Tuesday, March 10, 2009
napkin lists in shifty restaurants
we get inspired, with 90-rupee bhelpuri and chaat in a shifty restaurant at one end of a broken road. Like so many others, we want to win.
like so many, we create lists and think that just putting things down should be half the journey won. half the battle begun.
top 5 things to do before you get married, top 5 things to accomplish before your first baby, before before. we create milestones, not achievements. define age brackets neatly, by the time i'm 31, i'd like to have. define income brackets, million seems like a neat enough number to roll off your tongue. milllllion, with its tiny insect-like legs crawling over you to flagpin its conquest.
oh no, im being too dramatic, i need to tone down to increase my credibility.
not going down the roads not taken, seems to be the pride and glory. i knew, i knew what it would be like, and i didn't find it worthwhile to go further.
when we're bored we rewatch matrix 1 (the best one man) and wonder whatever happened to the non-keanu characters, in life in the films.
the top 5 lists, all neatly written on cheap tissue paper, i wish i'd remember any of them, just to have a thread to pull.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
simon & g knew
first wendys (some kind of fascination with popculture and fries. mcdonalds is better)
first imax
first time sleeping in an imax
(don't bother watching eagle eye, be warned)
we used to leave the TV on in the (not-totally-secure) hotel room to pretend that we were still there when we left and keep it on at night because, well, Miami is scary like that.
the most weirding out thing is the constant calcuation of times and timezones and trying and failing at keeping track of how its all fastforwarding or rewinding.
did i mention first ihop? i thought it'd be more starbucks. don't quite know why. iculture probably, so apt. people should only live in cities with hard rock cafes. that way they would know that popculture exists in sufficient quantity for them to take a dip in it anytime that they want to. no one's asking them to turn into mermaids.
popculture. unattainable things like simpsons posters and dilbert figurines and musical snowglobes suddenly all over, all too available, at new and discounted prices. it's always a good season to have a sale. So
that must be what america is all about.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
travelog
here it is, the one i promised i'd write.
still on the journey.
the firsts
- first visit to here, the not-them
- first ihop. it was not the starbucks-like experience crossed with high-end pancake lounge ishtyle crowd that i expected
- first cycling in a foreign country
- first public bodysearch at an airport
- first time someone gave me a camera as a present. thank you.
- first time in harlem
- first medieval festival
- first time staying at a (tinycramped) hostel
- first 24 hour journey
- first real jetlag :p
- first eid away from mom
- first birthday away from friends and family
- first time that the in-laws-meeting circle has been completed
- first comedy club
- first real hash-browns discovery
Thursday, February 28, 2008
shiny
no, i will not be silenced. you hear me? i won't be. i absolutely, positively, will
not allow it to happen. or to be. to be applied to me, like a slimy grey paste, like anasthesia, like a pall, like the white sheet they cover you up with when you're undergoing surgery. to obliterate all signs of you. generalisations are a constant source of comfort, much like fries and that
one t-shirt that you refuse to let go of, even if it's faded and torn in that one place that you always try desperately to hide.
They don't see. They never do. The only times that they notice you is when they want some kind of
reassurance.(Full-stops don't italicise. Have you noticed?)
It's an April of trashy novels, of reaffirmations of childlessness, of this part of the world turning, slowly to face the sun with squinted eyes and a grudging grin. Or maybe that's just me. I never did know I could turn out to be a creature of summer (not sun. Heaven for me would be non-tannable skin or hair that grows into an umbrella). Should have seen it coming with the irresistable night-lights that stretch into the waking hours, the insistence on bed-side lamps, and leaps to emergency lights in absolute terror.
An April of travel, lands unseen seem to stir some long-forgotten desire to see, to breathe. Often, the sheer fear of not being able to cram the three thousand and eighty four things that wikitravel insists that you MUST see into the breathless two days that you can barely afford to be away for leaves. The fear leaves. And what sticks around is absolute joy at even the least common denominator, the sitting-at-random-places-reading-random-books. My country does not let me breathe, and it's the one at fault. You can
cycle. No, you can
sit. The sheer fizzyness of being able to rest your behind on a random bench, alone. The strength in being alone.
You can take your fifteen-thousand rupee hot-ballooning and sell it to millionaires. I could just sit.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
peeled moongphallis and september
i know it's not the month
the same city, different realisations. older, cliches coming to life, chaotic sanity. the collective struggles. i string a thousand phrases, i string you along, one moti and then the next. i have found it is easier to make todo lists, to check, cross, obliterate them out.
than?i have to ask, cuz you have the nerve to question
you refuse to feel deeply about anything, standard issue.
it's all been said before, what
value do you have to add? take ownership, here, and take some salt and butter to go along with it. our polite existence.
did you enjoy the main course ma'am?should I take it away or are you still enjoying it?No, i've never been to england, but i've had first second hand accounts, feet too, but they go neglected. been nosing around alleys where i don't belong too much, mocking something, not sure what anymore, being the only girl in quarters unheard, and that too, denimed.
somehow it gives some kind of power
rush, this denim, territory marked, like female powersuits, and clicking buckled shoes.
why would you antagonisepulverise me, i was merely stating
but i was
but its
but i am
and
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
there are too many tomatoes
Of nights filled with bleepful sounds swiftly sailing through roads unseen, but felt. living on the 4th floor, in this my new home, in this strange boy's room who I call
him in affectionate conversations.
any conversation can turn affectionate somehow
after the much-anticipatedapprehensivehype, after the too-sweet forlorn plucked petals, and the dubai-centerpieces (I've never been there but my candles have), after the symmetrical alignment of bangles, the harrassed coordination and traffic jams, and the clear plastic bowls that were never found, sets in stillness.
i couldn't help it/it's all your fault
Monday, April 02, 2007
Anytime
