of favourite things

“Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!”


Wuthering Heights. 

a song for my heart.

"What if I fall?"

"Oh my darling...what if you fly!"

-Erin Hanson

pure bliss is when a relationship can be surmised by these two sentences. 

Let your fingers do the talking.

Have you ever forgotten your ATM pin? I did once. I have had been using the same combination for ages now, so I didn't need to put it now , I had thought I was immune, that I would never forget it.

On second thoughts, the thought of forgetting about it never crossed my mind. Like the thought of forgetting  your mother's name never crosses your mind, you never forget it you never put it down somewhere to remember it.

I called up my dad and asked him if he had the original docs and if he could help me with it. He told me it will come to me, to not hasten it. He told me to allow my fingers to remember it, go to the ATMs and try punching in the sequence. I laughed him off at first but my unrelenting trust on my father's way of life  took over and I did it, once/twice a week and one day, it just came to me. 

That was my eureka moment.

We live life like this, being used to things, getting comfortable. Letting our bodies, learn our language. Letting our bodies speak our language. Makes me scared, makes me think, how important it is to be mindful, how important it is to be aware of what language we are speaking, and what language our bodies in turn are.

In other news, discovered Paolo Nutini last week, told a friend about it and he says he has been listening to him since a long time. late bloomer me. 

check him out: 

forgotten

in anticipated anxiety,
the need to cry. forgotten
alive and awake,
the need to be seen and heard . forgotten
existing, pretending, coaxing, stifling, hiding.
FORGOTTEN.
like a rolling stone I'll walk alongside,
like a vagabond I'll leave you surprised.
a penny for each thought unsaid,
a penny for every memory that fades.
every single penny you earned,
don't forget, that is for every notion I burnt.
in ashes are those memories, those fantasies soot.
every desire famished, every lover moot.
the need to prove yourself myself;
writing in third person. forgotten.

forgotten for what is ever gotten
the desire to make sense. forgotten.

................

I came across this list of cues for poems. I am trying to do all of them.. 

this is one from the list (Write a poem about Forgetting) 

Maybe by the end of the list, I'll be better =)

tICK-tOCK

How much and how little has the time passed? tick-tock-tick it whiles away.
There is an urgency to live and and urgency to die, but all that is to be done on my sweet time.
Tick-tock-tick it messes with my brain; staring, straying, hounding and barking, forever and ever.

P.S.was sitting in drafts too long, had to be out. incomplete, but there it is.

whatever it takes.

Planning, shielding walking or rafting.
Whatever it takes. 

Finding a sweet spot in your own life where you can comfortably sink in and watch the world go by is difficult. It is not the finding that is difficult, it is, it is difficult, but it is not the only thing that is difficult.
It is also difficult to keep it. 

It is not difficult to keep it because of the obvious reasons, it is difficult to keep because you don't know how to stay in the place. You are not used to doing the right thing; not used to being nice, not used to being happy in the right place at the right time.

You are not used to being happy, not used to being content.

Trying. TRYING.
whatever it takes.

sing me a happy song and I wont turn you away.

When you are happy the happy songs make sense.

You like the beats, the drum roll and the bass. 

Sing me a happy song and I wont turn you away. At-least for now =)

I am not jumping-on-a-trampoline happy. 

No, I am not in the most ‘perfect’ stage of my personal or work life. I could do with a better paying job, a lean-toned body, but that’s only so much wishing can do. I know I can do with a lot of things different; but, I am in a place where I know that I couldn’t have done without the things I have now. 

Maybe, that’s what quiet satisfaction is (no, I have not given up on controlling things, yet) It is just that, I don’t have difficulty sleeping and my mornings are nicer, crisp almost. 

The broody, intense, passionate man with Jesus hair and song in his fingers is absent. I have instead a tall-ish, lank-ish, goofy man, who always smiles when he looks at me, hums a song when he is happy.

He doesn’t make me weak in my loins with his looks; but yes, his embrace is my spot, in everywhere.

He doesn’t make my emptiness go away, I still withdraw at times, cry and feel less than I should. He cannot fill me in ways I want…but he fills certain empty cold places with a warm glow, he holds the light up, un-knowingly most times but earnestly. He doesn’t want to search me, he is waiting, patiently, for me to come around. 

He is the Oak to an undeserving Bathsheba.

.....

On a different note, I don't know what it means to say exactly, but I am in love with this song :

 

Hope you have a happier 2016!

connect.

We do things that keep us connected. My husband reads the newspaper, even if he gets only 10mins to do so, while he brushes his teeth;  I cook, even if I do that in the only 'free' time I have aside from the working and traveling-to-work hours. It keeps us connected, connected to our homes and thus to our mothers, while we make a home of our own.

The Shadow

What is a memory? Who is a memory?

I have a lot of memories, I think of myself a storehouse of memories. I have filled my head with nuances, looks, songs, letters, words and even sighs. The sight of that man walking towards me with his shampooed jesus hair,eyes only on me, smiling. Those fingers pricking the guitar strings to my song;the same song he refused to sing lest he couldn't do justice to it. The sight of that man who looks at me as I run across the airport terminal to hug him tight as the entire terminal looks with awe at that grief stricken girl and sheepishly smiling boy. The reflections on all those mirrors are memories, those smiles are memories, those tears are memories.

No, you are not a memory if you are still here. If  you are a memory, you are not present; you have ceased to be a certain someone/something and thus transformed into a warm memory.

If I am here, I am not a warm memory, I am your present.

Or maybe I never was.

'The Gatekeeper put away his blade. "What do you make of it? Strange thing once you cut it off," he said "Shadows are useless anyway. Dead-weight." 

Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

- Haruki Murakami

this and that

I am vella again. Between jobs again.
.............
I was at my mother's place last week. After two years of my marriage I went there for an official 'aanto' (gujarati for visiting your 'maika') I could manage to stay there a week, then I shortened my trip and came back 'home'. Let me make this clear, i don't hate my parents; no one in his/her right mind hates his/her parents. They are gentle folk, just like my husband is. My mother is a tad stifling that's all. She has this habit of curbing people, non intended of-course,but yes the curbing does happen. She is the person who would open the caterpillar's cocoon for it, when she sees him struggling.

My impromptu packing of bags made my father call me to get my hormones checked – 'beta, that causes mood swings and depression'! Alright.

The constant need to run. Run away and escape makes me feel nauseous.
..............

Tamasha was engrossing.

Among-st all the subtlety the least talked about was the earnestness with which DP played Tara, that hopelessly in love Tara, who does everything Ved's way.

“...main jab se wapas aai hoon, tum mere saath ho”There is that unparalleled honesty with which Tara confesses that she has, in a way, become a stalker, searching him everywhere and yet staying with him when he in fact is nowhere to be found. Lucky for her she finds him and finds HIM.
..............
You cannot make you love someone, but yes, liking someone is not very difficult. Liking alone, I think is sometimes enough to get one through life. Atleast,till liking gives way to love, which i think also should be a natural process.

There is fear and insecurity that comes with the lack of love; respect and trust are not always enough.
..............

The only way to garner (extra) attention is to walk away in the middle of a conversation (not always literally) but, poof, gayab. I think that cat is out of the bag now. It is so not cool. Just plain stupid.

..............

I just love back-lit keyboards, they are the best. 

Words, oh words.

 “From this experience, I understood the danger of focusing only on what isn't there. What if I came to the end of my life and realized that I'd spent every day watching for a man who would never come to me? What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realize I'd never really tasted the things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been, because I'd thought of nothing but the Chairman even while my life was drifting away from me. And yet if I drew my thoughts back from him, what life would I have? I would be like a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.”

-Memories of a Geisha, Arthur Golden

Waiting is atypical. When you’ve waited a long time, the loneliness, the pertinent absence, becomes almost a part of you; a part of your everyday life. It ceases to matter anymore if the wait is leading you to something or it is just what it is, a wait. You’ve waited so long for your Chairman, that even when he comes he doesn’t suffice. Waited so long, that Love wouldn’t suffice. 

Restlessness

Chapter 1|Control

I like a clean house. Everything kept in its designated place, appropriate or otherwise. I am a cleanliness freak. Yes.

No. I am a control freak. I like to control everything around me, a lesson learnt from the past, where I simply allowed things to happen. Today, I want to know what is where; how and why it got there. Everything I have ever lost has cost me sleepless nights.

If I break something, I should be the one to blame, not otherwise.

If I lose someone I should know I had it coming.

I am a human after all, there is only so much I can do. Of course , there are days when I let go, only if  very briefly, where I let the winds blow stuff away, sitting there appreciating the fury that is so much stronger than I am.

There are some days when Che decides to take over and mess everything up, I get defensive and try and take things in my hand, these are days when I fight with him, following him and picking up stuff after him. I hardly ever lose, but I like him winning more, I enjoy the days I let Che win over me.  

Chapter 2|Him

I got back in touch with a friend recently (and lost touch, again).We spoke about Him and life and love in general. I told him how furious I got when Muse identified himself and explained his stance to me, isn't it obvious after all these years and my God like personification of Him, that he isn't what I am obsessing about? It is,always was, Him which is given skins and bones by me

We got talking about the abstract and reality. How passion in abstract is so different from the reality. How reality is not half as fulfilling as abstract is. I experimented by trying to add tangibility to the abstract, turns out it is not a good idea.

I am not crazy, it is just that this feeling needs to be fleshed out more to be put into words. But then, it would cease to be abstract, no?

I hate Serif fonts. 

absolution

I always thought I will die on the road, hit by a truck/jeep when crossing the road. Then I have this recurring nightmare, where I fall off the stairs, it almost always wakes me up; and since it wakes me up, I don’t really see me dying that way, maybe thoroughly injuring myself, turning me into a vegetable (which is worse than ultimate death).

But as you grow older life dawns on you as scares, you open for yourself different avenues. Then your mortality stares in your face and you do not take death as something you joke about.

Coffee and Silence

 Death is absolute, life gives you chances, every day. 

too much ado about nothing =)

I should have kept on writing. 

I took up a pen and found an old notebook, it had my husband’s scribbling on it. I think he abandoned it unknowingly. You know, like so many things in life we pick up, thinking we need them, but just, very simply end up abandoning them without too much thought, as a matter of fact not even realizing that, that something has been left astray somewhere. See now, I am really writing, I am philosophizing over a notebook which my husband bought and left after filling in a few pages. . 

We live on the 16^th floor of a new building. It further down a major arterial road and is frontal to a very busy, very tiny road. The building is so badly planned acoustically, that you can actually hear every single vehicle that passes by. Sometimes fights break out in the nearby slum when inebriated men lash out at one another, possibly hurling abuses at one another they actually want to hurl at themselves. I also hear dogs barking in the night, howling. Why do they bark so fiercely in the night and lay relatively calm during the day? Do they miss out on all the noise?

The height is good, I am sitting here in the balcony and I can see the rooftops of almost all the buildings in the vicinity. The breeze is an advantage, only that it sometimes too windy for my potted plants’ comfort sometimes, but hey that’ll only make them stronger, no?

I cannot wait for the rains, the air will be moist but cleaner, I cannot wait for the dust to settle. 

I shouldn't go too ahead of me, I have the summer ahead of me to sit out before that happens. 

of ketchup and haircuts.

1. you have to seriously reconsider your cooking when your husband reaches for ketchup/pickle at every meal
2. you can lose friends over a hair cut! [or earn their wrath =( ]
3. 'stealing the thunder' is a real thing. 

enjoy the weekend you guys!

*will the real slim shady please stand up*

Okay, so i have been to a couple of couples to their annulments of their love 'affairs' (strange affairs) by getting married to each other. I tried to be happy for them but was difficult, the impending 'life' that awaits them when they'd have to live with each other, wake up calls to breakfast through the afternoon stroll phone calls till the dinner. 

Marital happiness is highly over-rated if you ask me. Worse still if you have the perfect 'partner'. By 'perfect' i mean 'worldly perfect'. When you know there are a dozen women/men your spouse can keep/make happy but you are just you.

More like the pair of 'perfect parents' who have been there, not too pushy - but, not setting up boundaries - but. You know what I mean right?

Perfect marriages are like Santa Clause, just like perfect bosses are. Out there somewhere, maybe, but just no one in your fictional chimney. 

The other thing I would like to ask is how long and how many times does the haircut therapy work? 

My hairdresser on my recent visit to the salon was devastated to have to cut my 'long' tresses. I told him, it is just hair it will grow back;

 -hair now, gone again-  

lost and found and lost

I thought someday I will find you. Somehow. Even as I was leaving. 

There wasn't a fixed plan, nor a fixed time. It was always a time in future. But in time, I knew I will find you.

Someday in an overpriced coffee house that stores a guitar on that noisy street; there where you would order a doughnut complain how pricey it is, pick up the guitar and start plucking it. No, you wouldn't play, will be beneath you to play with ‘the mood’. Well maybe not that grand, but I thought someday I will find you.

Or maybe, someday on the street, when the traffic stopped, at the signal? It does sound cliché doesn't it? But you liked clichés you believed in them. The typical Bollywood you, minus the hypocrisy. Yes, someday when that signal turns red on me, I thought I will look on my left and there you would be on your shiny black horse. Horse? Yeah, it was nothing less than a horse. Yes, someday I thought I will find you.

But you are lost, it has been a long time. I should have found you already, before I lost all of me. 

Shouldn't I have? Why are you elusive?

I should have found you already. I should have found you so that you could find me in return.

Meri nayya paar lagane. 

Falling slowly

Killed myself. Died when I broke the promise I made to myself.

He was right. All my life I will be just OK. He cursed me.

No I am just blaming him and him. He doesn't need to be sensitive. I need to stand up and fight for myself. I need to walk out of the mess that I have made of myself, to be myself again.

...Moods that take me and erase me and I am painted black...
....

Hitched

Here I am. Back. 

I just wrote to a friend saying:
“life will never be the same again, but it isn’t too different (if you know what I mean)”"

I am not too different today, am just an upgraded version of myself. Some one new, some one I never knew existed. I feel more powerful, the power manifesting from his love; Love that is non-verbal, non-tangible, non-negotiable.

I am married. I share my  life with him now.

I will never be the same again, but I am not too different either…

More later!

=)

Mera wo samaan lauta do...

Day dreams. Pretence.
You and me back then. Pretence.
Ignore me like you always did.
Love me like you never did.
Far away. Near. Pretence.
Tears. Smiles. Pretence.

I jump off mountains, I walk those empty streets, I fly...fly, up up and away.
Reality. Pretence.

Looking for you. Empty not. full? Not yet. Looking for you. Pretence.

...ek sou solah chaand ki raatein, ek tumhare kandhe ka til...

Samaan tere paas...main? Pretence.