anniversary

Happy birthday to you, love.

What more can I say, really? Perhaps a bio. :)
March 26, 2006. A young, less confident, less articulate, less crazy T began, after inspiration derived from a boy, a blog. Her first blog. Without an idea of what blogging was, without an idea of the things she wanted to say, or didn't want to say. With a url that had her name in it, and a first post that was all pretension, she tiptoed, tentative, into revealing her soul.
Woke up at four and five, stayed up till one and two; wrote in spite of pains and aches and mother's nagging if only just to put down that one thought that refuses to sit silent in the head.
Perhaps that's why I write, to know what I am and who I am. And how well I can say it.

One cannot have anniversaries without thank yous. And so.
To San. The first one. In so many many ways, and not all nice ones. But I couldn't have done anything without you, babe.
To Mojo. First Fan. Adoptive parent. All-round fabulous person.
To PJ. Inspiration. Distraction.
To Bee. No words here.
To Andy. For pleasant conversations.
To the One. For the rhymes.
To Cat. 1066. And the children's section.
To Kishi. For pie. With cheese.
Oh, there are more. Monkie and AC and the boys of PSBB, and all the others I read and envy. I don't want to begin naming them, because I fear I won't know when to stop.
Let's just say, if you stop by here at all, there's a hug in it for you.

Thank you, everyone.
It's been a wonderful year.

and how pathetic can i get?

When the day is long and the night
the night is yours alone
When you're sure you've had enough
of this life, well hang on
Don't let yourself go
'cause everybody cries
and everybody hurts sometimes

Sometimes everything is wrong
Now it's time to sing along
When your day is night alone
(hold on, hold on)
If you feel like letting go
(hold on)
When you think you've had too much
of this life, well hang on

'Cause everybody hurts
Take comfort in your friends
Everybody hurts
Don't throw your hand
Oh, no
Don't throw your hand
If you feel like you're alone
no, no, no, you are not alone

If you're on your own in this life
the days and nights are long
When you think you've had too much
of this life to hang on

Well, everybody hurts sometimes
Everybody cries
And everybody hurts sometimes
And everybody hurts sometimes
So, hold on, hold on
Hold on, hold on, hold on,
hold on, hold on, hold on
Everybody hurts
You are not alone


REM - Everybody hurts

don't.

want to talk about it.

one week

A week from now, exactly, the blog will be a year old.
Which blog? All of them? None of them? One of them? The lost diary, probably. It's the only one that has retained its address through all the intervening rubbish. The strange thing is that it was always the one intended to be the secret, the hidden, the were you invited blog.
Things don't always work out the way you mean them to.

I'll do the birthday post there, I think. The My God I've written nearly five hundred posts post. The Holy crap it's been an entire year! post.
Here, I'll just do the thank you.

rhythms

oh, hi
hello
oh, and
i know
would you?
yes, please
so pie?
with cheese

:)

I'm sorry, but. People have been nice, and I couldn't resist.

disconnected things

I find it extremely annoying that I am so easily swayed by sob stories. It is just so easy to get me listening to a story of how you had ten kids, out of whom four are dead; and of the remaining none does a thing for their mother; and how your sister, on the other hand, has three daughters, all of whom are successful, and actually refused to get married so they could work and pay for an operation for their mother, who had lung cancer... yes, well. I pay rather more attention when people talk than I should, I think. It's just that it's rude not to give your complete attention to a person's performance, don't you think? And then I feel guilty for having listened to the entire thing and not helping because I'm just too selfish.
I just can't win in this world.

Meanwhile, all Transport is Trauma. Came home in the bus today, and the bag was heavily laden (oh! oh! new books! new! okay tell you later) and very painful to hang on the shoulder while awkwardly positioned in the midst of tired fat ladies. Hence I asked some girl to hold the bag for me. And spent the entire rest of the ride trying to keep an eye on the bag over shoulders and between chunnis and under arms. Sigh, paranoia.
I want to be able to trust strangers. And be justified.

Also managed to Stare a Boy Down while walking home from the bus stop post-paranoia. Was walking along all self-aware and such; keeping a wary corner of the eye out for undesirable elements (such as men) on the dark empty streets. Passed a gang of college-type boys while I was strutting my stuff (^-^), and naturally one of them started humming something at the back of my head all filmi-style. So I stopped and looked at him. That's all I did, just looked. Didn't ask him to shut up, or stop, or what he was doing. I just stopped and looked him in the eye.
Isn't it odd what confrontation does to a person?
One of these days I'm going to get myself into something I can't get out of.

For some reason I seem to get very 'xasperated when I fail at male-type actions. e.g. starting a bike, in front of boys. It irks me to imagine them going, "Oh, a girl". It IRKS ME, I say. I'm not a fan of damsel in distress unless it's emotional, I think. That's just so romantic, I think. Plus it works both ways.

You know what's awful? Laughing at a cruel joke someone makes just so you don't rock the boat, that's what. Agreeing with someone just so that you aren't put to the trouble of defending your own personal opinion. Where do you draw lines, after all? People's opinions are their own, right? And laughing at someone's accent, or clothing, or hair, or makeup, or height... it's just human nature, right?
sigh.

breaking out

Wish I'd said
Dear Praveen,
Thank you. Thank you for all the hours I spent on you, and all the work I never got done. Thank you for all the promises you never kept, and all the compliments you never meant. Thank you for making me feel unique for that little time in my life, and then dropping out of my life again without warning and without explanation.
Thank you for the closure.
Dear Hari,
Thank you. Thank you for confusing me. Thank you for making me believe there was something in me that I hadn't seen yet, but was worth finding out. Thank you for then turning that thought on its head. Thank you for all the time I spent wondering what I'd done to make you treat me like someone you didn't know.
Thank you for the clarity.
Dear Sanjeev,
No thank you.

Perhaps it helps that I know that none of them stops by here anyway.

and i won't say for whom this is meant

Suppose I said
I am on my best behavior
There are times
I lose my worried mind

Suppose I said
Colors change for no good reason
Words will go
From poetry to prose

And I
In time
Will come around
I always do
For you

Suppose I said
You're my saving grace?

Would you want me when I'm not myself?
Wait it out while I am someone else?

John Mayer - Not Myself

old familiar

Once in a while a day comes along that is so full of things and places and people that it just begs to be chronicled in every detail, but those days usually turn out so full that they leave no time to talk about them beyond a mental note in the head. Or multiple mental notes, even.
Something someone said got me thinking about the stories I tell, and the embellishments I add, and the liberties I take with the truth in the telling. That's the wonderful thing about human memory, really - its ability to be at once both vague and specific, and still entirely selective in everything.
Its tendency towards associations - people with places, and places with people, and them both with adventures; and sights and smells and sounds and songs. There are certain things I can never think of without immediately thinking of certain people who were so intensely into those things that they got linked to them in my head.
Like 1066. Or Pratchett. Or Oasis. Or London. Or Cricket. Or Milan (milan milan milan). Or India Coffee House.

What I love about every day; the idea that makes me look at every instant that I'm out of the house as an opportunity for an adventure; is the chance to make new associations. Every day is different, because you see new people in old places, and old people in new places, and old people and old places in some way new; and boom! you have yourself a new story.

I love going places I've been; I love meeting people I have seen.
Hmmm. That sounded suspiciously pseudo-sentimental :) but oh, it needed to be said.

There is really nothing I enjoy quite as much as visiting old places differently (different direction and transport and company and purpose). Unless, of course, it's landing up somewhere I've once been lost in some way new and unexpected. Going around in circles on foot, or on the scooter, or in the car; asking directions from strangers, going wherever instinct leads you… and then, suddenly, surprise! there you are in a place you know from before; and all the maps in your head shift to accommodate. Or you wander between two places you know, and take a turn unintentional, and oh! Here's where you were lost last week!
The first time I connected Malleshwaram and Fraser Town and home, all accidentally, I went around in a happy daze for days. (ooh! lookie, a little pretty :) )

Twice last week, in a space of two days, I visited a part of town I'd once gotten lost in. When you've spent an hour and a half walking up a road and then down the same road because you have no idea which direction you're supposed to be headed (and ending up having adventures involving kindly men of God and women selling guavas, incidentally) you tend to get that stretch of road marked out in your head. And then, to end up visiting that exact same road - from the other direction, twice in two days, with two different people - and having the entire geography in your head reassemble to fit in that new information... oh, there's no feeling like it in all the world.