts?’
It is mentioned in passing by Cinderella in one of her songs about what a typical crackwhore she is, that Prince Charmer, after few weeks of a-courting Rella, has fallen prey to and died of cancer, just like her mother. Apart from the technical failing of, hmm, going nowhere with the fairytale (nevermind that there was so subversion of the story, there was simply no story, reconstructed or unreconstructed), there are many aspects of this show that I found disturbing. What the audience seemed to enjoy most were the profanities. Every time there was a ‘fucking’ or ‘cunt’ or ‘blowjob’ accompanied by Cinderalla’s ‘interactions’ with the audience (mostly male), there was lots of laughter and clapping. The show was nought but men in drag constructing and donning female psyches, and with the male and some female audience’s help, sundering, eviscerating them. ‘I want to pour poison into your cunt,’ sings Cinderella to her stepmother. Bottomline is, it was drag misogyny masquerading as ‘alternative’ and performed for the entertainment of male and female misogynists. There is such a thing as misogyny among women, and it was exhibited by women in the audience, thankfully, only a few, standing and clapping at key moments of the performance. They might well have been applauding the comedy or the music, or the sheer outrageousness of the show which is refreshing after a year of behaving well and ‘normal’, but I consider it misogyny, even when it isn’t active or passive hatred of women, but the choice to be ignorant of it when it is expressed by someone else.
There was a song sung by the original trio in the group, while Cinderalla stepped out to ‘change’. It was the best five minutes of the performance. They should do more of the dark, operatic songs with unusual pauses and run riot with the melancholic drag queen in surreal setting motif. To sum it up, if you want to retell/reinterpret Cinderella, please get beyond the first act.

Belle De Jour Meets Bridget Jones

2008-08-15T10:33:00.006Z

Take That, Chick-lit Bitches!

Choice extracts from the Diary of Felicity Arnold

Saturday, 21/04/07
Smoked my last ciggie. I'm in fathoms-deep shit. Can't work because my mind is crawling with feelings for the one guy who is utterly wrong for me. He is fat, obnoxious, married and catholic, and morally, on the other side of the realm from me. When we hug, his belly comes between the top half of my body and him. Now I'm so emotionally entangled. The thing began as pity for poor bloke obsessed with me. Investigating the pity, I found it was partly amusement, sadistic amusement in watching him wriggle, and partly self-congratulatory, sychopant-seeking revelry in hearing him pour out his adoration for me. Now he's eaten part of my brain and left a gaping need it seems only he can fill. I spent an entire day moping in pyjamas, hurrying in the bathroom lest I miss his call. He's been calling everyday lately. But of course, he didn't call today. Had tons to do which I didn't. Worse, he's having a baby anytime now. The wife's probably in labour as I speak. God I miss the bastard.

(a little later)

Still no phonecall. Need to get out of this. I'm still pretty sure all he wants is to fuck me; that's how it started. He yearns to bone anything remotely resembling a pussy on legs, as a rule. Why would it be different now? Sharing a few jokes is tops but when it comes to brass tacks, all he wants is a rough and tumble in the sack. Grabs me to cop a feel everytime I'm too near him, and I'm the type to let him; now it's affected my brain. And EVEN if he does harbour real feelings for me, which, he says he does, but I'm doubtful of, there's no way he's gonna shake up his comfy home atmosphere, with all his moneyed crazy as coots cath. circle of friends who are crawling with kids and his utterly complacent wife who thinks (I know, I know, a bit judgemental of me) a husband is a necessary tool to help one produce chidren (the lord's little blessings), and sex is a bitter grease to necessitate the process. Aw... why wouldn't he call?

Friday, 27/04/07
That was last saturday.
Monday - I sat on his lap in 'our' cafe and confessed I'd missed him over the weekend. Let him drag me to my place and curled up in bed with his erection nestling against me and his love words in my ears.

Tuesday - Dropped keys down to him early morn, kissed him, rolled on top of him and said, let's have sex and get this whole nonsense out of the way. He refused to fuck; said 'I've waited one and a half years not for a quick fuck. I want the whole deal. Mistress. Proper. Stayed in bed four hours. Chatted online while attempting to do office hours, went to his office around 5.30, almost fucked standing up (bled a little), stayed till 9.30.

Thursday - Four hours in bed again. Then online chat. Then he came for a quick cuddle before he left home to wife, gave me four-five lovely old books he'd bought at this book stall on ----. Too short a while. I sent 'xx' as a text. then I texted 'It's been three hours since you left, and I'm still wet. x.' The wife read it. He told her (I'm listed as Dave) 'I had a water fight with this guy called Dave, and he's a bit gay is why the x.' I also left teeth marks on his shoulder - very distinct. He stopped at his garage before entering house and hit himself with a spanner type thing and made it into a big industrial type injury to cover the teeth marks. Said to me, 'Actually gpt sympathy from the wife. Tee hee.'

Friday - Today. Went to meet P--- for goodbye drinks, as she's leaving to Australia. He came in, and I had to pretend he was the same and I was the same and nothing has changed between us before everyone. I felt sick. He slipped out when I was saying goodbye to her and told me to come up to his office for a hug, but his colleague was standing at the entrance and I was feeling funny already so I said I had to go and left.
Feel sick.
He called and I told him and he said, Can I see you monday and I said I don't know and he said I won't give you a choice, I'll just tell you I'll see you monday. Then I texted 'You left the untreated corn saplings in proof 4 acetate instead of 3. Call me if you want it switched.'

08/08/08 8 months 4 days

2008-08-07T16:44:00.002Z

What do I lose if I lose him?

I'd lose everything and nothing. Because he is everything, but so am I.

ps- Need to talk less and kiss more.

Real Indian Writing?

2008-06-19T12:29:00.005Z

A House For Mr Biswas
By V.S. Naipaul

I’ve always been uncomfortable with most of ‘Indian English’ fiction that stagger the shelves. Even if one or two of the writers actually live in India, and have not been living in England or the US since their Oxbridge-Harvard days, they are from the upper echelons of Indian society, the super-sophisticated, westernised, English-speaking cream, and their fiction is everything they are. http://www.pugmarks.com/week/writers.htm Half of them went to St Stephens (the Indian Eton) and on to oxbridge.

I did not imagine that Naipaul, of all people, Trinidadian, only Indian twice removed, would portray a world and people I know intimately. The vast Indian middle class, people with their eyes to the west but feet firmly entangled in a history and culture which they view with myopic eyes, and with little understanding. The people in Naipaul’s early novels (of the mid twentieth century) are the family I’ve grown up with.

Mid to upper caste, not necessarily Brahmin, lower-middle class to middle class people, who slave themselves to educate their sons. Tellingly characterised, is their pride in being old-fashioned juxtaposed with their pride in their children holding new-fangled views. Says Mrs Tulsi in pg 211 about her son disagreeing with her views: ‘…Owad is going to college, reading and learning all the time. And I am very old-fashioned.’ She spoke with pride in Owad and pride in her old-fasionedness.’

Shama, Mr B’s wife, holds her ‘bureau’ close to her heart, a piece of steel furniture with a secret locker that I’m intimately acquainted with, as it travelled many one bedroom tenements with my parents and me. The one steel bureau (Godrej most preferred) that comes with the dowry and lasts an entire lifetime, how did it survive the boat to Africa and then all the way to Trinidad?

The sullenness that characterises familial relationships, boy am I familiar with that. I come from a people that only smile at strangers, because they feel warm and friendly only with strangers, for whom they throw open their doors and hearts. With family, one is usually sullen. Like Mr B’s sister Dehuti, whose sullenness holds no meaning, and is an attitude fixed by habit, simplifying relationships (pg 326)

School. I remember how strange and exciting my English lessons used to be, how exotic the idea of playing pranks and sharing picnics. In our school, there simply was no time for play. Bullies did not exist because of the limited time we spent in the play fields unsupervised. I suffered school just like Mr B’s son Anand, who realises that ‘Pranks’ were only permitted in English Composition. (pg 403). Like Anand, we had to endure ritual before every exam (He was given many blotters, many pencils, a pencil sharpener, a ruler and two erasers, one for pencil, one for ink. Shama, braving his anger, sprinkled his shirt with lavender water when he wasn’t looking. She put a dry lime in his pocket to cut bad luck) pg 496.

While by no means can I call Naipaul's writing, Real Indian Writing, as, of course, India is one country characterised by its resistance to be characterised, whose identity is its many identities, whose voice is its plurality. Naipaul's diasporic Indians are the most real for me; these are the people, the masses, that masala-movies were originally made for; these are the conservative, ever-suspicious, comical Indians with hearty sullenness, who indulge in everyday melodrama to survive the hammering mundanity of their ration-shop-lives.

I belong now to a new caste (separate from the society from which it has been released, pg 604), created by the very education for which my parents have slaved, like Naipaul’s parents slaved. I can see why Naipaul has been consistently famous for being bitter and twisted, and terrible at relationships. Patrick French’s excellent biography attempts to throw light on him, and as French says, how hard and how terrible it must be for Naipaul to have struggled desperately to move from the margin to the centre, and I imagine, how excruciating to find himself viewing the oppressed, his own people, through the eyes of the oppressor, to whose side he’s crossed? (Emanuel Litvinoff)

Jazz Black

2008-05-30T14:31:00.001Z

On me your voice unfolds
Like they say love should
-anon

Jazz black
A Thunderstorm in eyebrows
held tender as at twilight the weeping skies
The jangle and ka-boom of a canon stride
The hunger in your face
As you stare at me
As you stare at yourself
The mountain god made you
With a wisp of a shadow
Mixed with rain drenched earth
The soul of a kite
And shoulders of a pragmatist
Music in your veins
That pulse through to your heart
As this songbird
Perches on you
Shimmering wings that flew
For several summers
South into your arms

Afternoon After

2008-05-30T14:16:00.000Z

A still grey afternoon of sombre truck
Desiccates the spirit within
That gossamer thing
Suppressed under layers of heaviness
Of successive siestas
Through yawns emptying delight
Freshness of the morning
Given way to optimism
Of clear eyes unclouded by dreams
Of long nights on itchy mattresses
By the side of moist warm bodies
Of stale lovers

Who in evening glow shimmered
Whose bodies undressed glowed velvet
So removed from the late night’s chancing
When to a whirling moth they seemed
Pretty butterflies to drunken eyes
In the dry drunk desperation
Of late early party mornings
When anything would have done
Had done them, being done for
Again and yet again

The Case For Singledom

2007-09-18T10:35:00.000Z

Clean Sheets
Compact convenient one person meals
cooked to perfection
and appreciated fully
No pig like grunts in the middle of the night
no nasty yawns that sound and smell like death
no phone calls in the middle of a particularly interesting
bit of prime time telly
toilet seat devoid of dribbles
tables devoid of mug stains
the dishes done when they need to be done, not before, not after
no nasty surprise waiting
when you open the door to your abode
occupied, however temporarily, by your other
nothing precious precariously balanced
making your heart jump
Beautiful Silence

Batman

2007-04-05T00:03:00.000Z

Winged terror obscuring the moon
Comes flying from beyond
The dark

Telling traces or trails he leaves not
Never to be found or seen
Only imagined

Like shy scent of brine blood spilling
From a hole in the head filling
Your nose

Of murkling molasses, milding mushrooms
A trudging aftertaste of peril
Slow sweet

A grip of bat claw piercing bone so
Dense, descends gliding
The span

Of his wings, petrifying black hearts
That leap as quick as he scales
Mere walls

Muscle and bone in a cave of head
Still as sarcophagus
Batman stands

Points of Light

2007-04-03T23:46:00.001Z

crushed
ccdim
pupils awash in cataract
blinking blindly
Points of Light
blurred by the window glass

Beckoning string of pearls
white now
ccThere yellow
phosphorescence of
a blue and green sea creature
ancient and wily
luring fresh meat to walk
tantalised towards it
mesmerise with its miasmic
interior of pitch tar
Pliant Penumbra
studded with glitter
like a starlet with potential
like the sky itself
lights
glow
low
ebb
by

Getting Ready

2007-04-02T23:12:00.000Z

Slick wetting streams
Off the slope of my back
Steam sprouts and floats
Like elusive dreams
Through the gap above
Luminous white curtain

Undrape the towel
And smooth over
Little globules of penetrating
Moisturiser
Little blobs of sweet smelling defeat

Nourish and feed the need
To flatten spurts of thorny
Animal
Cultivate a culture
Of shiny baby necessities

Give me your look
Give me your love
Give me your need
So I can feel
Necessary

I pull over clothes
Over my supple new nakedness
Tempered, perfumed
Acceptable
In civil society

Preferring waxing to
Shelves of stubble
On display counters
Inured to Pain
But open to criticism
Getting ready
To exfoliate
extract and expunge

Tinny

2007-03-29T23:46:00.001Z

The wood of my desk vibrates
Before you sound
Your need to be picked up

Tinny, a cry shattering the air

I blow my breaths away from
Your sensitive maw
Your ears bring me disembodied
Voices brimming with need
For mindless chatter

I hate you
Though I look at you longingly
Sometimes, and touch you to
See if you would come alive
Startle me with a sudden

Tinny, a cry shattering the air

A trick, if I really think about it
Black and sinister
Like black pudding
Lurid invitation to partake into some

Unimagined sin
Though curiously commonplace
Can it be real
Or am I just hearing voices in my head

Tinny, a cry shattering the air

Bringing news I do not want to hear
Keeping me near persons
I do not want to be close to
A lifeline I do not need
To live

Consuming me like marriage
My ears bleed
As my tongue peels
off banalties like
banana skin

Tinny, a cry shattering the air

The Woman (first draft)

2007-03-05T21:19:00.000Z

I saw a woman in an orange coat and a green hat
who loudly said, 'He was so damn cute'

I was walking and it was raining
the overwrought sky was in a sulk
miserable people huddled with their armpits
fingers in pockets
chin on the chest

And there was this woman
in an orange coat and a green hat
exclaiming loudly
not giving a damn about the weather
not caring that this
was a world of greys and steel blues
of whispers and smiles
and not exclamations!

She was talking to this man
as they were walking along
with their pointys up and out

brown jutting, an affront to the very air
oh how the people behave
these those from the land of orange suns
and indecent mangoes
and head turning flowers
and strange religious pastes

And so I was walking as I said
one step at a time
huddling into my armpits
skirting puddles with stolid shoes
with doubled up laces

and here was this woman
in her orange coat and green hat
throwing her damn into the air
cutting the sheet of rain with her cute
leaving behind her a reverberation
of a remembered warmth
that I left behind on my way

That Undeserving Bitch

2007-02-21T21:11:00.000Z

'She was a nobody. Hardly Sharukh or Amitabh, or even a Preity Zinta or Kajol.'

'Here she's almost forgotten.. except for a stint as a judge in the indian version of dancing with the stars.. she's just got two films.. no one remembers which was her last release..'

'in the sense that a lot of people r saying that she's got no real merit.. in the sense, it's just real good luck that she was abused by this goody character. otherwise, as far as india is concerned, she is a has been.. '

Such seems to be irritated thoughts of many Indians that watch in disbelief as Shilpa glides on red carpets to accept contracts, accolades and even the British PM's handshake.

Why such ungenerous sentiment from the land of milk and honey?

Shetty was one of the biggest celebrities to grace the Celeb Big Brother, which is usually populated by third rate British has-beens with flailing careers.

She did not initiate all the brouhaha that followed her entrance into the big house. Goody and co did.

Indians everywhere seem to be asking, 'Why is the whole of Britain over-reacting to the racism issue and why oh why are the British putting Shetty on a pedestal?'

Especially since she has provided only flops in recent years.

Why is an issue is being made in India out of Shetty's level of fame or status of her Bollywood career. The Indians are trying to judge and measure the situation by the actress's box office standing, because they wouldn't know how to judge it by the standard of Goody's racist behaviour. And they wouldn't know to appreciate Shetty's attitude in the Big Bro house the way a nation that prides itself on good behaviour would.

Who cares about the horrors of a coining of a rude nickname in a nation where young girls take safety pins to hold in defense in public buses, where the loudest voice is the only one heard, where the idea of a queue only co-exists with the idea to jump it, where the police are doing their duty only with lathis and dicks?

How many races co-exist in vast numbers in India? One. They would have no comprehension of how big an issue racism is in modern times, especially in Britain that is like a rainbow tribe, where the whole of the white population like to think of themselves as tolerant and well behaved (with their pretty-please and thankyous) and entirely absolved from their guilt-ridden colonial past.

The issue of 'racist bullying' was what the whole of Britain was reacting to with horror. Horror at one of their own people treating a guest in such an uncivilised manner. It put everyone here to shame; even the college porter stopped me to assure that he condemned the behaviour of Goody and co, even ashamed of them. The British were suddenly thrown back into the skin of coloniser/tyrant which they feel they have almost escaped, albeit slightly slyly, out from under the shadow of USA (ironically, the real Big Brother)

To Shetty's credit, she behaved beautifully through it all. She never for a moment forgot that she was representing her people, and was utterly dignified and fair (or at least appeared so) peppered with typical Indian overinvolvement with the cooking and pissing people off with too many onions and spices.

It was enormously gratifying to watch the brown native setting an example in civilised behaviour to the white master race (another irony is that JAde herself is mixed race). Take that, you erstwhile colonising pigs, the uncivilised savage part of me wanted to chortle.

So I do believe Shetty deserves her millions and tv and movie contracts and the PMs handshake for putting the whole of Britain to shame and making the British wish that She, and not Goody, belonged to them. Only by making her win, again and again, can they attempt to absolve themselves of this latest sin and everlasting history.

De-Liberating Love

2007-02-20T15:28:00.000Z

Nothing grows in a vaccum.
When people, things, expectations, negative emotions, rationalisations crowd around, they shut off the light, the air, the oxygen, the nurture. No space to grow. Nothing to thrive on.
I suppose some plants make a show of growing, in a jar of water, or even thin air.
They even sprout leaves, nod, talk about furniture.
Then they say, 'Oops, there isn't any more nourishment in this jar of water. What do we do now.'
Nothing. Wheres the soil dammit?
Soil? What's that like?
The stuff that binds us together with each other and the earth. Stuff that gets replenished all the time so in turn it can replenish us. Stuff of life.
No soil. Might as well be in a vaccum. Oh shit, we are in that too. Water unreplenished, the air cut off too. By a wall of bricks. Bubble wrap. Canvas. Now what?
We die a slow death, or fast. You choose.
I choose fast.

Sarah

2006-12-21T21:37:00.000Z

I had lunch today in the Infolab cafe with Davey. I hadn't been in there for more than a year, since the end of last summer actually, when I was unceremoniously kicked from the waitress job I held by the woman who supervised the place. Pauline was her name.

Sarah was behind the counter today, and I couldn't help but widen my eyes in surprise when I beheld her over the still same tortelloni bake and pork cuts. The menu hasn't changed a whitt, but Sarah has dramatically bloated.

She must be eighteen now. I couldn't help follow her with horrified eyes whenever she waddled past cleaning up tables and bringing out food. Last summer, slowly over the lunch times that we worked together, she had told me her mother was working for Uni Catering too, in the management school, that she had just found a new flat and was all excited about having her own place and a proper fulltime job, about how she was seeing Pauline's son who was nineteen, and asked me eagerly if I thought he was Fit, when he slouched by one afternoon to pick her up.

The most riveting fact she told me was that she had never been to London, and had no immediate intention of ever visiting it. Why good god oh why on earth wouldn't you visit London I haemorraged, I mean, it's LONDON. Like Paris or NewYork. People from my part of the world dream of seeing London, and you are only a three hour train ride away.

She didn't like big cities, she said. She had visited Manchester a few times and wasn't impressed.

Later I wasn't so surprised when I met white 30 and 40 yr olds that never visited London, or any of the big cities (Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, even Leeds or Sheffield) for that matter, as they were unequal to the ordeal of venturing out of their little towns and meeting strangers who spoke in a strange tongue of differently accented English than theirs. 'Have you heard the Newcastle accent,' one white person shuddered dramatically, 'only thing worse than the Liverpudlian accent luv.'

Sarah was happy. She worked 70-80 hours a week, went out and got pissed every night, and smoked like a chimney, like every other girl or boy her age who was in full time employment.

My first day at work, I had asked her innocently, 'Are you a student?' She had said, 'Good god no. why would you think that.(I think she was secretly flattered, though that might just be the narcissist in me). I hated school and have no intention studying anymore.'

Slowly, insiduosly, I began dropping hints that studying something she really wanted to wouldn't be such an ordeal. She was so good at her job. What about something like Hotel management? Her eyes sparked for a moment. She really has pretty eyes. 'Yeah, summat like that would be awright i suppose..'

Obviously, no one in her family had ever talked to her about accomplishing anything in life other than a lifetime of servitude to uni catering. This is unimaginable to someone like me, freshly sprung from middle class India whose very apogee of aspiration is Higher Studies.

Sarah would probably marry Pauline's son and pop out two kids in three years. Pauline's brother-in-law works for uni catering too. So does Sarah's mom, who smokes more than her daughter, and constantly swipes her cigarrettes. So uni catering would be kind of all-in-the-family in a few years time. And the family would go on resenting the students, even though students are what the whole economy of little Lancaster sustains itself on, and would go on failing to realise that it is but a small step from servitude under unscrupulous catering bosses to uni life where you can discovver untold potential within yourself in the course of your flowering three years amidst uni-promoted boozing in the nine uni-bars and the several in town that offer student discounts.

I'm glad I got booted out of the job. The ricotta was greasy, the mozzerella chewy, and the hot chocolate pudding from the microwave. Maybe I'll pop by again in six months, before I get kicked out of the country by the home office, and see if Sarah is still working here, and leave all smug with a greasy undertone of pity.

Making Blackberry Jam in November

2006-11-13T21:58:00.000Z

We should have removed the twiggy bits before we froze them berries.

I had spent the summer in India and got back at the end of September, and John had waited for me to go blackberry picking. We hunted the roadsides of the hilly cattley bit of Rochdale (to those of you who know Rochdale only by its football hooligans and scally centered towny bit - there's a beautiful beautiful valley too, just behind John's house) for the tumbling finger snagging deep purple staining bunderberries.

We strained; well, I strained. Little Gabriel, showing impatience typical of his age, wasn't impressed by the quantities we found, and started eating then and there, whatever we did find. John had his new camera growing out of his face, as he clicked and clicked his darlings, one of whom glared at him malevolently and ordered him every ten minutes to lend a hand.

I stooped, I stretched, I winced as the thorns pricked, but I was indefatigable in my short denim dress. Summer was making a last ditch attempt to impress before she burst into her autumn plumage, and the sun kissed and kissed us all afternoon.

Amidst a raging argument over whether the tree i spotted was laden with elderberries or blackcurrants (I was proved wrong after a later google search for distinguishing features)Gabriel climbed up John's shoulders to ravage some high up branches, John pretending to come over all faint from the poison berries that were mimicking blackcurrants.

Some glorious sunlit photographs (of a lot of exposed leg and dark blond boy)and a white plastic bag seeping with shameless violet juices, we returned to the car. Gabriel having gorged himself on the berries, had to expel them in a hurry. John, laughing, Hang on son we'll be home soon, to the much contorted berry-stained face.

Having got back, the furious home-maker despatched the berrybag to the freezer before I could turn around and register what he was doing, in the hippopotamus way I have, and I left it there. The twigs will come off when they come off, I thought.

They finally came out of their unseasonal hibernation as we got jam making yesterday. A bitch getting the frozen twigs off the frozen berries. A bitch trying to convince my darling I knew how to make jam (Yes, they still aren't cooked enough; No, you don't have to stir every five seconds; Yes, that's all the sugar we need; No, absolutely no point standing and watching the pot, as it will take about an hour to be ready; Yes, that is an acceptable ocnsistency; No, you don't have to taste the jam every five minutes, this is not stew). He still checked out five different recipes on the internet. After much chastising him on not sterilising the bottles properly (upended jars previously inhabited by peanut butter, old jam and colour-turned unidentifiable liquid), after washing them again myself to satisfy my pseudo sense of hygiene, we poured, closed and sealed.

And today, I had my first dollop on buttered brown toast. Perfect!

Headache

2006-08-21T14:40:00.000Z

Looping streams
Threading needles
A bunch of red sparks
in water, in a vase
thomm! thomm! rrrrrrrllll
%%^^>>>>

2006-04-30T17:46:00.000Z

haha, that's a controversial title. i love it.

One More Raisin In My bun

2006-04-30T17:38:00.000Z

wet grass slips under my feet
but they are touching air
are electric pylons dead martians
do i care

sometimes it seems my brain
wants to explode with all it understands,
the intense sympathy of knowing
all and in between lard and lance

spring to, sweep at, drag under, stuff and stuff
what is left, what is undone or done
years it will take and yet everyday
there's one more raisin in my bun

Easter break.. Whew...

2006-03-28T16:59:00.000Z

Ha, Thanks god for term breaks.
wib wobs was getting to me... i almost shouted at an annoying customer during my last shift. er.. told him off actually, but the brute probably didnt understand my subtle telling off. most of them don't.

another 1000 word a day pledge. marathon. 30,000 by April 25th? er.... wanna say, like hell, but being optimistic and all that (1000 words down today), i shall say.. fingers crossed.

and this has to somehow happen around disruptions like office hours, meeting shannon, davey etc, visiting the valley (ha.. that sounds mysterious), having the girls visit.. ooohh...

wanting to go anti social again, but valley and girls can't be avoided. hmmm...

Bookercat

2006-03-22T19:57:00.000Z

Booker of the cat

story by haruki murakami

2006-03-20T15:41:00.000Z

Ha, I found it... dear Malchisadek,
it starts like this..

On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning
Haruki Murakami

One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl.

Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert.

Maybe you have your own particular favorite type of girl - one with slim ankles, say, or big eyes, or graceful fingers, or you're drawn for no good reason to girls who take their time with every meal. I have my own preferences, of course. Sometimes in a restaurant I'll catch myself staring at the girl at the next table to mine because I like the shape of her nose.

But no one can insist that his 100% perfect girl correspond to some preconceived type. Much as I like noses, I can't recall the shape of hers - or even if she had one. All I can remember for sure is that she was no great beauty. It's weird.
"Yesterday on the street I passed the 100% girl," I tell someone.

"Yeah?" he says. "Good-looking?"

"Not really."
"Your favorite type, then?"

"I don't know. I can't seem to remember anything about her - the shape of her eyes or the size of her breasts."

"Strange."

"Yeah. Strange."

"So anyhow," he says, already bored, "what did you do? Talk to her? Follow her?"

....and so it goes

the mere bones

2006-03-18T18:03:00.000Z

What do I need to write here…
Story 1
Aspiring model meets with horrid middle man..
Gap toothed..peanut crunching
Ciggie smoke blowing
Modern coffee shop
Funny ashtray; looks like a misshapen pot.
Talks of lingerie ads coming up.. tirupur
Movie.. how simran was introduced by him
Music video…
Bhavesh bhai..meeting in his car…
Picks her up.. unhappy with her conservative clothes and no/little-makeup
Bhai and her in car… talk talk… clean rich teeth and hair…
Talks of being friends.. friendly advice- never do lingerie ads- u say yes means u willing to sleep with them..
Drives all around bang; wanting to be friends, wanting promise of meeting again..
Drops her off…

embar

2006-03-10T22:43:00.000Z

assing is the saturday feb 18th post now i find.
hmm.... tempting to delete, but must keep for checking every so often and renew embarrasment as lesson to learn continually.
sop. sad sap.
like to also i do talk like yoda do.

stirring the sun

2006-03-10T22:33:00.000Z

stirring the sun
and leapfrog the horizon
scratch the eardrums burst
sinking in cold fathoms deep snow
pinprick the tender arch, instep
steely eyed cat on mahogany table o
rattle the woodwork
rattle the claptrap horsecart vandyke
pine tail tin drum drum
leap and leap and leap frog
the horizon
stirring, crooning like elvis
flick the hair back
talk quivery dialogue after dialogue
after dialogue
like chevalier shivaji ganesan
enunciate
hold my hand
... and jump

This is what I see

2006-02-18T21:14:00.000Z

I see that you and I would be fantastic together. We'd have great kids, and our home would be cluttered, rambling, heaving. Chaotic, rollicking, and topsy turvy. Every single day. There would be great fights, great discussions, dramatic utterences and over the top make-up sessions, apologies and declarations of love.

There'd be curiosities, nick nacks and tid bits, and not of the gastronomic kind, scattered everywhere. Each piece will have its own story, history. Even the tea spoon will be quivering with passion, and something to tell.

Our kids will not know what hit them and where they landed and whats happening till they grow up and leave home. But they will have learnt a lot of survival skills, and to argue.. a lot.

There will be a mountain of books.. or mountains of books.. in every single room, including the garage and the bathroom.

There will never be a 'Hush, baby sleeping' sign for any of the kids. They would just learn to sleep inspite of the vibrations of chaos.

Friends would know they could leave the whole world behind them when they enter ours, for they can be what they want to be and then some more. Their kids would wish they were ours. Ours would look horrified at such a wish.
This, and some more, is what i see.

But what I don't see, I suppose, is that I keep thinking you are some one that I want you to be, but you are not that, not yet, and perhaps will never be, for you don't see what I see.

You don't see that constraints are like blankets. You throw them off when the sun shines through. You might like to snuggle under and snooze as long as you like, but eventually, you do throw them off, or should. Even if after, you have to wade through piercing cold to reach your bathrobe.

Shot in the Dark

2006-02-07T12:38:00.001Z

Deleted as this post will be published in an online mag soon.

The Sweet Sound Of Bees

2006-02-07T11:35:00.000Z

Could you love a bee
that buzzed, tickled your ear,
brought tiny legs up to lips,
while amber honey dripped
down your breast?
And if he followed it there
carried it down
to the place where you open
like flowers, clear petals. If wings
grew tongues, and he said
you were enough
the very essence of you
that he could live, grow
in the sweet sugar of your hip.

Would you then turn and walk
away?
Say he is not a man with legs,
speak of spiders or ants
who would deny you both a place.
What if these were not reasons
just something you said,
for the hum had grown so sweet,
you realized an ability to sting.

T. E. Ballard

2006-02-03T23:01:00.000Z

monday - entire day xcept 3 hrs
tuesday - entire day xcept 3 hrs
wednesday - post 6 pm
thursday - entire day xcept 3 hrs
friday - post 6 pm
saturday - entire day
sunday - no time

plenty of time i seem to have.

1 to

2006-02-01T10:37:00.000Z

25 what the fuck am i doings.

The Flu has revisited, and has brought along Fever.
Thankfully, Toothache, after one extended visit, decided I'm not its cup of tea.
Some burdday.

2 days to 25

2006-01-31T21:12:00.000Z

yikes......

bleeurh.. The State Of Celibacy

2006-01-21T19:37:00.000Z

Excrutiatingly long and excrutiatingly dull day.

Shouldn't have broken the self-imposed exile. i was happy during the long christmas break not meeting anyone at all, and just pottering about in my room and kitchen and only meeting davey for christmas and newyear, who doesnt count anywyas. shouldnt have have made a habit of meeting lumberjack every single day after term started, and going out for drinks with the manchunian and the bulgarian. heated up my blood again i think, and re-induced craving for testosterone. especially at wib-wobs, the untiring games of lets cuddle anita, exchanging chaste kisses with ni-tone under guise of enacting funny scenes or illustrating movie scenes or reward for a perfect cup of latte, and georgy-porgy teasing me as being their personal raggedy-ann to be thrown around and giving a back rub everytime my shoulders slump from the weight of work, and big-ed's crushing hugs when too many customers barge in and order blue cheese special, to make him feel better and making me sit on his knee to prove my weightlessness, and of course, the boss's penchant for a floorsliding dance moves and throwing me on the meat table to tickle me to death.

unendurable long day with no testosterone around and my state of celibacy is mortally challenged;
slept till 1, napped from 4 to 6, now sitting in gloomy reading light and typing reams of dull words.
waiting for a phone call, a text, an email, a nod, a nudge to dispel the gloom and give me an excuse to rattle out a laughter, deliver a hmmmm and fill my ears with the warmth of a communique from a different head.
shouldnt let the coldness thaw; thaw, warmth, flood, torrent, disaster. in every sense.

words

2006-01-21T15:29:00.000Z

fierce
unkempt
why don't i ever use these words? they are singularly loverly

this morning's (afternoon's) post awakened phase - bleary.

yyy

library... here i come...

2006-01-12T00:10:00.000Z

havent written a word in 4 days.. sheer fear of frustation of efforts... and laziness...
ah... finally can get library access. tired of reading mills and boon and bloody chekov as theres nothing else in the room...
woo... what will i borrow tom..?
chandler.. farewell my lovely.. yes yes yes
hmm...dubliners.. joyce.. for sure
then ill be spontaneous and grab stuff off shelves...
ah.. i have to wait till tomorrow...
and after that.. i just wont have any time to read coz i'd be working like a pig won't i..
grrrr.....

the day after goody good

2006-01-09T19:57:00.000Z

read the 4000. shit shit shit.

clinging on to sanity

2006-01-08T00:56:00.000Z

ok, title is exaggerating.. i've recovered from the 2 agents' in-a-record two hour email rejection. made me realise... they're right.. i'm not happy enough with this stuff, though it has hope... so started writing from another angle right away... goody good. close to 4000 down... sorta comi-tragic (note the inversion) naipaulesque... still floundering to find my distinctive style... which is only good...
also very good is, im sticking with the story... Yep! after a year and four attempts, all diff stories, my fifth one sticks...and unlike in the case of pancakes, sticks is good.

nabokov

2005-12-30T23:27:00.000Z

Syncope – loss of sound, consciousness
Oneiric - suggestive of dreams
Chasubles – preist’s robes
Roiled - turbulent
Ineffable – indescribable, overwhelming
Parquet – wooden floor
Linden – tree with fragrant leaves

I shall read Nabakov with help of a dictionary, then my life will be enriched like the post-composted university lawns

strict schedule

2005-12-29T20:37:00.000Z

strict writing schedule. just keep forgetting to blog. have successfully stayed away from expensive gym, citing health care reasons - tooth reacting to cold air plus friend's advice to start eating healthy before exercising, which seems sound - obviously, utter bollocks of an excuse.

made list of writers i have to read soon as i can get library access again - Borges, nabakov, carver, irving. maybe mailer, though im not a big fan of war fiction. right wing action ones yes - loooved alistair mclean as a kid, read everything he ever wrote, but left wing agonising psychological political dramas.. well, shouldn't judge before i read should i? i did love Apocalypse Now, after a fashion.

too lazy to correct typo. should get back to novel.., i've been holed up in my room last 4 days, with no contact with humans xcept for regular msn and flatmates in the kitchen. working wonders for concentration..., im half in this world, half in my novel world.. wish i could completely go into it for a couple of months... but work descends with the onset of term 2, jan 14th. and oh hell, new years eve party to attend, that so gonna shatter my routine and concentration. and yes, running so low on food; have to flyvisit sainsbury tom morning - im thinking aloud. must stop. get back to writing. yoo hoo.. ok, pretending enthusiasm... writing is exerting.. and im a lazy bunny.

Beastly Chirstmas

2005-12-24T16:02:00.000Z

This is my idea of a nightmare. Everything shuts down for the holiday season. I mean absolutely everything. I'm shut up in my room, sick. no medicines. worse.., no books, not one single book to read, no television, no internet, nothing. I'm not sick enough to be unconcious, I'm only sick enough to not venture out, plus I have toothache. Everyone's gone home. The whole world's gone home.

Straight out of a Stephen King novel.

Thankfully, there's internet, and i'm getting better. i have a couple of friends left, stranded like me, and my flu's goin away. But the book situation sucks. Been reading on the net, but despair at having finished sherlock holmes collection, and that was ideal for net. everthing else, i need physical book.

ah.... agatha christie. not in the same league, but will do.

need real books...

was lying in bed reading from laptop. simulation: lay on side, tilted laptop to simulate book, shut off vents, laptop overheated, tripped itself shutdown. Horror. Thankfully, switched on alright after it cooled down.

whew!

no laptop will equal total death in current situ.

asked dyslexic friend who's never been to library to borrow books for me - he goes 10 mins before closing time (final closing time before christmas vacation), can't find anything I want, stays till lights go off, triggers some alarm, gets caught by a horde of security guys, and calls me up to describe how he grabbed two books just as the lights went off, but wasn't allowed to check them out. urrgh.

Well meaning orphan friend (like myself here) cooking 'traditional' vegetarian christmas dinner tomorrow. Last year I couldn't eat a bite of the bland veggie nightmare. Tomorrow, I'm taking honeydew melon and chocolate cake and red wine for strength.

Burning Down

2005-12-21T15:55:00.000Z

Went to bed sickie. Spent most of day in bed. No gym. Cold has ripened; fruits greener and thicker. More satisfying to blow.
Random bit of grossness please be excused.
Why am I writing in this weird disjointed fashion? Brain refuses to make effort. Numb.
Tooth behaving. Only hurts like a bastard when I let cold air waft over it, or hot. It likes things to be luke warm. Considering this is december and in student acco, everything is either too hot or too cold (radiator, shower, kitchen taps, basin taps, people's attitudes... now I'm getting carried away. So the trick to keep tooth happy is to keep my mouth absolutely shut.
Annoying about gym. Don't want to fall more sick by venturing in cold (5 minutes walk) to gym, exerting oneself on treadmill, take shower each time before entering steam, sauna, blah, finish with a shower, wade back in cold winds to warm filthy room and collapse sick again.
But come what may, I'm going to gym tomorrow. All that money!
Having said that, maybe I shouldn't mention that I'm venturing all the way into town to watch the Wallace and Grommit movie. Even if I'm in deathbed, I will drag myself to it. Been looking forward to see it since months. Went with cucumber man when it came to the cinema, but was soldout. Probably one of the few housefuls in the history of Lancaster Cinema. Usually it's empty, and stinks. And the usually practical Britons have slipped up this once where they have an 'interval' before the movie starts. I'll never be able to understand the logic of that. Why would people want a wee/snack break 5 minutes after they have sat down?
Anyways its now running in Dukes, and I love that place; they don't have weird intervals.
Going to see movie with this guy called Kuan Fu. Looks like Jackie Chan. I call him kungfu. Can you blame me, with a name like that? He is the first chinese (oops, Taiwanese, I think) guy in the world to fancy an Indian chick. Or thats what it feels like in this Indian/chinese proliferating place where they have absolutely no eyes for each other.
rrrrghhh..., must crawl back to bed to recover from exertion of writing blog entry, and be in presentable condition for kungfu.

Misery...

2005-12-20T18:34:00.000Z

I've never had a toothache before in my life. I have it now. It's not pretty. I also have a monstrous cold moving in like monsoon clouds. Heavy, with the flashes and chills and wind factor. The works.

Joined posh gym today. The first time in my life. Insane. Can't afford it; but convinced myself that I deserve to spend the money I saved by not attending graduation ceremonies by splurging on something luxurious, as well as beneficial. Loved the treadmill. Revelled in steam room, sauna and jacuzzi, hoped steam room will flush out all the viruses, but they've come back with full vengance now. Will go again tomorrow and stay in steam room till I feel the mocrobes boiling.

Now have to buy posh track suit to wear in posh gym, and posh two piece swimwear. Eurrgh. Upside - Theres a free fruit basket from which I can grab lotsa fruit, but attendees always looking; so will restrict myself to one/two. Damn.

Felt stupid when during induction, instructor had attitude that said, you little rich foreigner, you're never gonna use all the equipment here, you're just wasting my time. And I didn't have any intelligent questions to ask. Dabbled with cross trainer but forgot how to set it, so pretended to exercise diligently for 10 minutes whilst watching a rather dumb cartoon show on the mounted TV.

Tomorrow treadmill half hour. Row boat thing - 15 minutes. Steam and Sauna 10 mins each and jacuzzi 10 minutes. Havta get money's worth. Oh yes, 2 fruits.

woe this toothache and cold. can't afford bloody dentist.

GODDAMN Foghorn

2005-12-19T22:58:00.000Z

Wish I would stop sounding like a goddamn foghorn. Deafening, nasal. Wish I wouldn't splutter out half chewed phrases that begin in a rush of heat and stop in awkwardness.
What I want to be, is thoughtful, considered, with lilting tones carefully weighed and gracefully uttered. What I want to do is sing out sentences in which every word is chosen, inevitable, lstring out into a gurgling lush river.
What I want to be is goddamned Oprah.

Wibbly Wobbly Christmas Do

2005-12-18T18:01:00.000Z

Got a vibrating soap and extra large long johns for this guy Rob, Susie's fiance who I hardly now, and the bugger wasn't very impressed. 0 sense of humour. waste of £ 1.99 .

Got Alex, big Ed's girlfriend, wild cherry and strawberry flavoured lubricants, perfumed rose petal type bath stuff, and a counting book on bananas, he he. she i think liked them, but typically, didnt manifest any sort of enthusiasm.

Tony disappointed me. I was so thrilled that i got him the perfect presents. Jokey that they were. I even felt, all giggly and lightheaded while paying for them, that if I were him, I would fall in love with me the instant I opened the wrappers. Narcissa.

I got him a pair of boxers as he keeps forgetting to wear his underwear to work; a really cool 'Be a Detective' book with a file of info about a crime he should solve, complete with a Do not Disturb Detective at Work door sign, a badge, clues etc, in film noir Philip Marlowe style, wich is precisely why the gift, as his favourite genre in his film studies is that and we have been discussing Holmes and Raymond Chandler a lot between burgers.

Also a cute story book about a cat into which I slipped a written quote about the unadulterated cat thats there on top of my blog - this because he and Emma have 2 cats.

He just frowned several times, was insulted that the boxers were too small, that the quote was bizarre and the detective book childish. Even complained to me about the silliness of the things.

Hmmm..., why do I bother? Silly cow. Me of course.

Giggin' Frogs

2005-12-16T22:46:00.000Z

http://www.nwmangum.com/Frogs/
I'm not sure how to arrange my thoughts about this webpage I came across. On the one hand, its monstrous (notice with particular intensity the captions), on the other, I made the bar frogs picture my desktop background.

annoyment

2005-04-01T17:41:00.000Z

Our youngest aunt, Ranchitam chitti,said she had to go to Kattukolli to weed the groundnut patch, and offered to take us with her. Anand dug deep into his trunk and brought out his tightly wrapped newspaper bundle that contained many little bundles tied with cotton string. Each mysterious bundle of musty newpaper and white crisscross strings held a potent ingredient that went into the maanja. He alone knew in what order and in what manner each had to be unveiled and used.
So fresh after breakfast, my granny repowdered our faces, buckled my sandals, and off we went. we three, Ranchitam chitti in her yellow print saree with white flowers, red dot bindi and mallipoo carrying a wirebag with a pot with a broken handle and a blackened ladle, Anand in his black shorts and brown half slacks with brown stripes, me in my favourite sleeveless frock that mother stitched for last year's Deepavali. dark kaapi and light kaapi coloured bunches of little flowers all over, frilly sleeves and hem lined with lace that only reached my knees.
we had to walk on a narrow path, that led from the last house in the Marapattu (ours), bordered the rice fields of my granny, fallow fields of our neighbours of the Parvatam house, cut across the shopkeeper Kaali anna's mango orchard, rounded the big open well of our mango orchard, and reached the main road. the road connecting Madras to Bangalore. The main road that pushed lorry drivers to race like maniacs that had killed two of our cows (blackie cow and red dotted cow which had been pregnant) last year through the sheer carelessness of the servant boy, who we promptly dismissed.
The path was so narrow, so only one adult or two children or one cow could walk shoulder to shoulder. Ranchitam chitti walked first, holding the rope of the white cow that walked behind her. Ofcourse Anand wouldnt walk with me, he always walked in front of me, but behind the cow trying to avoid its swishing tail fanning away mosquitoes and carrying his newspaper bundle. I walked with my buckled new sandals, touching every bush of touch-me-not on the way watching it shrink with fear and shyness, and collecting little purple flowers and big yellow flowers for my Science Holiday Homework and secretly breaking off leaves of --- the oozed poisonous milk that I let drip fascinatedly squeezing all along the way.
Once we reached the main road, we had to cross it, then we would leave the village behind and enter the territory of the hills. after looking right first, then left and then right again, the three of us but not the cow that only kept chewing and salivating and swishing its tail, we crossed the road in a sprint, for the mad crazy lorry drivers would be driving so fast that they would be upon you and over you and away in a quick breath, and then where would you be?
From now on the path would be wider, for we would be walking along the sandy flood water canals. It seems that long long ago, the river Paalaru used to flood when it rained, so long ago when it actually had water in it, so they had cut these canals out of solid earth so that the water could be routed to the fields in Kattukolli and so that it wouldnt flood the villages. But now there were no rains, no water, only deeper and deeper and dryer wells, so the canal was safe to walk in, sandy and only strewn with dried hard balls of goat shit and occasional smelly lump of cowshit, strecthed on a winding route with scraggly bushes on both sides that the cow kept stopping to sniff at and to chew, my aunt muttering stupid cow can't you wait till you get to the field? and I kept stopping too at honey-suckle bushes to suck out the honey from the many tubes of tiny pink and orange flowers, and to pick red fruits that were edible, unlike other red fruit that could be poisonous and only my aunt could tell which was which.

Very Short Stories

2005-03-13T09:03:00.000Z

I wrote a suicide note

And left my doors and windows open so the snow floated in and settled on my bedspread and arm chair and Oriental rug. It made for a much more dramatic abandoned room.

It was three a.m., and I had just come back, drunk, from a so-so party. The party was alright, the drinks were abundant, but the people were tiresome. People always are.

I first placed my little note on the bed, but the snow might have covered it up after I left, so I pinned it onto my dart board. Right in the bull’s eye, with a red feathered dart.

I fished out the car keys from my overcoat that I had just thrown on the floor. I didn’t take the coat; it wouldn’t suit such a mission.

I started my car after three tries, and headed to meet my maker. I had noticed several high bridges when I was driving to this place from France, three months ago. I had thought then that they were perfect jump off points. No I was driving to the nearest one.

The bloody car sputtered and died when I was still three kilometres away. Absolutely no vehicles in this time of the night. So I had to get off and continue on foot. I am still two and half kilometres away, it’s still snowing, and I really wish I had brought my overcoat.

That’s why I have to kill him

I could live with a snoring man. I have lived with a snoring man. I have lived with a man who used to snore every single night he slept. And I’m not talking about gentle fetching snores or that whispery snore of women. It’s a loud, shuddering monster of a snore I’m talking about. The kind that vibrates through wood. And walls.

Laughing is another matter. You might wonder how I didn’t notice James’s extraordinary laugh in all the three years that we were engaged, or why it didn’t bother me this much in the five years that I’ve been married to him. I don’t know.

All I know is that my love for him has gradually shrunk in these five years, and all that is left is a vicious putrid hate that focuses on just one aspect of his character.

His laugh. Early morning to late evening, at least twenty times a day. It starts from deep inside his belly as a slow rumble, gathers volume and girth as it moves up through rolls of skin, muscle and fat. When it reaches the throat, his shoulders are shaking in collusion, and it takes on a soprano timbre. He throws his head back at this moment, and as he reaches a crescendo, my head starts splitting.

I would be able to still tolerate it, if he didn’t laugh so often in early mornings, and catch my shoulder conspiratorially when he does.

Mosquitoes

2004-10-19T22:14:00.000Z

The incessant buzzing pounds my temples
cutting my head into violent shapes
with a child’s heartless scissors

Summer’s oppression in the diminishing noon
beckons Darkness like a simpering mistress

Darkness in its wake drags in horrors

little misshapen heads with drooling grins
ghostly silences lone whistles
an icy finger and coagulating blood

and mosquitoes.
Frenetic urgency in buzzing pincers
and piercing wings

Lewd egg eyes stare blackly
like black on blackboard
The creature alights on my hot skin

And sting.

The needle point pain surprises me
With its sheer impertinence.
Drunk like a fool, M sits, blissful, delirious, numb

Dumb.

With one swat and squelch,
I feel much better.

Wind

2004-10-11T23:19:00.000Z

My paper
Flutters, whitely
Holding on
To grim earth
Swift
Lifting clear
Rolls upwards slantly

Stuck in a soggy branch
Lightly shivers, sagging

Then quick burst of wind
Up it flies gaily
And away with my body
My paper

India Poems No 1

2004-10-06T10:17:00.000Z

Travelling in a crowded bus

We almost miss it you know
The bus arrives in a huff and leaves in a puff
Storming in, slowing down, barely stopping
You have to hop to it and amble up
Nimbly, even if you’re ninety five

You’re lucky if you get a window seat
But any seat will do
Just cover your nose
Sweaty bodies have sweaty armpits
That rise like an inner sanctum over your face
Blessing you in whiffs of stale despair

But we usually go standing
Palms slipping on greasy rails
Bums swaying over potholes and speed bumps
Lechers rubbing themselves on us
Unsuspecting schoolgirls, honourable matrons
Even crummy old fishwives
Lechers are usually undiscriminating diplomats
They tell you politely to take an auto
If you have a problem with their rubbing

You are extremely lucky if you get to
The steps in time to get off the bus at your stop
It’s like swimming against the current in
A wild choppy sea in the middle of winter
With grinning sharks jostling by
And with no clothes on

And it’s no small achievement to get off
The bus and land on your feet without stumbling once
You might wish you’d taken an auto
But wait till I tell you what that’d be like.

LOVE SONNET NO. 3

2004-09-03T16:40:00.001Z

When I imagine you in someone else's arms
this heart shivers like a wet puppy in the rain
Looking for a fireplace in the night that warms
a shelter from icy blasts of memory, but in vain
Real or imagined, the very thought of another with you
Mowes my spring lawn, tearing fragrant grass to bits
unrelenting teeth do, my heart felt desires undo
plunging it in a deep chasm that only darkness emits
I wonder with a pang what charms she might posess
surely dark and sinister binding you to her will
when your back is turned all sweetness undress
and her true face reveal gloating evil
But in the dead night soft angel she must be
Or wouldnt you rather be here beside me?

Sogamana Sonnet no. 2 - The Bardess in Distress

2004-08-26T16:12:00.000Z

When love hurts, time is a gleeful torturer
Every waking hour, every waiting moment piles
On this my heart as a shroud in a funearal pyre
As staring phantom in my mirror mockingly smiles
Oh my heart but breaks like brittle glass
The shards rupturing the soft insides every time
I look up at a shadow that might by me pass
And that is not you, not you, my temples chime
Molten wax moulds my eyeballs hardening fast
As I try not to blink for fear of missing you
The tortuter time in slow motion slinks past
My lips parched, wither, smiles being few
Without love, they say, life isn't worth living
Without you, this blessed love is my life force draining

SEX-PEARES SONNET

2004-08-21T16:47:00.000Z

To love it seems is making an appointment
Not of heart but of the head is made
Has grey hair outgrown the age of sentiment
That which young lovers seek and old forbade
When passion comes knocking hard at your door
You do but chide and send it away scampering
Like a naughty child's prank father can stand no more
So to bed without supper, banished whimpering
While I, in my youth's passion, have no eyes but for thee
Keep them closed against sight drowning senseless
While you kiss with eyes open, shut only to me
Searching for voyeurs as dignity and propriety press
Emptying my entire day, I await an embrace from you
That would steal away caution and let us love anew

You think? Think again, and read again. Hasn't it redpolka stamped all over it??
So Polka stands up and takes a bow! For her first attempt at a sonnet.
(applause applause applause) Thank you ....Thankyou..... (sob) Im overwhelmed by your appreciation. (sob) NO NO NO... I surely can't accept this... NO not even as a token of PURE appreciation... NO surely not a diamond!! (faint)

Shakespeare Sonnet LXXIII

2004-08-17T17:19:00.000Z

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

How does, or did he make all the words fit together so beautifully, considering he had to stick to the form (sonnet's) iambic pentameter, and rhyme scheme on top of that!!!!
And Im not even starting on the meaning, emotions, comparisons, similies, metaphors, internal rhythm, blah blah blah..... The man ist mein gott!!

LE MONSIEUR SANS MERCI

2004-08-13T13:53:00.000Z

How shall i punish you for ignoring me like this? Shall i write a song bemoaning my helplessness and bewailing your cruelty, shall i refuse loftily to talk to you ever again, shall i rush into someone else's arms seeking solace that i will not find for you have spoilt me for anyone else now... or shall i beg you to show mercy and let me be a slave circling your feet till you tire of me? The last few days, I have had cellphones growing out of my eyes and ears growing out of my heart. The last few days, my clothes have been my enemy, teasing me with their insinous touch and caress. The past few days have been hell. For who am I to you, that I can complain... what hold do I have over you, to show feiry eyes and threaten you with my silence. Your silence, for just a couple of days... has wrung dry my being, like a good washing machine; would my silence, my hapless pitiful reproachful silence, be even noticed?

A PARALLEL CIRCLE

2004-08-12T16:28:00.000Z

'As you sow, so you reap', goes the old saying. But in this world of pragmatic brutality, where sensitivity is deemed senseless and false pride and ruthless greed rule the roost, are the people punished for their sins in time? The answer to this question is complicated, ambiguous and paradoxical. Yet, it is quite true and right. People get punished for their sins but they don't feel the punishment. In the course of their continued actions of immorality, their skins have turned thick, their set of values non-existent, morals-killed, Regrets- none. Teh punishment is no longer a punishment to them; it is a part payment or let us say, a small inconvenience to be sustained for winning the mega booty. This is only one way of looking at the scenario; no only a part of the scenario. The whole system of unethical acts, their fruits and resulting liable punishements run on a much wider, deeper, more massive scale. The acts are like numerous branches of a big tree, the cause being the desire to obtain exotically flavoured, different sized types of fruits, invariably juicy ones, resulting punishments a variety of insects, birds and bees pecking at the fruit but the root causes remaining the same for all - erosion of values, corrosion of attitudes and an over-whelming mind boggling greediness. The stick in the colossal neck of the rapidly depleting morality is that these people believe fiercely and resolvedly that their cause is justified interms of their wants, in their own perverted, twistedly strait-jacketed way. Nothing can shake them. Not even punishments. To cite an example...........

- I wrote this 03. 01.98. Got my old stuff out today to get inspiration, and saw this. Funniest piece I've read in a long while. Didn't get any inspiration though. Wondering whether I should post more of my real old stuff, that make me either cringe with embarassment or laugh out loud now.

A SUICIDE NOTE

2004-08-01T17:44:00.000Z

Dull would be these bright ones
light stolen, sight bereft
lively warm brown laid plain dark
lashes no more needed, so staring unheeded.

Never as smooth as butter
but soothing warm nevertheless
no more would be necessary
to exfoliate to unearth luminesence
no more would be smooth
this that will become cold, parched husk

moist succlulent slice of orange
will you turn blue or green or just pale?
this one permanent kiss will be
for you forever

shiny, waving in whispers
like whiffs of perfume
dark as heart, sinful as soul
abundant as lust
and gathering in bunches,
oh willt never wilt
remain long after i become
remains of yet another

ha

2004-08-01T17:06:00.000Z

yyyyaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwnnnnnnnn.............. is my general state of being.

Eine Woche dans l'hopital.

2004-07-31T04:05:00.000Z

My dad had a heart attack , and i was pretty much in the hospital for a week, except to come home to sleep and take my mom clothes and stuff. Now that he's back home and well, I can look back and retrospect. Actually, it was fun, this last week. I met so many of my relatives after some 6-7 years... and literally EVERYONE had come coz my dad is very liked and he's the last person anyone would expect to fall sick. I discovered that i actually liked one aunt and uncle and a couple of my cousins, and these stayed with me the whole time, and we spent many happy hours bitching, fooling around and making my mom laugh. And yeah, now I know Apollo like the back of my hand, and all the parking attendants are my friends and so are the cafeteria guys and now i have many short story ideas, so im gonna give everything to finish the first one tonight.
ps - pardon my franzoideutsch, or allemancais. i ve forgotten all my french, and am not very profiecient yet in german either, hence the mix up.

anaayyaawwnalysis

2004-07-20T16:52:00.000Z

wrote some analysis of the next edition of my story myself (coz no one else would) but it vanished mysteriously before i could post it.

it more or less goes like
"Why didnt she feel thrilled to the tips of her toes on seeing him, why didnt her heart flutter like a butterfly when she saw him smile and wave and quicken his steps towards her? Where has all the romance gone to? "

- i dont know what its supposed to sounds like, but sounds gaudy and millsandboonish. and that ist nicht gut.

"After half an hour, when she had eaten the dinner her mother had made in her destined career as a cook and maid for her busy husband and unsympathetic daughter (She could count on one hand the times that the daughter hadn't frowned after one glance at the dining table) she felt things could be worse. "

- whew!! tiresome. cut it short, woman!!!

thats enough. now to answer mr kanjus unnikrishnan, if u click on the title of the post below (Published writers...) , it will take you to the site where your book "Coffee stains on camel tea cup" is showcased. so that makes you a published writer full of fart (just like sharat, not the published bit, the other bit) and u still havent sent the whole story.

and, btw, he gave me ur name and the link for ur book voluntarily long ago, but i didnt think u were the same person and author till last night. So you can now with a free copnscience go play with his t... whatever..

Published writers shouldnt sound depressed

2004-07-19T17:09:00.000Z

kanjus unnikrishnan, send me the whole story.

WORK IN PROGRESS cont'd

2004-07-18T17:33:00.000Z

When she saw him, she couldn't help but feel a small pang of disappointment. Why didnt she feel thrilled to the tips of her toes on seeing him, why didnt her heart flutter like a butterfly when she saw him smile and wave and quicken his steps towards her? Where has all the romance gone to?

He spent about 5 mins with her mulling over the hideously expensive clothes (fancy buttons, no buttons, fancy straps, no straps, shimmery hardly there material, hardly there), before she steered him to where the swim wear lay. Pick one, he said. She thought the one in white would flatter her. He picked it up and rubbed the material between his thumb and index fingers right between the leg holes. As he did this, he looked at her and smiled. He had really kind eyes, so his look and smile didnt really go with his action. It made her feel a bit funny, like you would feel while watching a perfectly turned out gentleman digging his nose while opening the door for you.
After promising to go swimming with him from 'next monday', she started home. By the time she reached home, she decided to ignore his calls. It made her feel a little relieved, and very sad. And very tired.

Her mother was fluttering near the door when she came home.
Where did you go, why are you so late?
I told you I was going to meet Yamini to have coffee. I was only gone for two hours.
Why do you have to go out to have coffee? As if theres no coffee at home.

She wished she could scream till all the panes in all the windows in all the city shattered and all the parents in all the city went deaf. After half an hour, when she had eaten the dinner her mother had made in her destined career as a cook and maid for her busy husband and unsympathetic daughter (She could count on one hand the times that the daughter hadn't frowned after one glance at the dining table) she felt things could be worse. Her father could have been her mother. If her mother drove her to the wall, her father would have driven her over and under it. Thank god he works 20 hours a day 7 days a week. She hated those rare sundays that he stayed home the whole day. He spent his free time at home, arranging and rearranging pens and magazines on the coffeetable, bellowing instructions to minions on the phone (2 phones), peeping into the monitor every ten minutes if she was on the internet, asking her who what when why where before she went out and calling her every one hour to tell her to get home before "It gets dark." And yes, picking his nose.

It never ceased to amaze her that they could find completion and happiness in each other. But then, their definition of happiness and completion were very different from hers. Her mother felt she was complete because she was married, married to a husband with a decent amount of money, married to a man who didnt smoke or drink or cheat on her, and was still married. Her father felt complete because he was a man, married a pretty girl his parents chose for him, married a girl who gave him a child and managed the house with whatever he earned. They felt complete because they got exactly what they expected out of life. Nothing more, nothing much less.
They definied happiness as a state of no sorrow. If no one important died, no financial disaster occured, if they could buy a house and a car and have babies, they were happy. The word love did not exist in their beings. After getting used to each other, after so many years of marriage, they were extremely comfortable with each other, and agreed on everything when it came to their daughter. Which was to disagree with and disapprove most things she said or did.

They did not understand how they could have produced this creature. That went out of its way to disobey them. they did not understand why she wasnt happy staying at home, learning how to cook, wearing pleasing salwaar kameezes and sarees, and looking forward to getting married to an Engineer settled in the USA. Mostly, they didnt understand why she wanted to Buy so many books, when there were perfectly good lending libraries all over town. Or why she wanted to Spend a 1000 rupees on a handbag, when her mother bought 3 for the same price and even gifted one to her sister, or why she wanted to learn french or have boys for friends.
(to be cont'd)

Wah Wah Wah

2004-07-08T18:23:00.000Z

I won't lie, I was asked by a friend to read your fledgling short story, and comment on the same;............
.......without being asked to shut shop.I could swear I hear the world crying, "Please!Mercy."
-anonymous
(the full comment is the second one under the post titled "lernen deutsche bitte')

oh man, i didnt understand half the stuff Mr Anonymous wrote. well, pls do tell me who you are. one thing i did understand is that.... i thought i was cynical... Mr Anonymous is grandfather of cynicism.

Anyways , i dont agree with u that my posts make better reading than the story. but i do agree with the let the pen fly thingy. anyways, im going to namma uuru bengaluuru tomorrow early in the morning, so i shall stop here, and continue when i get back on monday.

pls do send me something uve written Mr Anonymous. I promise i won't comment on it.

POP ANALYSIS

2004-07-07T18:01:00.000Z

Pretty enjoyable, most of your work seem to stem entirely from yourself and your experiences (just an observation). I keep seeing you, as i read what you've written. I know you won't post whatever u wrote before, but is there any chance you might publish some of your old work ?

- 362

P.S Kings of all the possible brands ?

WELL, since my mysterious friend 362 and another friend requested old works of moi, im seriously considering obliging. ill do that once i know where im going with my story. coz that decision is vital to acknowledging whether i can move on and write more for the rest of my life... or if i should give up...

anyways, heres my own analysis of the 700 words.

1) plot. theres no progressive action (actually its still to early. only 700 words. so ill let that be).
2) Mono character. Mono lougue. no dialogue. no spoken words. just narrative. a trifle tiresome.
3) no colour in descriptions. VITAL VITAL VITAL IS COLOUR.
4) lugubrious sentiments for a young woman, and a little too judgemental and assfaced to be likable. (but thats the character's characteristics!!!!!)
5) too much mindscape description. actually thats ok, but theres too little landscape description. read stephen king to find balance.

aside- is 362's remark about seeing too much of the writer in her works a snide comment? well author is forced to acknowledge that the same thought has been nagging her since the time she started to write. Author finds herself incapable of dreaming up characterisations alien to her nature. Which is why she has stuck to confessional poetry till now. Well.... the 700 words is a start of something fictional... if one doesnt consider the author's brilliant story for 7 yr olds called "Woof and Poof". and about the kings.... well that bit is definitely fiction coz author has changed brands very often and doesnt smoke kings currently. and author wishes to remind snooty yuppie NY friend 362 that this is bharatmahan where kings is no.1 brand.

WORK IN PROGRESS

2004-07-07T17:05:00.000Z

She stared intently into the mirror. Probably half an inch. But sparse. Sniffed gingerly, nose turned down sideways. No need deo. The stuff stinks anyways. She lowered her arm and pulled on a t-shirt and jeans. Too young. Naah. Probably old one digs it. That thought sent a small ripple of distaste just under her skin that went almost unnoticed what with her general feeling of complacency about the entire situation.

The afternoon sun beat mercilessly upon her head like a drunken schedule caste husband. She felt listless as she walked toward the autorickshaw stand. The heat always made her feel so. Give me freezing cold anyday, she muttered, upperlip to lowerlip. Not that I'd know what any temperature below 28 C feels like, she added with a wry half chuckle.

The autorichskaw was just a paper overhead and paper underfoot. Hot salty wind burned away at delicate forearms from either open side. Felt like sitting in a cardboard box that was crumpling under the pressure of the fist crushing it from all around. Her attention though, was diverted from her browning forearms by the godlight. Yes, it looked like godlight, surreal to the point of being mystic, the light streaming from the most unlikely of places, a place one's imagination can't even stumble at, the one being in an auto behind an auto driver. The Godlight, from where she sat, was streaming from the hole in the autodriver's left earlobe. The Sun was up at 60' in the front slanting its rays through the cheap glass, maybe plastic of the auto. The bulky dark form of the man in front of her steering the three legged vehicle was blocking the dazzling light effectively, but a strong, sinous ray got through. Through the dark lumping form, through all his darkness, streaming through the 1 mm pierced hole in his earlobe. Still the goosebumps refused to rise.

She wanted to laugh at herself, but it seemed such an effort. The feeling of lethargy was overwhelming. She hoped she didnt do anything bizarre, like falling asleep or yawning in his face when she met him. Why was she meeting him? Did she really think he wanted to buy her a swimsuit because it was a nice gesture? Did she really think he wanted to teach her to swim because he felt that swimming is a good exercise and everybody should learn it? No she didnt. She knew exactly what he wanted, and that was exactly what she had expected from the beginning. Swimming was an adequate excuse, and teaching her how to swim would provide ample opportunity to touch, fondle, grab, etc. Oh, and rooms were available in the same club. And he wanted to buy her a swimsuit because he thought it would be kinky, the choosing, speculating, imagining her in styles, colours, maybe even peeping in the dressing room for a quivery nod of approval.

She smiled. Her contorted reflection in the driver's mirror smiled back uglily. One of her constant sources of amusement was to look at strangers as she caught them staring at her, and imagine how shocked they would be if they really knew what all she was upto. Another source of entertainment was to imagine how her parents would react if they knew. They would probably not recognise her if they saw her with a cigarette in her hand. They wouldnt be able to even imagine that their daughter smoked. Female promiscuity was a known even if disapproved of concept. But a female smoking was unthinkable, unimaginable. That reminded her that she had to get rid of the empty Kings pack from her handbag.

The auto charged through the streets like a knight in shining armour, all steel and sound and fury. Enemies from all sides scattered in the wake of the all conquering hero. Their blasts of righteous annoyance at being humbled scraped at her trembling eardrums. She stuffed a finger into her right ear, which had started throbbing. The posh grey tones of the department store was stylishly letting in the suckers through slick automatic doors. Middle aged women badly dressed and brightly lipsticked were consiously picking out clothes that made them look classy to other badly dressed brightly lipsticked middle aged women in the store. Slightly smarter women, and some men, with a studied casual air about them were glancing at displays lazily, as if shopping in a big store didn't make them nervous.

POETRY OF THE MASSES

2004-07-07T11:58:00.000Z

Looks like annie has taken mercy on less poetically inclined people like me and put in this poem. I guess now even i can start to write poems and find the poet in me thnx to found poetry.
-anonymous.

hah! you never know what inspires whom to become what all! To borrow a line from Tagore, "Now my cup is full."

COMING UP

2004-07-05T17:11:00.000Z

The Public demands that I post some of my old poems. (proof- check the comment on the bikini post). this is disheartening. public knows poet is unhappening and unprolific and uninspiring and generally worrrssst. but poet refuses to regurgitate her old poems (ITS ACCEPTING DEFEAT).

anyways, im writing my first wholesome shortstory. 700 words down. 3000 odd to go. all await with bated breath for it. The subject is S-C-A-N-D-A-L-O-U-S. so there...

ENOUGH POETRY

2004-07-05T16:39:00.000Z

friend of mine said she really wanted to leave a comment on the blog, but didnt coz she didnt think she could say anything intellectual to suit the blog!!! Brrrrrrrr..... what can I say?
Poetry is not intimidating. Shouldnt be intimidating
AND EVEN SHAKESPEARE WAS NO 1 on the bestseller list in his times coz he wrote SLAPSTICK. which we now consider as great art.

oh yeah, i have to mention something soothingly mundane to bring the blog down from the branches. I got 2nd best marks in german class in the first test of my course. yaaay... i got 89 on 100 and was taken aback to to learn that the paavam dude who never opened his mouth in class got 98/100. i mean... its a language for chrissakes. how can anyone get 98 in it? then i learnt he's an iitan. ah ha, alle ist clair now. i used be friends with some iitans myself. about 10 of them. all of them wrote GRE and all of them knew the meaning of EVERY SINGLE WORD in the vocab list. and i can guarantee that the GRE vocab list is a deadly monster developed in secret labs under the desert sands in Nevada, USA by the govt of USA to leech out the braincells of all smart 3rd world kids.

anyways, iitians dont belong to the earth. 8 of the 10 ppl i knew got something like 3390/3400 or something like that in their GRE. sheeeesh!
anyways, i topped among the non iitans in class. he he

MY BLOG IS NOT A FLOP

2004-07-03T16:26:00.000Z

oh my! After opening my blog twice everyday and getting disheartened everytime seeing not 1 comment, im doing flipflops in the air now after receiving a mail from my old prof. She READ my posts, SENT her poems for MY perusal, and also GAVE SUGGESTIONS for posts!
yaaayyyyy....
heres a stanza from a poem she sent me..

The touch, the smell and the sound
You talk about…
Let me tell you…
I have lost the fragrance in it and for me
For days to come…
Unless you are the moon
Or hold the sky….
- Sashikala Gurpur-Murphy.

I quoted this particular stanza because I identify with it, with the concept. Let me see how id write it if i wanted to express the same idea...

I wish your touch would send shivers
running down my spine
Leave quivers across my lips and
fingertips tingling as they leave your skin.

I dream an aching dream where
i sink in your musky fragrance
and your face looks a thousand times better.

In hazy afternoons, as my eyes swim drunkenly,
they weave a simple design- you hold up the sky
and im ur blissful slave, you are the moon
as I look up.

Afternoons are brief,
long are hot summer nights
when the real you
is bearing down on me,
rushing breath in my ear,
sticky fingers in my hair,
your gaze melting the man in my eyes
as I look up at you

Foundlin Poetry

2004-06-29T18:21:00.000Z

>Another modern form of poetry is Found Poetry. It is composed of text found by the poet in signs, grocery store aisles, overheard conversations, or advertising. If you are in an environment where there is little textual material you may be severely limited in producing found poetry. Our environments are generally so rich in such material that it is fairly easy to write.<
My attempt right away is as follows:

Document wordpad
the best of bob dylan
JVC the new touch keyboard
interact in english malaysia
calendar 1996
panasonic Dax Eminem
Casio Senorita's Supreme
Polyester Saree Falls
Baby wax matches
B E Happy V Vallabhan
Srinivasamoorthy avenue
moment mal! Lehrwerk fur
Deutsch als Fremdsprache

(Well all this is all that I can 'find' in this 10*10 room at 11.53 in the night)

TAMBULINA WAN

2004-06-29T16:47:00.000Z

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship,
My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip,
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels
To be wanderin'.
I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way,
I promise to go under it.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Though you might hear laughin', spinnin', swingin' madly across the sun,
It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin'.
And if you hear vague traces of skippin' reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it's just a ragged clown behind,
I wouldn't pay it any mind, it's just a shadow you're
Seein' that he's chasing.

- BOB DYLAN
Born Robert Allen Zimmerman, he legally changed his name to "Bob Dylan" on August 2, 1962. It's generally accepted that "Dylan" is derived from "Dillon" after Matt Dillon of Gunsmoke fame. He has denied throughout his career any link to the controversial brilliant poet Dylan Thomas.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

-DYLAN THOMAS

Dylan Thomas was a neurotic, sickly child who shied away from school and preferred reading on his own; he read all of D. H. Lawrence's poetry, impressed by Lawrence's descriptions of a vivid natural world.
Thomas did not sympathize with T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden's thematic concerns with social and intellectual issues.

Interestingly, this brilliant poet has actually plagiariased from an unknown poet. In some school publication early in his career, he had submitted a poem which was actually already published by another kid. This was discovered only long after his (Dylan's) death at 39 from alcholism.

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih

-T S Eliot
This guy is just tooo much. I love him to death, to distraction, to distress, to damnation!

BUT THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE BEST::::

"`I grow old... I grow old... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.` What does that mean, Mr. Marlowe?"

"Not a bloody thing. It just sounds good."

He smiled. "That is from the `Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.` Here's another one. `In the room women come and go/Talking of Michael Angelo.' Does that suggest anything to you, sir?"

Yeah -- it suggests to me that the guy didn't know very much about women."

"My sentiments exactly, sir. Nonetheless I admire T. S. Eliot very much."

"Did you say, 'nonetheless'?"

- The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

BIKINI WAX

2004-06-28T15:05:00.000Z

WOW! This article is very enlightening and very entertaining!
why woudn't it be? The subject is bikini wax!!
http://www.salon.com/health/feature/1999/09/03/bikini/

I remember in Manipal, the friendly neighbourhood beauty parlour akka telling me once in hushed horrified tones how this one girl walked into her shop and asked if she would wax her.... there....!!!
I suggested that she hire studs for the job and said that they wouldnt even demand to be paid.., even suggested a couple of guys i knew for the job. ofcourse, she thought i was kidding.

Also, my friend prabha mohan (who was soon to be getting married) and I searched the whole of banglore onve to find a parlour that ll do the deed. but no, neint, non, zilch, nay. nothing. so we settle on ready made cold wax strips, that i tried (lucky mohan didnt) and regretted immensely. shall not go into gory details keeping in mind reader discernment (yeah right!).

WALKING THE BLOCK

2004-06-22T14:16:00.000Z

When i sit to write, i instantly feel a heavy sort of weight descend quietly on my shoulders. I've been suffering (read really suffering) from a writer's block the last 2 years. long time. a promising ass-kicking career crushed, even before it began.

Now Im faced with the great difficulty of finding a subject thats easy to write about. Coz I usually have deep and varied thoughts about everything, thoughts that are so fantastic and flighty and flitty that they are impossible to pen down, what with this stupid block thats almost like a physical handicap.

Like for example, as Im writing whatever im writing now, my mind identifies each half-second, atleast 2-3 better ways of saying the same thing im saying (metaphors, similies, allusions, choice of words etc), but i actively disregard all but the easiest, most mundane, most simple, most untaxing way to express myself. Coz the pressure on the part of my brain that nourishes the writer becomes almost a physical pain if I tax it too much.

So now Im kind of coming to a decision on how to break this curse. I'll start writing whatever happens everyday, since the time i wake up. that should be easy, cant put too much pressure on the creative part of the brain. Then slowly, Ill get more comfortable with writing and words and the flow of ideas and their conversion into words, then I can get a grip on myself and start to really write.

Whew, even writing all this has taken a lot of wind from me. Im exhausted! So in the next post, Im going describe my daily activities starting today.

Aching Poetry

2004-06-19T20:10:00.000Z

About my other constant interest (other than myself that is) poetry, here are a few provoking lines...

SHAKESPEARE SONNET XLIX

To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws,
Since why to love I can allege no cause.

-This u have to read the whole sonnet. Its all there on the net for ur perusal. Just do a google search. My lawyer friends wud like these lines!

VIKRAM SETH: UNCLAIMED

To make love with a stranger is the best.
There is no riddle and there is no test.

To lie and love, not aching to make sense
Of this night in the mesh of reference.

To touch, unclaimed by fear of imminent day,
And understand, as only strangers may.

To feel the beat of foreign heart to heart
Preferring neither to prolong nor part.

To rest within the unknown arms and know
That this is all there is; that this is so.

-This is how I lead my lovelife right now, but 'Preferring neither to prolong nor part'should be in my case, 'Preferring not to prolong and to definitely part' and 'To rest within the unknown arms and know' should read in my case, 'To ache to rest within unknown arms but know'

lernen deutsch bitte?

2004-06-19T18:30:00.000Z

I started learnen-Deutsch last monday. Went with moderate expectations as regards classmates, but even the moderate expectations were dashed!! class is filled with rural folks from all sorts of rural places in Tamil Nadu. Don't wanna sound like some urban snob, BUT THIS IS THE CITY FOR BAGVAAN-SAKE!!!!

Not one city bred (read dressed in jeans, t-shirt and reasonably friendly kind) person. About 20 men and 4 women including yours truly. girls sit together and boys sit together. Girls talk mostly to girls and viceversa. Girls dress in salwaar kameez and have their hair oiled and tied up. Boys avoid catching girls' eyes and look away while blushing furiously if they do so accidentally.

One boy acted hip and tried conversing with yours truly. What happened is as follows: First day after class, I was standing in the bus stop for a ride home, when this dude Balasubramanium walks to same stop and stands next to me. He is from this town in interior Tamil Nadu called Madurai. He starts a conversation with me, and after one or two banal exchanges ('Does 24C come here?', 'Yes', 'Where you working?', 'Nowhere'), he asks, "Can you understand Hindi"? to which I reply "Yes, sort of." Then he says, "Yagan bike negi ai tho boguuth muchkil ai." This is a horrible south-indian accented hindi "Yahan bike nahin hai to bahut mushkil hai."

Why do tamilians have to impress fellow tamilians by trying at all cost to speak in any language expect their mutual mothertongue? This used to happen in Bangalore too, where in the area i lived in, every single ayya, anna and akka were tamilians. But each one, from shopkeeper to neighbourmaama to milkman, would insist on speaking to me only in English even if I only talked to them in Tamil!

Coming back to German class, I cut quite a sorry figure everytime I crack a joke and the only response I get is a blank stare of incomprehension from each of my classmates! eeeuuuugggghhh!!

Time to kick off

2004-06-19T06:20:00.000Z

Enough stalling. Im sputtering like the choked engine of a Feat 86 model. Time to start building the blog.
first, i've to clear my mind. What do I want to write about? What are my interests? My top interest is myself. Surprise! Apart from that and poetry, my other top interests keep changing every month.
Right now, my top interests are myself, poetry and german. I'll start with learning Deutsch coz thats what i do with most of my time these days. So in the next post, I'm gonna give a complete description of my course, and more importantly, my class.

stuck in my throat

2004-06-12T18:48:00.000Z

trying to writing a poem after long
is like trying to feel a new person's touch
decades after your lover died

the words seem like sandpaper on my tongue
nervous grating rubbing of unfamiliar love
clashing with a new body on a hard bed

like speaking an unfamiliar langauge
after just three four beginner's classes
to the director of the foreign language school

how do you whisper sweet nothings
in the brink of rush of love
holding close in breathing distance
a total stranger

when a multitude of words rush from the stomach
traffic jamming your crushed throat
the mouth gapes slackly.
no exit.

RedPOLKAChaddi

2004-06-11T19:00:00.000Z

er... what can i say? Now that I set up the blog... Im tongue tied. And sleepy... And not to mention... or to mention... wanna go to the bathroom...