Things I did today when I should have been working

Used a butter knife to scrape off paint splatters from my dressing table mirror.

Stuck two postcards on my wall.

Read blogs about oil pulling and then rinsed my mouth with coconut oil for 20 minutes.

Added a face wash, a body wash, and a body lotion to my cart on Nykaa. Did not check out.

Added a poster of Van Gogh’s Almond Blossom (to go with the postcards on my wall) to my Amazon cart. Did not check out.

Added a map of Delhi to my Amazon cart. Did not check out.

Tried selling my couch online.

Read blogs about reupholstering furniture.

Spoke to a friend on the phone. Told him I had only a little work left and that I couldn’t wait to get done with it.

Cleaned the bedside table.

Cleaned the sink.

Put a honey oatmeal mask on my face.

Bought dental floss on Amazon.

Replaced my toothbrush with a new one.

Watched half an episode of Star Trek.

Read half a Manto short story.

Added 5 books to my Goodreads to-read shelf.

Washed off the honey oatmeal face mask.

Watched an ASMR video where a woman pretending to be a receptionist checked me into a hotel in Japan and told me about the hot springs I could visit in town.

Watched an ASMR video where the same woman, now pretending to be an executive at Nordstrom, spoke about spring fashion while pointing at images in a fashion catalog.

Watched part of an ASMR video where a woman shaped my eyebrows. She pretended to put numbing gel above my eyes and then plucked out stray hairs. It was very relaxing.

Made this list.

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The Shape of Things to Come

no more lying on a bed
shivering like the stars our toes curling
windows open, daylight
a kite, my spine long and loved
no more

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Feeding The Machine

I went to Kota for a week in December 2014. To most people, this might not sound like the ideal setup for a winter break, but my brother was studying there–post-Class 12, IIT prep, that stuff.

I hugged my boyfriend goodbye at the Bangalore airport and got on a flight to Jaipur, where I teamed up with my father, and we got in a taxi headed to Kota.

My father had been waiting at the airport for a while and was cracking jokes with cab drivers when I met him. I thought I heard him say something about helping them start a revolution. They laughed nervously.

We stopped at Tonk for brunch, where I judiciously stopped myself from buying Rajasthan-themed skirts and earrings clearly priced for foreign tourists. On the way, we made conversation with Rajesh, the driver. My father asked him what he thought of Vasundhara Raje. "No one respects her," he said. But isn't she from the Scindia family, asked my father, doesn't she have the whole dynasty thing going for her? "That's not her family," Rajesh said. "A woman belong to her husband. She was married to the Maharaj Rana of Dholpur, but they aren't together any more. What respect? A woman without a husband deserves no respect." My father dropped the subject, and I silently rolled my eyes.

Till the coaching class boom happened in the past decade, Kota was largely a trade town, with a type of limestone (known as Kota Stone) as its primary export. It's still a small town, though, but now most of its economy is built around institutes promising to get students into the IITs, NITs, and top medical colleges. There are hostels, apartments, family homes, all of them housing 15- to 20-year-olds. The city is teeming with young people, cheap "tiffin" restaurants, and cyber cafes. It's like a college town, except, of course, it isn't one at all. None of the large, privately-run educational institutions here are awarding degrees. Kota is a sprawling symptom of the failure of the Indian educational system.

The star of Kota, though, in on the wane. Rajesh, our taxi driver, attributed this to a series of kands, or scandals. A quick Google search showed that there have been a couple of "MMS scandals", but this is hardly surprising, given that Kota is a highly concentrated vat of unsupervised, enthusiastic young people at the peak of their hormonal turbulence. The rightness or wrongness of shaming young people, especially around issues of sex, is, of course, a whole other conversation. In any case, the parents I spoke to were troubled by the supposed licentiousness of the place, and it is possible that this is contributing to fewer admissions in Kota coaching institutes in recent years.

We met my brother in his hostel, a place run by a middle-aged family who seemed more concerned about "hostel rules" than about the emotional welfare of the youngsters living with them as their wards. My brother is a friendly person–smart and silly in equal measure, but he seemed downcast. No passing cloud, either; this felt like the shadow of a long imprisonment. People can have differing opinions on the worth of going through a ritual such as Kota, but to me, at that moment, it seemed like all the students here were in limbo. Not in school, but not in college either. All they had, really, was hope, and that didn't look like it was counting for much.

I called my boyfriend that night. "It's a prison," I said to him, "He's so unhappy. He's not meant to be here. He's too interesting, too alive.""I know people who spent time in Kota," the boyfriend said, "and they're all great people–fiercely independent, but great fun to be with."

I don't know if that's true. I do know that whatever happens, whether these students are successful in feeding the great Indian machine of the IITs or not, they will learn something about themselves in a place as insular and stressful as this (enough to be almost surreal), and sometimes that is more than enough.

I had dinner with my brother and his friends the next day. "Tanmay got a 52 rank in the previous test." Someone corrects him, "Not 52, 47." All of them contemplate the ramifications of this information in silence as they slowly chew their pieces of rubbery naan.

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Date A Girl Without A Head

Date a girl without a head. Date a girl who has broken free from the shackles of society and convention. Date a girl who doesn't care so hard that she literally lopped off her head one morning and never looked back. She is utterly incapable of looking back. In fact, she can't look at anything at all. I mean sometimes she wants to and then it's kind of a bitch to have to feel for things with her hands and the stump of her neck, but the girl without a head is nothing if not brave.

Date a girl without a head. Date a girl who has not only been called "strange" and "foolhardy" but also "freakish", "repulsive" and "horrifying". The girl without a head squares her shoulders and takes everything life has to throw at her without as much as blinking an eyelid (she has none). The well-meaning advice of friends and the taunts of strangers - they all roll off her like water off a duck. Or like water off a smooth stump where a head used to be. You can mess up your metaphors. The girl without a head won't mind. She can't hear you anyway.

It's easy to spot this girl in public. She's the one without a head. You might find her at a cafe, folding origami into shapes that look vaguely head-like, or you might find her walking down the street - arms outstretched - grabbing hold of and rubbing the face of anyone unlucky enough to be looking down at their phone while walking. The girl without a head tries to be strong, but sometimes it simply isn't enough.  Hold her hands in yours and kiss the side of her neck when she least expects it. It's easy because she never expects it. She likes that.

Date a girl without a head because nothing will ever faze the children you will have together. No monster under their bed could ever hold a candle to your girl. They will not only be tough and quick with their fists (PTA meetings will be hard to live down) but will also be the smartest kids around because interacting with their mother will involve looking at an abacus or a softy rotating globe affixed to their mother's neck. The girl without a head wants only the best for her children.

Grow old with the girl without a head. Sit with her on your front porch and feel the frayed edges of her head-stump gently flutter in the spring breeze as she lays it on your shoulder. Love her then. Love her forever.

Date a girl without a head. Or better yet, date a girl with neither a head nor a torso.

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Twitter ate my brain

So I'm writing this in an effort to stop "doing the twitter" so much and slowly (maybe) regain control of my writing faculty and also other faculties in general (but hopefully not my Immunology faculty from college. She and I, we had our differences). Because a) I might have forgotten how to write long sentences and b) I'm worried that my brain has started thinking in 140 characters. You spend so much time trying to fit your nice complex thought into a simple sentence that slowly the simple sentence is all the complex thought you can muster. AMIRITE. hurrrrr.
Okay, I'm tired already. Baby steps.

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The Dentist Who Doesn't Lust

Last week on a bus to the amazing metropolitan city of Chennai, I met a dentist. I know he was a dentist because he asked me why I hadn't sought out orthodontic treatment (I have unusually sharp and slightly out-of-place canines), and then gave me professional advice on how to correct my unseemliness ("Of course though, if it doesn't bother you aesthetically then I suppose it's alright"). I could hear him speak in italics. Added to this his constant greasy grinning and what he told me next, I don't think I liked him very much.

He said he didn't lust any more. We were discussing various Art of Living programmes (I haven't been to any but I would like to) and he told me how, through controlled breathing and willpower, he did not experience the negative emotion of lust any more.

What is negative about the emotion of lust? I don't always act on it, but the occassional surge of wanting (or frisson, as a writer of 'romantica' might put it) feels pretty nice.

If I could host erections, I'd want to be able to revel in them.

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Blogger Lost All My Comments!

In my never-ending state of hyperactive insomnia quest for perfection, I changed my blog url a couple days back. Twice. Maybe thrice. Okay, five times but that's it. And now my comments are gone! All of them! Not one comment still here! And it's not my fault! Not one bit! Blogger ate up all my comments!

This post is here because I'm bored out of my fucking mind so you don't think I'm a loser with no friends. About a dozen people or so do read my blog. A couple of them have been known to post the occasional comment. I'm no loser.

But look here, do I use too many exclamation marks? Is this font too small? Is my hair too frizzy? Stop looking away! I don't have ADHD! Look at me. LOOK AT ME!

(17th September 2010) A happy update - All comments have been restored.

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How To Get Yourself An Engineerboy

Since doing this sort of thing seems to be all the rage nowadays.

Before we begin, you must know that at any time, you can speed up this whole terribly complex process (or even completely skip procedure) depending on amount of cleavage you decide to show. Just so you know.

1. Identify: You see that good-looking bespectacled boy with the pair of earphones and no sense of style? That is possibly him. Trail him. If he finishes his canteen dosai and then proceeds to go attend a quiz somewhere, he's your man. These boys are always attending quizzes somewhere.

2. Read up: On trivia from the following movies: Star Wars/ Lord of the Rings/ all Quentin Tarantino movies/ all Mani Ratnam movies. These may sound pedestrian, but the good Engineer Boy has a vulgar amount of information on most of these (plus of course even more trivia about a wholly abnormal number of films). Repeat this process with information about Jimi Hendrix and Metallica, and any other popular music not made by a boy band.

3. Accost: At (obviously) a quiz club event. Start a conversation and mention in passing pieces of the completely useless information you should have gleaned by now from Wikipedia. At a relevant moment, say something like, "OMG don't be such a lameass padawan!!" It makes little sense and might sound stupid to the uninformed outsider, but the engineerboy will be duly impressed. After the quiz is over and you have placed first, tell him how even though he came 3rd, you thought he "totally pwned" that one question about Naughty America. Then glance down at the the large erection outlined in his pants and smile cunningly, and whisperingly give him directions to the restroom (in Elvish).

4. Make your mark!: Now that you have ingratiated yourself with his skewed sense of what is cool, let him know you can think for yourself. Violently diss an A.R.Rahman album. He might walk away, but curiosity will lead him back. If he doesn't return... well, fuck it. There are so many more of them!

5: This is important: In bed, if you ever get that far, let him cry a little afterwards. Take steps to ensure he doesn't start to resent you. Maybe hold him and offer him a cookie.

6. Be careful: Around his parents. Never let on that you are anything more than friends. He's most probably terrified of his parents and in fact, his meek-looking father is actually the reason he's been bullied into doing his engineering anyway. Which leads me to my next point:

7. Don't expect to date an engineer: If you do start going with your gorgeous quizzer-boy, chances are he won't stay an engineer for long. Once his filial promises have been fulfilled and he has an engineering degree, he'll go a little nuts and start doing something completely unexpected and dorky, like making and selling his own Star Wars quilts, or something unexpected and cool, like being a professional bonsai artist. Chances are, he might decide to do an MBA. At which point, you must leave him.

Similar(ish) articles you might enjoy:

How To Date An Indian (Advice For The Non-Indian) - which, really, started it all.

and the not-so-reverent:

How To date An American Chick (For The Non-American)

Andrea Miller And The Hungry-India-Poor-India-Sexy-India

[Most important addendum: I loathe Metallica, and am not into either Tarantino or Mani Ratnam movies. Please don't hurt me.]

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2 Bodies 1 Hart

A truly horrible joke(?) I've been wanting to do for a while now. Also, for your listening (and viewing) pleasure, 2 Bodies 1 Heart by Noah and the Whale.

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Poo Chronicles, Contd.

I read best in the loo. It's a childhood thing, in fact when I was 10 it made my mother tear one of my Enid Blyton St. Clares in half, but then the next day I had it taped back and was sticking it in the waistband of my skirt to take to the toilet. She never asked me what that suspicious rectangular shape was, sticking out of my abdomen at an odd angle, but she waited till I thought she was cool with it and the next time I stepped out of the toilet with a book in my hand, BAM! She shredded that book to bits. But I was a stubborn child and well... what I'm trying to say is, habits like this develop over time.
Anyhow, I read good when I poop. It's my little bit of "me-time", when I can pool my pants around my ankles and stretch my legs out and relax. I bust stress that way. (Stink? What stink? My poo smells like roses.) And while I usually spend about a half-hour in the loo each time, it's been down to ten minutes ever since I started that godforsaken book I mentioned in my previous post. I hate the hellish thing to bits, but I've never started a book that I didn't finish, and painful as it is, I'll see this thing to the end. And make sure I read all of it only in the comfort room.


NOTE: Elia Kazan, great man though he is acknowledged to be, ratted on his colleagues for being Commies at a time when Communists used to be hunted down and killed, which makes him a dick, and therefore makes it okay to hate his work.

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Bad Reading Habits

I can't poo unless I don't have a book to read. This is what I'm currently reading (The Arrangement by Elia Kazan), except my copy doesn't have boobs on the cover to distract me from what's written inside, which makes it so much worse. Anyway, I've decided to read all of it - beginning to end - only during poop time. Mostly because it's too horrible to read outside of the toilet, but whatever.

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Die, evil book-hungry vortex

Books that have been sucked into the vortex that is (clearly) operating somewhere in hostel. Near the water cooler, is where I reckon.

Transmission - Hari Kunzru

Procured at a Landmark Table-of-Perennial-Sale in Chennai, circa 2008. Reading this had taken rather longer than usual. But it was an odd sort of story, and I'd enjoyed it. More importantly, the cover art was funky.

Chocolat - Joanne Harris

My. Oh my. I loved this book. Not in a generic sense (which isn't to say I didn't like reading it. Oh well.), but this copy in particular. It had been bought with my aunt in Bangalore when we were out on a used-book-scrounge. The pages were yellowed, the spine was slightly wobbly, and it had belonged to someone called Ida, who had a lovely loopy handwriting. It had a Feel to it. It had Atmosphere. Also, it had Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche on the cover.
Looking HOT.

Mobius Dick - Andrew Crumey

This was a leaving gift from my best friend when we'd just graduated from school and were en route to our respective undergrad colleges. I'm not completely sure if the Dick in the title had anything to do with it. I'd read it thrice - the second time because I wanted to to, and the third time for lack of other reading material. Yes, excluding the blurb at the back of the box of Kellog's. This is a strange, wistful book with schizophrenic characters, parallel universes and time travel thrown in for good measure. Oh, and Schrodinger's cat.

I hate losing books. Even if I'm not overly fond of them. It is worse, even, than ripping your newest jeans at the crotch. And that is saying something.

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Creepy Poem

[It would seem there is yet much angst in my happy little bohemian soul. Apologies about the title. I couldn't stop myself.]

I look down
to see, my feet
are not my own.
My fingers are
melting, slowly, dripping
Like candle wax.
Hot puddles on the mosaic.
My eyelids
are heavy, hung
It is so cold.
Drenched in misery and self-loathing,
Who have I become?

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Exalt

I am king, and I am ruler supreme, and my kingdom is mine own to bless or condemn as I see fit. These people, who scurry about like ants in search of food for hoarding, they are my serfs, and all of their toiling would be for naught were it not for my grace and benevolence.
My chariot is of gold, and it shall be hoisted by my men, their supple bodies tan and oiled. Raise me higher, so my people can marvel at my majestic being, at their sovereign. Watch, as they gape in awe, these weaklings, slack-jawed.
Join me tonight; we shall dine at my palace. The table is set for a hundred. Watch now, how these men, these beings of lesser order bow, watch how they grovel before my countenance. None dare be inattentive to my luxuries, for my wrath is not to be made light of. Not for me, your Stoic restraint. I shall have my women as I have my wine - full-bodied and voluptuous, not unlike Rubens' Venus. And they shall love me, these women, and be devoted to my every need, for they shall know no other.
Come now, let us feast.

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Poem

Bouquets of roses, and
the scent
of your hair - apples,
and wildberries.
Honeyed kisses -
your lips,
your tears.
Sweat, and our bodies
Aching.

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She talks to angels

[Title sourced from the Counting Crows song of the same name]

She was a little girl in a wild, overgrown garden and the tall grass dwarfed her.
She was five, wearing the green dress with the pretty yellow socks and the white mary-janes. And she was bent over a tiny puddle helping catterpillars cross, and she would marvel at the way they curled around the twig.
She was seven, lying on her back in the grass when she saw the eagle. And he would soar higher with every beat of his wings. And it was beautiful and magnificent and her eyes were large with wonder.
She was ten, with her face raised to the sky, and she could smell the allspice leaf crushed in her palm and she could smell the rain.
She was parting the wispy wayward wildgrass stems and she could see in the endless distance a tall chimney, and the breeze was curling the smoke into fantastic patterns.
She was on her favorite mango tree as high as she could go, and she stood on tiptoe to see what was beyond the sudden drop of road along the slight hill and she saw the silhouette of a lone tree, leafless and wizened and bent against the indigo of the sky, and it made her want to weep.
She was the sun. And the earth belonged to her and she belonged to the earth.
She was a dervish, whirling barefoot on damp soil.

She trips and lands on the mattress, laughing.

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Wax. Strip. Ow.

Today, I waxed myself for the first time. Which isn't to say that I'd spent the years ensuing the arrival of my adolescence in hairy heaven. It's just that I'd always gotten myself waxed in parlours - those strange smelling places run mostly by women who (for some strange reason) all look like eunuchs.
I am a hairy person. I admit it. (And I urge all ye other lasses similarly afflicted to stand up and be proud. 'Tis nothing to be ashamed of. The era of waxing strips and hair-removal creams is come.) So when I looked down at my legs one day and saw Chewbacca's instead, I felt moved to pick up my (butter) knife.
If someone had told me that I would one day enjoy giving myself pain equivalent to being skinned alive, I would have found the idea snortingly amusing. But oddly enough, I didn't mind it. I even found the pain strangely therapeutic. It was almost as if with each strip of wax I pulled off, I was leaving behind all of my doubt and confusion. I am now a surer and more confident (not to mention hair-free) girl. Since this whole process took above of 2 hours, I also missed dinner, which event will ofcourse render me slimmer and more attractive in the near distant future.
This little episode got me thinking about all of those women (and fewer in number, but prettier - men) the world over who engage in this painful ritual. And I have come to the conclusion that a reasonable method of calculating how close a woman is to suicide is to determine how often she gets rid of her body hair. The hairier she is, the greater her collection of books on the afterlife. Because all of these women (and I keep forgetting - men) who choose to go through Hell (oh, the pain!) are not merely de-furring themselves, they are reaffirming their lust for life.
P.S.: Any of you reading this who think the details of bodily hair removal are gross can go wax a werewolf.

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Wild thing, I think I love you

Introduction

Title courtesy Jimi. This line from the song 'Wild Thing' stuck in my head, and I wanted to write something which would adequately capture it's spirit. I don't know how well I've managed, but well...here it is.

Chapter I

"I don't think we should", he grumbles as she pulls him along. She turns around to stare at him, her hands on her hips. "It's my tenth birthday. On your birthday, you decide what we do", she says and turns back with a toss of her long, curly hair, continuing to drag him by the hand.
The boy with the unruly mop of black hair and the deep green eyes glowers at her back. He is after all, still nine-and-three-quarters. And a whole inch shorter than her.
There is a mango orchard on the other side of the fence. They race to the nearest tree, panting. She starts to climb. "Get down", he whispers loudly, "You'll hurt yourself".
"Don't be silly", she yells back, throwing him a ripe mango. "I'm stronger than you are".
He grins at her, biting into the mango, the juice running down his shirt.
As she sits on a branch not very high up, the sun shines down on her. He looks up from his mango to see her slim legs dangling from the branch, her large brown eyes sparkling in the sunlight.
There is suddenly a lump in his throat. He swallows. And then coughs.
"Are you allright?"
"I'm fine", he says, frowning up at her.

Chapter II

Her brain clouded in a drug-induced haze, she sways lazily to the Pink Floyd playing somewhere in the distance as she fiddles with the buttons on her shirt.
She slips it off. Now in jeans and a bra, she walks across the room to sit astride his lap. She kisses him. Feeling lightheaded, he watches as she stands up to slowly remove her jeans, and then her bra. The black lace of her panties is in sharp, beautiful contrast to the cream of her skin. She turns to sit on the edge of the bed, her legs spread, and smiles at him.
He stands up and unbuttons his shirt, letting it fall to the floor. He walks to where she is sitting and she drags him closer by the waistband of his trousers, pushing him onto the bed. She crawls to him, her knees on either side of his. Spreading her hands over his chest, her brown eyes look deep into his unfathomable green ones and she grins. As she kisses him along the hard line of his jaw, her eyelashes brush his lower lip.

He breathes in, sharp.
She purrs, catlike.

Epilogue

Sitting hand in hand on the edge of the pier, their toes skim the cool waters of the lake. Her hair is loosely tied with a cloth. His is beginning to turn grey around the temples.
They are quiet as they watch the sun go down. As the evening chill starts to set in, she snuggles in closer to him. The boy with the green eyes kisses her forehead, and smiles down at his brown-eyed girl.

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Fake Plastic Tears

[This was originally posted on another site (well, facebook, if you should know) about a month back, but I thought it seemed more appropriate here.]

Is it just me, or do Radiohead songs sound particularly wistful when you listen to them all alone, in the dead of the night? Because I was just listening to Fake Plastic Trees - and by the end of the third stanza, all of a sudden - I was crying. Actual choke-back-your-sobs, blow-your-nose wailing. I've heard it twice since, and that strange feeling of loneliness hasn't dimmed one bit in intensity.
I think it began when Thom Yorke went 'she looks like the real thing' in his heartbreaking falsetto, and then went on to sing to his fake plastic love how he could 'blow through the ceiling'; the music building all the while to a crescendo - I think thats the part that brought me right to the edge. And when it suddenly drops to 'wear me out' - I fell into my salty, watery abyss.
Then again, maybe I'm just PMSing.

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The living

She lay curled on her side, her eyes open. The room was narrow and ill-lit, with a bulb above the dressing table giving it a sick, deathly glow. Paint was chipping off the walls, and there was a damp patch on the ceiling from a leak somewhere.
She had been awake all night, for countless nights now. Her eyes were bleary, her eyelids tired and heavy. But she continued to stare unfocussedly into the distance as she willed them open - almost as if hoping that this only contact with the real world would stop her demons from turning on themselves.
As one of her legs dangled off the edge of the bed, her toe grazed the marble floor. It was much cooler than the bed she lay on. She slid off the bed to lie on the floor, her arms spread in an unrequited embrace. A thin sliver of sunlight from a crack in a shuttered window lit up a small patch on the ground.
The noise of the fan whirring above filled her head, and it grew louder and louder till there was nothing but silence.

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