Safety-Pinned Mind

My mind's been off having adventures. Identity crises, moral ambiguities, confusing arousal, and euphoria and depression chasing each other in circles - and I've just sat back and allowed it do its thing. Usually it returns in time for Top Chef. Composure Coherence, on the other hand, arrives about as often as my freelance cheques and I'm rushing to make good of today's sudden burst...

I've realised only recently that my quest to understand people would be strides simpler if I stop trying to solve them.

The handful of relationships that I cherish have one thing in common. They're all based on the premise of Quality > Quantity. I'm not built for too much familiarity, I don't like knowing every last stitch of anyone's day or recounting mine, for that matter. Unless you can tell it well and the conversation has potential to descend into lots of meta humour, then I'm all ears. Otherwise, let's just talk when we actually have something to say.

I think I enjoy struggle way too much to ever really succeed in the conventional sense. I'm at a professional fork-in-the-road currently and while one path definitively leads to being able to afford poncy hair accessories I don't need, the one I'm on has me under house arrest because I can't afford even coffee without feeling like a shameless wastrel. It's still a tough choice. The writing jobs I enjoy the most are the ones that often push me to tears of inadequacy, the ones that come easy are forgotten almost instantly no matter how well they turn out.
I wish to have it all though even the thought of it bores me intensely.

Stupid trends irritate me so much I feel like punching my screen. This business of saying 'super like!' on Facebook,  SHUT UP, IT'S NOT A THING. Also, this sudden adoration of droopy hipster girls with limp hair wearing oatmeal-exciting fashions. WHERE WAS ALL THIS HYSTERIA WHEN MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL DID IT WAY BACK WHEN? Herd. I spurn you.

I have been feeling quite good about my weight even as I remain the fattest I've ever been. Except for this past week of beer and fries and Easter pastries and Pepsi, I've been pretty good about working out and eating well. I suppose it's freeing to know you've done your bit and it's now out of your hands.

I am diabetically girlie. Lace, florals, ruffles, sequins, pastels, sorbet make-up, aforementioned hair accessories, box clutches, diaphanous everything and I'm sold. I haven't triumphed in any popularity contests because of my love for jeggings either.

Ever since I watched Chashme Buddoor a few weeks ago, I've been mesmerised by Deepti Naval. Forever she's been no more than a clip-on Smita Patil to me but Christ, such beauty and vitality. 90% of the stuff below is from here.

Am I right?

Miss Chamko!

So Thelma & Louise :)

'course she's a poet.

J,

I threw my back out today. It happened while I was brushing my teeth this morning and specifically during the daily one minute I dedicate during this time to tongue cleaning.

I want to take a tick here to say a few words about this seemingly inconsequential activity. I have always, and continue to, have tongue cleaning right up there with taking vitamins and checking if the internets have recorded any activity from Kareena Kapoor. I genuinely believe that if we, as a people, recognised tongue cleaning as a vital part of our daily ablutions, it would lead to the quietest and nicest revolution ever: the end of shit breath. Think of the general reduction in the earth's level of loathing, the end of the fear and foreboding that are ever present in the prospect of close talking. Think how it would be if we each were just a little more responsible for the atmosphere in our mouths. That's the kind of world you want to bring kids into.

So anyway, there I was going about my business when I bent too low into the wash bowl and felt a sudden splash of pain about my lower lumbar. Since then I have been walking around in a most unattractive way: butt and chest thrust out, muttering. The mother's general rule‐of‐thumb is that if your ailment isn't classic to your age group, you must be faking it (more accurate than you would believe), and so she ordered me to walk it off around the colony. It didn't do much for my back, or my ego, especially when an irritating devil child whizzed by on his tricycle shouting 'Dadima!' (I'm saving my thoughts on children for when I really need the catharsis).

After I got back, I categorically refused to listen to the mother's rudimentary arguments about Jesus striking me down, changed back into my nightie and attached myself to bed. It is there that I am writing to you from. The philosophical standoff between me and the mother seems to have come to an end. This I can tell by the hot tea and rusks that have found their way to my bedside. This turned out to be an agreeable day after all.

Why did you need to know this? Because I needed to not feel alone, for just a little while.

I am yours.

Skinny Soup

Still no words.

I made that. It is supposed to be a chocolate cake.

Well, hello again.

I think this is the longest I haven't posted on this blog in about a year and a half. I just haven't had a lot to say somehow. Been pondering life, work, weight and love with no iron conclusions, only ironic ones. I have also been under the weather, then travelling some and otherwise mucking about with work, not doing, mucking. I have recently discovered a love for cooking...potatoes, so far. I believe I am keeping the tater industry afloat in my part of the world with fried potatoes, potato pakodas, potato salad, potato vegetable and potato parathas. Correspondingly all weighing scales are being avoided with great care. This may seem most mundane and it is, just not in my world. In my world, it's like the collective relative brigade can now take a great big shit of relief - "she can cook, she can be married". Now if I'd just start combing my hair and giving a toss, I'll be well on my way to being hitched in no time at all!

Anyhow, that's about it really... here's a little more about how I've been spending my time. These pictures are about as organised as I am.

The potatoes I made today. They turned out quite well in that they were edible with no muffled gagging sounds emanating from the bathroom thereafter.

The wizards of UU have decided to play football and a dangerous orc is the appointed coach. Except he will not tear his team's heads off as is traditionally expected of his community but will scare them into compliance with his frightening erudition. As is Pratchett's own tradition, the book is a poignant scream. I did notice that he has begun to resort to puns that are cheaper than some of my friends (you know who you are) and I did stop to wonder if this is him degenerating or me starting to outgrow him. Scary thoughts both.
Sam sand dunes, Jaisalmer, Rajasthan.
En route to Mehrangarh Fort overlooking the old city, Jodhpur, Rajasthan.


Hotel Pushkar Palace, Pushkar, Rajasthan.


Feisty granny showing me I'm not the only one with a camera around there. They're not in the picture but her grandkids were facepalming furiously :)
Pushkar, Rajasthan.

This is exactly my mum's expression when I break out my threadbare harem pants. She's hoping any one of these days I'll get real. Joke's on her.
Pushkar, Rajasthan.

My monkey friends outside the popular Gayatri temple. Getting up here took a 30 minute trek and the nice corpulent pandit asked if I could read or not when I took my shoes off in the wrong place.
Pushkar, Rajasthan.

Yes I read her second book based on the first. Does she always make sense? No. Can she be a tiresome statistic-spouting paranoid idiot often? Yes yes. Is she razor-sharp, funny, tart and do her words sink like hooks into me anyway? Yes, they do. What I like about her is she belongs only to herself. Her work is self-indulgent but it always tries (and often fails) earnestly to be something more. I like that. Read Committed if you want to journey through somebody else's premarital neuroses so you feel better about yours.

Hannibal Luca. He was attacked by a couple of dogs a few weeks ago when he pranced up to them for a friendly butt sniff. Has to be kept muzzled so doesn't lick his battle wounds. Enjoys wearing it entirely too much if you ask me. Freak dog.

This is my foray into Dickens' world and already I'm breaking out in sweats. A very dehydrating experience. Let it never be said that my sentence construction is too long and cumbersome to keep up with. For I will show you Charles Dickens. Stand down.

One of us is physically sick here and the other one is just sick in an everyday overall sort of way.

You want to gently suggest I take another lengthy hiatus don't you?

A few thoughts

To begin with, people who tell me I think too much. Usually you are people who don't think nearly enough. I'm carrying your assigned mental load, so instead of bitching about it, be grateful and buy me lots of beer. And you know when it comes to it, I like thinking. I enjoy thinking. I enjoy thinking so much I want to flirt with it, get drunk with it, make some stupid decisions with it, have an unplanned thought baby. So shut the hell up. Go back to your stupid dark little dingy rooms illuminated only by the wan light of your TV/comp/game console and the piddly dialogues you will then parrot with so much ownership, it's really quite frightening. You are usually the sort with precious little regard for consequence, accountability or other people. And you pat yourself on the back because you mistake it for spontaneity and single-mindedness never once realising what an absolute germ it makes you. The good bit is your stubborn unwillingness to think will protect you from your own douchebaggery. I guess it all works out in the end.

I'm thinking of starting a food blog. From a very early age, I knew eating was what I wanted to grow up to do. And chronicling it seems like the next level. I've begun taking pictures of food. Haven't managed enough though, because I have a huge SLR-style camera. Not SLR mind, SLR*style* camera. 'Why Gyuri, that sounds absolutely daft,' you say? Blind adoration will do that to you. All mental faculties shut down when you're smitten enough and you begin to think with your loins. Only the proven WORST state in which to make decisions. I have grown up since then (somewhat). Anyhoo the camera is large and I have retired it temporarily after the third time I got asked if I was with Mid-day. At my own office party. Yeah. Maybe I'll sell it and buy one of those tinier, sleek ones which totally don't suit my personality.

You may have had the mild discomfort of reading the post where I went all Bjork on New Year's. Well I am happy to report that I have a great support system in place, albeit one that will wring the 'sharing' out of you, but once you do that, they'll rally around you, all dead ringers for maternal hens, many online hugs and 'hmms'. Even the guys :D. These are some of the helpful suggestions I received:
- 'You're a strong woman with good looks, talent and a great personality. Are you really going to let someone make you feel this terrible? Think positive, send positive vibes into the universe. Sometimes *cough* takes a bit longer for some, but you will be happy.'
- 'If this is making you feel like shit, you have more problems than I originally thought.'
- 'Positive vibes. Take, listen to AR Rahman."
- 'Life's too short to date every nice guy you meet. And you still haven't made it past the a-holes.'
- 'HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHH I'm sorry but Hhhahahhahahahhahaha he SAID that?! Dude that is awesome! That has to go up in your Hall of Rejection.'
- 'Positive vibes.'
- 'Jesus will never leave you.'
- 'Hello Leftover!!'

If I haven't said this before, I'll say it now. Books saved my life and continue to do so every day. When I am through enduring relentless support (I mean this in the nicest way possible :D), my books let me forget everything. My own life is suspended and the people in my books will walk that stretch of nonthingness for me. I am not one of those people whose books are covered with newspaper and are immaculate. All my books are dog-eared, discoloured and slightly tainted with drool. I have travelled with everyone of them and they're worse for the wear, having done what they were there to do - engulf and uplift the mind.

That's that.


If you have not heard New Slang by The Shins, you must.

Until I find you

2008 ended with a loud thunderous silence. Something inside me died then. That presence inside you that holds on to faith by the skin of its teeth even when you're sure it has no reason to. That presence died. In 2009 I proceeded to destroy myself completely. 365 days spent kicking myself in the ribs - it was like that beach cliche, little hopeful kid painstakingly builds a sandcastle and a bigger brutish chap comes along and cruelly kicks it down. That was me and myself all of 2009.

I forged on or atleast I thought I did. I didn't believe in anything or anyone and if I managed to give the impression that I did, it was because I started to make an exercise of suspending disbelief. 'If I can't believe it, atleast I won't disbelieve it until proven otherwise.' What that meant was I was holding my breath, waiting for something to go wrong. Which ofcourse it did because I looked at everything as potential hurt and so I willed it to become that. I did that. Noone else did that, I did it.

By the end of 2009, I was struggling. I was barely there anymore. It was someone I didn't recognise. It was someone I'd set out not to be. The worst night came, dramatically enough, last night. The last night of the year. I had been hanging on to someone for dear life and realised he was already gone. And I slumped to the floor. Those many tears shouldn't be biologically possible. This time there was no silence, there was only screaming. "Love me love ME LOVE ME LOVE ME LOVE ME LOVE ME PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE" I begged at the darkness. I begged... of myself.

This was new. I thought I was crying for him but I wasn't. I hadn't realised up until then how badly I missed me, how much I wanted to feel like a living breathing emotional person again. I don't remember how I got to bed, when I changed into my nightclothes and snuggled upto my dog. But that's how I found myself this morning.

And so here I am, nothingness except a thin pinhole of hope, suddenly and very very slowly making the darkness lighter. I had banana milkshake this morning. And it was wonderful.

Happy New Year. I hope you find your truest self too.

Phase In, Phase Out

You know, the more I think about it, the more certain I get that I'm a Phase Person. A Phase Person is somebody whose personality is so far from well-rounded and wholesome that he/she can only ever be a passing phase in another person's life before the latter senses the need to detox. Clearly my self esteem levels are at full mast here. More seriously though, I don't think this a bad thing.

Longevity has never really been my strong point. I have noticed that most everything in life has a shelf life and pushed beyond its expiry date, a relationship, a yellow ointment for problems of the embarrassing kind and your favourite sitcom, will all eventually become a force of habit. In a word: tedious. And I'd just rather eat a washcloth.

Being a Phase Person has some very attractive perks - you don't have to give up smoking or swearing like a truck driver. All your worst habits like chewing your nails, your acute discomfort with brightly lit coffee shops and your endless reserves of self deprecating humour will seem cute/different/quirky. Some strange sexual caveat would probably bump you right up to 'exotic'.
For that short period of time, this is paradise for the kind of Twilight Zone person you are.

Until it all starts to go a bit runny.

One day your Phasees wake up and realise you are a very dysfunctional person indeed. Your obsession with toiletries, all in various nauseating floral scents, are the cause of their headaches. Your deep interest in their mothers' maiden names unsettles them slightly, and can they ever really trust someone who doesn't care for ice-cream? Don't even get them started on your tendency for having your few meaningful conversations with your bilingual, fruitcake of a dog.

From there it's only a matter of time before you become the star of their 'This one time...' stories which will most likely end in '...and then I met my wife/ turned to drugs/ found Jesus."

That's my least favourite part about being a Phase Person. It just never lasts.