An ineffable spirit

Lately the news has been tremendously full of all manner of race-related things, and this is GOOD. I am just getting a little overwhelmed by all the caring that I feel myself automatically undertaking, and as someone attempting to get schoolwork done as a graduate student in a challenging program, this is a bad idea.

Not to mention that I am growing tired of being in this atmosphere that leads you to believe in all sorts of things that are not really true...

the ridiculous age

There is something about going back to the things you wrote when writing was the thing you did. By "something", of course, I mean "something embarrassing". It isn't only that you see the starry-eyed optimism of youth from the cynical-eyed viewpoint of your old age, but it is that you can no longer relate to it. And you can no longer write with the same ease and disregard for typographical errors that you once did.

I used to write emails to strangers on the internet. There are chances I have said this before; I don't think I will bother to check. Why can I not repeat myself on the internet? It isn't as though someone is going to come up to me and say, "Hey, lady, you've been telling that same story for decades and it's getting old." Actually, that would be kind of awesome, because it would mean someone's actually following my blog. This is even more unlikely, because of the number of times I've:

a. changed the name of the blog

b. deleted the blog

c. changed the address of the blog

d. written somewhere else entirely.

So I will return, thoughtlessly, planlessly, grammarlessly - because I'm uncool like that.

just some regular feeling sorry for myself

Today I was on the phone with the ex-boyfriend (the one I thought I was in love with, remember?) and he told me he would be out of town this weekend because he was travelling to Mysore with his girlfriend.

Score!

Who feels like the hugest horse's ass in the country?

realizations

Last night I got drunk for the first time in my life. That's twenty-five years, five months and twenty days that I have spent drinking no more than 20ml of alcohol at any one time.

***

After being interrupted by a welcome but unexpected visit from the cousin, with interesting conversations and controversial topics; followed by thinking a lot about the so-called bad habits (drinking smoking drugs sex) that girls like me are not supposed to indulge in but do; I am angry all over again.

Why is it that innocents who have nothing but their virtue lose it the first time someone comes by and says he loves them? I feel so stupid. and used. and angry.

I don't want to feel angry. I want to be able to pretend it was not important. that it was a learning experience. That the disgust and fear and shame and willingness to please that forced me into a situation I didn't want to be in (should I spell it out? I cannot. I cannot.) don't make me less of a person.

Chastity was given a bad name and hung and I did nothing to stop it because I wanted so much to feel important.

I hate myself for my weakness. I hate the other for his blindness, his inability to respect my discomfort, his unkindness and apathy. I hate him. I hate him. I want him to hurt, and I don't know how to achieve that.

This cause me so much pain. I cannot say.

P.S. longer happier post soon. who the fuck cares anyway? not you accidental reader. move along. nothing to see here. these are not the droids you're looking for.

decisions!

I have just been over at Allie's and I have realised some very important facts:

1. I was never as funny as I thought I was

2. The first-and-only-boyfriend-who-is-now-ex kept me away from the internet and my blog and that was a bad thing for me to have allowed anyone to do

3. I have forgotten all the html that I once knew

4. Allie is awesome! And inspirational! Also there are real people who still care about language! (I don't know if you still check links, Allie. Chances are that you do because you have comment moderation, so if you are here... Welcome! I was not always as incoherent as my latest posts might make me appear to be. Once upon a time I was prolific, if not very interestingly so. Also you are awesome.)

I have also made some resolutions, viz:

1. No more zynga games

2. A return to the blog! That means the first blog and no making new ones just because I want to re-invent myself. That is not allowed.

3. Re-learn html and make the blog look like I've actually put some effort into it, for God's sake.

4. No whining about lack of blog-friends. They may never come, but whining will help nobody.

5. No more falling for jerks and making them the centre of my life! I AM SERIOUS T YOU HEAR ME.

These are my resolutions.

I had better stick to them, or else, etc.

old, dim light

The problem with losing a friend who was a part of your physical existence is that it is so much harder to find quick acceptable substitutes. Or any kind of substitutes at all...
I am sad.

breaking up

when i was drinking
when i was with you
living it up when the rent was due
with nothing and no one to live up to

you and me dying on the vine
holding hands and drinking wine
now i'm not the same girl i left behind with you

twelve bars behind us
and twelve bars to go
bottles of beer lined up in a row
one for each hour you didn't show

you and me dying everyday
getting high just to pass away
but that's not the reason i couldn't stay with you

now i am sober
now i'm alone
three years have gone by since you have gone
letting you go
letting me go on

but i'll raise a glass now to you and me
to to lift me higher so i can see
which of these blessings are killing me

When I was drinking - Hem

return!

The T is back to having adventures again. What I'm not sure of is whether the T is back in entirety, or if she only surfaces when I'm writing about her.

I went to the Himalayas. It was a time. There were many adventures with an Elf Express and lost horses and sleeping bags that fell in a stream and a cold goatherd's hut by night with snow leopards roaming the icy slopes eyeing sheep and goats. There was abandonment and reconciliation and a sari and a beard. It was a wonderful, magnificent, unforgettable time. I think I will forgo talking about it.

What else has been happening! So much. Let us enumerate...

There were the Iranians:

"This morning u ask me about I am your boy friend or not. Yes i am ur boy friend. Now cal me."

There was the gentleman at the theatre on my day off:

"The next time you go for a movie alone you should call me!"

There was the auto driver who refused to take my money (I did finally pay him) and then sent me morning SMSes:

"Smile-ever sad--never Speak--ever silence--never Share--ever hide--never Care--ever forget-never because we are BEST Friends forever. :)"

There was the recording I made for the M. K. Retail summer offers:

"Now save Rs. threeee hundred. Happy shopping!"

The recording is currently playing at all outlets in the city. :)

There was the woman who chased me across Shivajinagar bus terminal for Rs.5, the auto driver who gave me a lecture on what women should wear and then gave me credit because I didn't have change, the sunglasses I kept leaving everywhere I went, helpful strangers everywhere, the four blind people wandering around bus stands looking for their buses...

Life is back to being interesting. :)

hello!

The odd thing is that it takes a very large irritant (for example, in the shape of my sister) to actually get me blogging again.

Things have been relatively good in my life lately - I have a new job (which I enjoy and I'm good at), I have supplementary sources of income (which I also enjoy and am good at), the boyfriend and I are on a "break", but I'm pretty sure I'm breaking up with him in the end unless something drastic happens to change my mind.

What is getting slightly closer to unbearable is the situation at home. The fact that so many people who know me in real life read this blog should be a deterrent to my outpourings, but "frankly my dear," and the rest of it.

"Even now I'm bearing with your short temper."

It seems to be harder to live with a twenty-year-old than to live with a teenager. Why is this? Because there's virtually no difference between her two weeks ago and her now except for what she'll be filling in the "age" column of paperwork, is why.

The question of privacy rears its head again so I'm going to stop now.

g'day.

I will write again when I want to.

some search

The matrimonial express is gaining speed but still hasn't found either its bearings or its destination. I'm stuck in the middle reading pathetic profiles and comparing people to someone else.

I'm not certain I'm ready to settle down, and I'm sure that none of these people are the ones I'd choose if I were.

The whole business is just making me sick to my stomach.

bits and pieces

Most people tend to have a stock supply of stories, the tales they tell when they invite you over to their house for dinner; the ones every person in your family knows because each of them have been told the story at least once, and some more.

People have begun to bore me. People I used to know; whose company gave me pleasure, or, at the very least, entertainment. I wonder exactly how snobbish I will grow to be, with this new-discovered disgust of repetitions. I will move out of the house because I cannot stand to be around my mothers complaints of the world at large (because I can quote them in my sleep) and I will stop talking to most of the engineers I know (because if you have heard one of them talk you have heard them all) and I will


I have always had a problem letting things (oh, and people) go.

I have been searching for people.
The old ones who would stop by and pretend to be interested in my witty recollections of mundane events. I beg your pardon, they probably did enjoy them - I know I did.

The T's life has been unusually full of adventure lately. She wishes she could stop and tell everyone, but she's been having trouble with her words of late.

However, in other news, she's feeling much better about other miseries of her tumultuous life. Part of this is because she is certain sombody else will come along who will understand who carroll and kent are, and

what's on my mind

A while ago I felt very loved.

Today I feel. less. I feel less loved. I feel misunderstood (then again i've always felt misunderstood) and maligned. (yes a good word i approve)

I'm wondering if it is up to me to apologize.
Do people do this often? Wonder if it's their job to apologize? Do they wonder at how simple things can go very wrong and blow themselves out of proportion and lead to yelling and tears and slammed-down-phones-in-the-middle-of-conversations? Do they worry about how to tell the other person they're sorry even though they don't think they're wrong? Do they worry about whether this is the end (the end my friend) and whether what does not kill you only makes you stronger?

I am not wrong. But I am sorry.

But I am not wrong.

How does this go, exactly?

after who knows

I tend towards the meta in all my talk posts; it's part of the reason I call them that - it is a remnant of the days when I thought I could be clever.

I am reaching a point in my life where most things tend to do a lot of looming over my head: my age, my lack of a job, my inability to make something great of myself, my refusal to be married. This is the first time I can remember, however, when mild-panicky reactions and feelings of inadequacy haven't sent me scurrying to words. Well, it is now, but it hasn't been for a while. I am afraid to look at the dates for fear that realizing exactly how long it has been might actually cause irreparable brain damage.

I went by The Cat's home today, the virtual one where I first met him. I miss the way conversations with that person made me feel, as though there were secrets that I was privy to by virtue of things I had done inadvertently; as though I was smarter, and funnier, and wittier than so many others because someone seemed to see me that way.

The odd thing is that there is someone in my life now who loves me very much, but in whose company I never feel anything extraordinary about myself except for the fact that I am very loved.

I realized today that I have grasped very few opportunities to talk about him, my mystery boyfriend: this person with whom I have so much in common and so little; about whom I am asked every day and about whom I return noncommittal platitude-phrases (potter indian michigan kannada jewish 28 5'8" ) because I haven't given myself a chance to talk about him with myself yet.

There isn't much I can say about him without feeling as though I am violating spaces; I have not yet found a way to talk of someone without imagining them in the audience as well.

(It was something that made it easy with the others I spoke of and wrote of, the fact that I thought I knew the way they read things... Of course sometimes I was wrong in the readings of those readings, and that was when I was visited by my dear friends confusion, embarrassment, and shame (good times, good times) and after that it was just splendid fun for all concerned, of course.)

I ramble. I think I can vaguely remember a time when my posts had points, and beginnings and ends and a couple of clever sentences somewhere along the way, but for now I am willing to wait and see what getting back to writing feels like.

internal audits

The snow is here. The light is bright.

There are big changes around the corner, and I am aching with the waiting of it. There was a secret medicine ball that fell open before I could pretend I had not guessed what it was, and now I must pretend I never heard; my very bones turn to mush at the thought.

It has been four months since I left my home behind; did you know, my dear? I have grown in ways I did not anticipate; and those are the best ways to grow (and the best ways to listen to new music). And I have been singing lullabies across states, seated on balconies in the dark.

from my love and to my love

Oh look! I let go of somebody. Not completely; I have graduated only to that point where looking at his name causes the littlest of heart-pangs and a but oh, have you forgotten? and then I am sensible (and the merest littlest teeniest bit homicidal) again. Someday he will return a letter, and then I will forgive him and move on. Stealing my creativity without any reciprocals is not a crime I am ready to pardon yet, and I have already allowed far too many to get away with it.

I have been dreaming of ways to sneak into somebody's round house.

Unforeseen, this most sweet, beautiful change.

women's days

I have been working three weeks without a holiday, and yet I have found the time to visit India Gate at midnight and eat meetha paan while boys with accents played hotel California on out-of-tune acoustic guitars nearby and great shiny lights lit shiny construction sites; and I have found the time to take walks through the market during Tuesday haat with flatmates and drink bitter carrot juice at roadside stalls and be overcharged by fruitsellers; and I have found the time to be a Shoulder to people who told me and told me and then told me they felt better because they'd told me; and I have found the time to watch Slumdog Millionaire on somebody's laptop on a bed with people i had known for less than a week; and I have found the time to split a meal four ways with strangers when I ordered vegetarian and the others did not, and the time to complain to other strangers about it.

And today and tonight I met old and new geeks I would be a groupie for; and made hypocritical conversations on the bejewelled sofa of my landlady; and wandered the streets alone in the dark with clenched fists afraid that someone would step out of the shadows and I would be stuck in a strange city with nobody to turn to; and I called and called the one person whom I promised I would not, because I knew he would be the Shoulder I needed when I needed, and I needed him.

I am tired and sleep-deprived and overworked and underpaid and all I'm thinking is that I miss the one I love.
What does it mean to be a woman?

And I have to speculate that God himself
Did make us into corresponding shapes like
Puzzle pieces from the clay
True, it may seem like a stretch, but
Its thoughts like this that catch my troubled
Head when you're away when I am missing you to death

:) Ow.

tired.

I am alone and far away from home and I have gone a week without a whole night of uninterrupted sleep.
The only thing that really bothers me is the amount of money I'm paying to stay in Delhi.

sigh. I just cried a few tears at the unfairness of it all.
Well, and back to work, and work, and another Sunday of work. Isn't my life wonderful?

in delhi

Time! Time! I need more time! But I will make use of the little I've stolen, now. Oh constant reader (and at this point, that's certainly the adjective. Or perhaps manically optimistic? But there - I do not want to drive away the few that remained.), do bear with me while I attempt to talk of the drama, and drama, and melodrama (and perhaps a little light comedy) that I've been immersed in over the last few weeks...


The office I work for has two bases: one in Delhi (where the boss is from) and the other in Bangalore (where the boss lives). Seeing that I had been working in the Bangalore office for over ten months, I decided it was high time I learned what it was like to work in another city, and I firmly told my boss so.
All right, fine. She offered a chance to work in Delhi, and I grabbed it. The main reason I grabbed it was because the agreement was that I would serve out my term (which ends in June, and I do not use the term (ha ha) lightly) in Delhi, after which I would decide where I would go next.

I didn't get a raise, in case anyone was wondering. The office doesn't work that way. all I was promised was that any expenses incurred purely because of my displacement would be borne by the office. This meant rent, and food, and a round trip ticket by third AC to Delhi from Bangalore. Everything else I was taking care of at Bangalore, I had to continue to take care of. This meant a new Delhi phone number and all its attendant expenses, any medical expenses incurred, and all travel to and from the office. [This last is really not considerable (in that it cannot be considered), because I was either travelling with her, or staying less than a minute away from the office, as I am now.]
The initial plan included a stop-over at a site we were working on in Chhattisgarh. I was not very keen on this, because not only are there no direct trains from Bangalore to Raipur, but I was carrying with me three months' worth of baggage, and until two days before I was due to leave, I had no idea who was to accompany me, a lone female, to the State with the highest crime rate in India. (I'm indebted for this piece of information to the boyfriend - she expects you to stop over at the state with the highest crime rate on your way to the place with the second highest?)
The long and short of it was that I got out of the plan the easy way.
I asked my father to talk to my boss. (The repercussion of this is that she now says she won't send me anywhere, which is unfair because one of the reasons I wanted to be in North India were our projects here. Oh, well.)

Thus it was that, on the 11th of February 2009, two days after the T boarded the one-point-three-day-long Delhi-Bangalore Rajdhani Express with one suitcase, one handbag, one backpack, and one paper bag with items her mother insisted she would need. (She didn't really, none except one.)
But the rest in the next installment!

a lack of poetry

stomach-clenching at the thought of yelling.

Apparently my need for approval has not gone anywhere.

curveballs

New beginnings, and promises of large unwieldy disturbances in the force.
Why is it I must make life and love so complicated?

Here is a new year in which to make something spectacular.
What will you change tomorrow?