A new couple has moved into apartment 4 D. That is to say, they've got the movers to come in and dump their two dozen cartons on the floor. They haven't opened them yet - it's too cold - they've turned on the heating but it'll be a while before the room is warm enough for them to unpack. The cartons lie scattered about, each cardboard box a small private god to be knelt before and worshipped.
They have only been married a week, so there is no furniture.
It feels like there is something they could be doing in the meantime, but they are not sure what. They sit there, in their gloves and caps and winter coats, wondering why it is that they can find nothing to talk about, when this is what they've been planning for, all this while. They tell themselves it's just that they're tired after their long drive. They tell themselves it'll be better tomorrow.
And they remember to feel relieved, thinking their boxes have arrived safely. While unknown to them something has broken, and the stain of it will be on everything.
***
It is two weeks before they get the curtains up. Two weeks in which they pretend to be bashful of strangers when it is really each other they are embarassed by.
When he turns off the light tonight, she says nothing. He's right, she thinks. Best to stay in the dark a little longer.
Saturday, July 02, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Stones
To build a house lay one stone on another.
To make a road just lay them side by side.
For some shall live together as lovers
While others must walk away as friends.
To make a road just lay them side by side.
For some shall live together as lovers
While others must walk away as friends.
Saturday, June 04, 2011
The Dark Side
I love dark chocolate.
Who dreamt
That joy could be this dark?
That love could be bitten in half
So easily?
That guilt was a girl with sticky hands?
Who knew regret could taste like sunlight?
Or that the defeat of an entire summer
Would dissolve in a single mouth?
When you give yourself equally
There is no surrender
There is only the certainty of being melted and glorious
At the instant of your destruction.
But dark chocolate is a special favourite of mine - there's something about the intense bitterness of it that makes it, for me, the concentrated essence of everything chocolate-y. A really good dark chocolate is like fine wine - that first insistent rosebud of flavour that blossoms slowly into the full, rich flower of an aftertaste. The same heady feeling flowing straight from your palate to your brain, the connections in your head resolving themselves into a network of intense, almost infinite joy.
Some people, I know, don't like dark chocolate - they feel it's too bitter. For such philistines there are many alternatives - milk chocolates, peanut flavoured chocolates, granola bars, even (shudder!) fruit candies. But for the true chocolate connoisseur there is only one true taste of chocolate - and that is the subtle, delicate and amazingly concise flavour of genuine bitterness.
P.S. A friend of mine brought me two huge slabs of dreamy dark chocolate this weekend, hence the rapture. This post is most definitely dedicated to her.
Who dreamt
That joy could be this dark?
That love could be bitten in half
So easily?
That guilt was a girl with sticky hands?
Who knew regret could taste like sunlight?
Or that the defeat of an entire summer
Would dissolve in a single mouth?
When you give yourself equally
There is no surrender
There is only the certainty of being melted and glorious
At the instant of your destruction.
But dark chocolate is a special favourite of mine - there's something about the intense bitterness of it that makes it, for me, the concentrated essence of everything chocolate-y. A really good dark chocolate is like fine wine - that first insistent rosebud of flavour that blossoms slowly into the full, rich flower of an aftertaste. The same heady feeling flowing straight from your palate to your brain, the connections in your head resolving themselves into a network of intense, almost infinite joy.
Some people, I know, don't like dark chocolate - they feel it's too bitter. For such philistines there are many alternatives - milk chocolates, peanut flavoured chocolates, granola bars, even (shudder!) fruit candies. But for the true chocolate connoisseur there is only one true taste of chocolate - and that is the subtle, delicate and amazingly concise flavour of genuine bitterness.
P.S. A friend of mine brought me two huge slabs of dreamy dark chocolate this weekend, hence the rapture. This post is most definitely dedicated to her.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Triangle with two points
He envies me for being with you when you died.
I envy him for not knowing how that felt.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
The Girl Next Seat
Will someone please explain to me this curious male fascination with having a good-looking woman sit next to you on a flight? So many men I know, perfectly normal guys in every other way, get stupidly happy about the fact that their travel companion was young, female and attractive. They'll even gloat about it afterwards. The whole thing is practically an urban legend. (There are also, of course, the people who tell you that so and so airline is great because their hostesses are so much better looking - another piece of reasoning I've never understood).
I don't get this. For starters, it's not as though she's choosing to sit with you. There isn't a separate check-in counter for the seat next to yours (Economy Class, Business Class, Dusty Bullet Class) with a mob of women fighting to be first in line. It just happened that the next middle seat available was in your row. And even if it's free seating, she's probably choosing that particular seat because there's space in the overhead bin or because someone in front of her just took the last aisle.
And even if she did choose based on the way you look, what are the odds that she was thinking "Oh wow! what an incredible hunk of man-meat! Let me sit next to him and bathe in the aura of his magnetic sexual presence"? Isn't it more likely that she thought you looked too old / emasculated / gay to be much of a threat?
Plus it's not like you're in a relationship or something. Say she passes you your lunch tray. Say you exchange a few smiles. Say at some point you say "Excuse me" and pass her on your way to the restroom (there's an association of ideas you want!). Say you get lucky and she needs to be taught how to buckle her seat-belt. Say you decide to live dangerously and offer her your newspaper after you're done with it. It's not exactly Antony and Cleopatra, is it? I mean, compared to this, watching your clothes tumble in the dryer next to hers would be wildly carnal. And what are the odds that she's going to get off at the first stop-over and leave behind a little note with the words "We'll always have Seat 14 A and 14 B"?
In theory, of course, you could use this opportunity to start a conversation, dazzle her with your suave charm and secure both her phone number and the promise of a first date before the seatbelt sign went off. There are, I'm sure, people who can do this. But let's face it - if you're sitting there dreaming about the vagaries of a boarding card algorithm playing cupid for you, you're not one of those guys. Chances are, you couldn't talk your way into a woman's affections over a candlelight dinner with the mariachi singing softly in the background, so the combination of crummy airline food, turbulence and uncle-ji snoring on the other side of her is certainly not going to work.
But let's be optimistic. Let's say you get really lucky and your plane goes down over the Atlantic. You rise to the occasion. You help her with her oxygen mask. You comfort her. You get that floating feeling inside you and you convince yourself it's love, not depressurisation. Before you know it you're sliding down the escape ramp together and she's clinging to you in the lifeboat while the sharks gather and the waves seethe. It's like something out of a Tallulah Bankhead film. Only trouble is, there are two dozen frustrated men like you on this lifeboat, and chances are you're the only one with a good looking woman on his arm, so when the time comes to decide who gets eaten first, guess who they're going to pick.
It hardly seems worth it, does it? Personally, I'd rather get a scruffy twenty-something sitting next to me. He's less likely to have too much cabin baggage, less likely to be finicky or complain, and if I end up having to argue with him over something I have the comfort of knowing that everyone in the plane will be on my side.
Though I have to say it would be convenient if airlines would let you select a seat based on the profiles of people next to you. That way, I could safely avoid all women of child-bearing age.
I don't get this. For starters, it's not as though she's choosing to sit with you. There isn't a separate check-in counter for the seat next to yours (Economy Class, Business Class, Dusty Bullet Class) with a mob of women fighting to be first in line. It just happened that the next middle seat available was in your row. And even if it's free seating, she's probably choosing that particular seat because there's space in the overhead bin or because someone in front of her just took the last aisle.
And even if she did choose based on the way you look, what are the odds that she was thinking "Oh wow! what an incredible hunk of man-meat! Let me sit next to him and bathe in the aura of his magnetic sexual presence"? Isn't it more likely that she thought you looked too old / emasculated / gay to be much of a threat?
Plus it's not like you're in a relationship or something. Say she passes you your lunch tray. Say you exchange a few smiles. Say at some point you say "Excuse me" and pass her on your way to the restroom (there's an association of ideas you want!). Say you get lucky and she needs to be taught how to buckle her seat-belt. Say you decide to live dangerously and offer her your newspaper after you're done with it. It's not exactly Antony and Cleopatra, is it? I mean, compared to this, watching your clothes tumble in the dryer next to hers would be wildly carnal. And what are the odds that she's going to get off at the first stop-over and leave behind a little note with the words "We'll always have Seat 14 A and 14 B"?
In theory, of course, you could use this opportunity to start a conversation, dazzle her with your suave charm and secure both her phone number and the promise of a first date before the seatbelt sign went off. There are, I'm sure, people who can do this. But let's face it - if you're sitting there dreaming about the vagaries of a boarding card algorithm playing cupid for you, you're not one of those guys. Chances are, you couldn't talk your way into a woman's affections over a candlelight dinner with the mariachi singing softly in the background, so the combination of crummy airline food, turbulence and uncle-ji snoring on the other side of her is certainly not going to work.
But let's be optimistic. Let's say you get really lucky and your plane goes down over the Atlantic. You rise to the occasion. You help her with her oxygen mask. You comfort her. You get that floating feeling inside you and you convince yourself it's love, not depressurisation. Before you know it you're sliding down the escape ramp together and she's clinging to you in the lifeboat while the sharks gather and the waves seethe. It's like something out of a Tallulah Bankhead film. Only trouble is, there are two dozen frustrated men like you on this lifeboat, and chances are you're the only one with a good looking woman on his arm, so when the time comes to decide who gets eaten first, guess who they're going to pick.
It hardly seems worth it, does it? Personally, I'd rather get a scruffy twenty-something sitting next to me. He's less likely to have too much cabin baggage, less likely to be finicky or complain, and if I end up having to argue with him over something I have the comfort of knowing that everyone in the plane will be on my side.
Though I have to say it would be convenient if airlines would let you select a seat based on the profiles of people next to you. That way, I could safely avoid all women of child-bearing age.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Photo finish
I hate being photographed. I will do almost anything to avoid it. If I'm travelling, I'll only take pictures of the landscape / sights, and leave people out entirely. I'll try and go exploring on my own. In any group setting, I'll always volunteer to wield the camera, not because I like taking photographs but because that way I'm the one behind the camera, not in front of it. If that's not possible, and my presence in the picture is unavoidable (I can't 'accidentally' miss it by being in the loo, for instance) I will find the tallest person in the room and make it a point to stand behind him / her, so that the most you will see of me is a tuft of my unruly hair peeping over someone else's shoulder.
Why do I hate photographs of myself, you ask?
Because they strike me as being too deterministic a form of evidence for my tentative, even circumstantial presence. Records of a permanence I neither feel nor aspire to. That I was in such a place and at such a time means something, the photograph suggests, and this is almost never true. My being there is usually a matter of coincidence and serendipity, sometimes it is the result of casual choice - all other narrative is convenient, but false.
Because I'm tired of the way people are always smiling in them. Or trying to. As though life were inherently happy. As though this were our 'true' face. Or as though the fact of having this role of the lens' object thrust upon us, of being forced to step out of the stream of our life and assume this fake pose, were pleasurable in itself and "cause enough / for calling up that spot of joy". Who exactly do we hope to fooll by this? Personally, I'd rather see pictures of people crying. If you're trying to figure out how beautiful someone is, that's the right way to do it. What was it Emily Dickinson said? "I like a look of agony / Because I know it's true / Men do not sham convulsion / Nor simulate a throe".
Because photographs limit and circumscribe. Because they are an insult to both memory and imagination, as though either needed the help of some piece of printed paper to perform its office.
Because they will insist, like spoilt children, on their own version of things, as though accuracy really mattered in something so trivial as an individual's life.
Because every photograph is a lie. When you see a group photograph you think: the people in it are together, they are having a shared experience. But this is not true, because each person experiences the moment in his own way. Ask the people in the photograph about the day it was taken and each one of them will have a completely different set of memories, and none of their versions will be exactly right. The photograph is simply a brazen attempt to hide this lack of connection, to put a brave face on the irreconcilable differences between us. A desperate attempt to pretend that we have something in common.
Because photographs are two-dimensional. Any real record of the past would have to include so much more. Not that one instant only, but the moments that came before and after. And other things. The smell of the freshly mown grass, the distant noise of the traffic, the feel of the sunlight on your skin. What person A was thinking about, what person B was feeling. The warmth of these bodies - their heartbeat, their breathing.
Because photographs are a claim: one that I have no wish to make. They are flags planted in history, an attempt to claim a certain handsbreadth of the past for our own. As though it was possible for the past to belong to someone. As though such ownership were valuable.
Because photographs are symptoms of the worst nostalgia of all - the nostalgia for memory. Where does it come from, this desire of ours to remember and be remembered? Why do we want to be unforgettable? What good will it do us to think or know that people will remember us even when we are no longer with them? And do we really believe that this picture, this foolish little image, will do the trick for us, grant us immortality?
People are always showing me old photographs of someone I used to know (or someone they claim I used to know) and saying "Remember him?" I usually don't. And the reason I usually don't is because in all likelihood the person either bored me or irritated me, or, at best, I never got to know anything about him except maybe his name and so there's really nothing to 'remember'. It annoys me to know that I'm expected to remember such people, and it frightens me to think that they might still remember me (or rather, that they remember the version of me as I was then; no, actually, the version of me as I was then that they subjectively saw). The few people / places / times I do remember I need no photographs to remind me of. In general I find the 'if you can't remember it, forget it' rule a good one. That way the memories I keep are the ones I truly value. Remembering isn't cheap, and it shouldn't be.
And even if you want to cling to some memories (and which of us doesn't) why make them public? Why create this common vision of the past, instead of keeping your own unique and inaccessible version of yourself? I hate photographs of me because they deprive me of the right to control my own memories. You know how in the old days when a king died they buried him along with his household and all his worldly goods. That's what I'd like done with all my photographs - bury / burn them with me when I die so that afterwards there's no proof left of the fact that I ever existed. [1]
I hate photographs because they assume that the purpose of life is to establish your presence in the world. Personally, I'd rather establish my absence. After all, if people notice you're not there, it means they miss you.
I hate photographs because they make me look involved, and therefore culpable. Because every time I look at a photograph of me I know that some day, in some way or the other, someone will use it against me.
"Preserve your memories / they're all that's left you" Simon & Garfunkel sing. Can you imagine what that would be like? To have got so old, so tired, that you could neither see nor imagine any future, that you no longer cared about the present and couldn't remember the past with any clarity; that you had no inner resources left and had to turn to these tiny coloured bits of paper to keep you going. And even then all you'd have would be a lot of fake images from times you probably regret and certainly can't change. Isn't that a terrible thought?
To hell with bookends. Personally, I'd rather fall off the shelf.
P.S. Of course, the real reason I hate photographs is because they make me look fat. But you don't think I'm going to admit to that, do you?
[1] Besides, if there is an afterlife, I'd like to show them around - just think what fun it would be to meet up in hell with the people who forced you to look at their baby pictures, and spend all
Why do I hate photographs of myself, you ask?
Because they strike me as being too deterministic a form of evidence for my tentative, even circumstantial presence. Records of a permanence I neither feel nor aspire to. That I was in such a place and at such a time means something, the photograph suggests, and this is almost never true. My being there is usually a matter of coincidence and serendipity, sometimes it is the result of casual choice - all other narrative is convenient, but false.
Because I'm tired of the way people are always smiling in them. Or trying to. As though life were inherently happy. As though this were our 'true' face. Or as though the fact of having this role of the lens' object thrust upon us, of being forced to step out of the stream of our life and assume this fake pose, were pleasurable in itself and "cause enough / for calling up that spot of joy". Who exactly do we hope to fooll by this? Personally, I'd rather see pictures of people crying. If you're trying to figure out how beautiful someone is, that's the right way to do it. What was it Emily Dickinson said? "I like a look of agony / Because I know it's true / Men do not sham convulsion / Nor simulate a throe".
Because photographs limit and circumscribe. Because they are an insult to both memory and imagination, as though either needed the help of some piece of printed paper to perform its office.
Because they will insist, like spoilt children, on their own version of things, as though accuracy really mattered in something so trivial as an individual's life.
Because every photograph is a lie. When you see a group photograph you think: the people in it are together, they are having a shared experience. But this is not true, because each person experiences the moment in his own way. Ask the people in the photograph about the day it was taken and each one of them will have a completely different set of memories, and none of their versions will be exactly right. The photograph is simply a brazen attempt to hide this lack of connection, to put a brave face on the irreconcilable differences between us. A desperate attempt to pretend that we have something in common.
Because photographs are two-dimensional. Any real record of the past would have to include so much more. Not that one instant only, but the moments that came before and after. And other things. The smell of the freshly mown grass, the distant noise of the traffic, the feel of the sunlight on your skin. What person A was thinking about, what person B was feeling. The warmth of these bodies - their heartbeat, their breathing.
Because photographs are a claim: one that I have no wish to make. They are flags planted in history, an attempt to claim a certain handsbreadth of the past for our own. As though it was possible for the past to belong to someone. As though such ownership were valuable.
Because photographs are symptoms of the worst nostalgia of all - the nostalgia for memory. Where does it come from, this desire of ours to remember and be remembered? Why do we want to be unforgettable? What good will it do us to think or know that people will remember us even when we are no longer with them? And do we really believe that this picture, this foolish little image, will do the trick for us, grant us immortality?
People are always showing me old photographs of someone I used to know (or someone they claim I used to know) and saying "Remember him?" I usually don't. And the reason I usually don't is because in all likelihood the person either bored me or irritated me, or, at best, I never got to know anything about him except maybe his name and so there's really nothing to 'remember'. It annoys me to know that I'm expected to remember such people, and it frightens me to think that they might still remember me (or rather, that they remember the version of me as I was then; no, actually, the version of me as I was then that they subjectively saw). The few people / places / times I do remember I need no photographs to remind me of. In general I find the 'if you can't remember it, forget it' rule a good one. That way the memories I keep are the ones I truly value. Remembering isn't cheap, and it shouldn't be.
And even if you want to cling to some memories (and which of us doesn't) why make them public? Why create this common vision of the past, instead of keeping your own unique and inaccessible version of yourself? I hate photographs of me because they deprive me of the right to control my own memories. You know how in the old days when a king died they buried him along with his household and all his worldly goods. That's what I'd like done with all my photographs - bury / burn them with me when I die so that afterwards there's no proof left of the fact that I ever existed. [1]
I hate photographs because they assume that the purpose of life is to establish your presence in the world. Personally, I'd rather establish my absence. After all, if people notice you're not there, it means they miss you.
I hate photographs because they make me look involved, and therefore culpable. Because every time I look at a photograph of me I know that some day, in some way or the other, someone will use it against me.
"Preserve your memories / they're all that's left you" Simon & Garfunkel sing. Can you imagine what that would be like? To have got so old, so tired, that you could neither see nor imagine any future, that you no longer cared about the present and couldn't remember the past with any clarity; that you had no inner resources left and had to turn to these tiny coloured bits of paper to keep you going. And even then all you'd have would be a lot of fake images from times you probably regret and certainly can't change. Isn't that a terrible thought?
To hell with bookends. Personally, I'd rather fall off the shelf.
P.S. Of course, the real reason I hate photographs is because they make me look fat. But you don't think I'm going to admit to that, do you?
[1] Besides, if there is an afterlife, I'd like to show them around - just think what fun it would be to meet up in hell with the people who forced you to look at their baby pictures, and spend all
Saturday, April 02, 2011
of Billion dreams and Billion smiles
I wasn't born when India achieved its independence neither were my parents but when India lifted the cup, when people flocked the streets with the Indian flag in their hands, when people from different communities, from different walks of life gathered together distributing sweets and celebrating together, I could feel what it would have been like when we got our independence. I know you might think the comparison is just too exaggerated but just look at the way cricket has united all of us and you'll know why I said so.
Diya Ghumake -A billion dreams come blue!!
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