Pathos ruled my August Mistress

Pathos ruled my August Mistress
And I could but stand by and watch
Watch her fight with contentment
Watch her war with normalcy
And could do nothing to help
Coz I was part of what was normal too
Something she had as a life
Something she didn’t desire

For she longed to be a tormented sea
Against the calm lazy lake that
Didn’t know her own depth
She longed to be the foolish moth
To shimmer out to a dramatic death
Even to an unworthy cause

Her greatest fear, was her reality
Where, going against the flow
She dreamed and longed not for peace
But pain, to an extent that was not quite sane
It took me a long while to understand
The anguish she longed for, she quixotically thought
Would make her feel, the real emotions
Of love, pleasure, rage, and the lot

And as she fell into another night of restless sleep
I prayed a silent prayer of hope
That she didn’t get what she asks for
For the man with whom she lay
Had seen the beauty of silver flashes across the angry sky
Had felt the numbing pain of being touched by the same
Had stood at a shore and yelled ecstatically at the oncoming tornado
Had been caught in that breathless circle of non-life too
I prayed that she didn’t get what she asked for
I prayed too, for the death of her soul
To be of restlessness rather than the nothingness
That engulfs when feeling breaks the bonds of one’s universe

What fascinates me about love is...

...The way someone has this excited child-like look in a mall looking for her favorite candy shop, but the look is the search for the perfect love story

... or the soft look in someone's eyes which belies the cynical words spewed about the spouse...

...the stoic commitment in behavior which says without words that "you are the most important relationship in my life and I will fight tooth and nail to keep it safe and alive...

... is the look in someone's eyes when an abstract gaze pans across a crowded floor searching for the loved one...

... is in the way someone blushes while reminiscing their love story...

... in the way my father holds my mother's hand so tenderly so that incase she looses her balance, she would never fall...

... the silent complete conversations you can hold in your head, while sitting silently in the presence of your object of desire...

... in the strength it takes to be weak, vulnerable and flawed in the eyes in which you only want to see awe and admiration and desire...

As someone said there are a thousand reasons why love between 2 people won’t or can’t work; there is only one reason why it will - that there your partner is the only one who completes you in all the myriad ways only he/she can.

Question for all...

"Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship. " - Oscar Wilde

Onwards to the movies...

...and so,  of course, there will be days, when the sentences will often times than not , not start with the 'so' ( this is slightly off limits already). 

I realised, one of the things about wax statues which I cross or dream about, is that the space between the time they burn the candle to churn the wax, that space is disconcerting. Cos, probably it always stays put. The wax doesn't quite melt. I might avoid it, but it has hazel eyes, which hold. Disconcerting cos, looking away is probably like work- you need to do it. I love work, even so.

I've become a fan of Piya (the girl with the smart lines here) - it really should be like the movies.

Mirror, mirror on the wall.

Distance is an unknown variable.
There are many unknown variables but distance is certainly one of the most uncertain.

If I were to be a cynic tonight… what would I see? What would I choose?

There are vignettes of feeling, of sensation… like memories from a previous life.

flaming flowers that brightly blaze
swirling clouds in violet haze*


I love that line by L.P. Hartley: “The past is like a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

How do they do things? How does one locate, retrieve, and archive the old ways?

I look.
I delve into the depths of the sea and grasp blindly at something hidden between seaweeds and fragments of shells.
What have I brought to the surface? What have I retrieved?

I remember K. and R.
Vivacious, steady, bright-eyed K.
Who went away to a faraway land and refused to stay the same person. She grew and changed and she became an older, different K. It would be silly to say “better” or “worse” than before. She was just different…
And tenacious, steady R. became the past- he became part of the foreign country and she no longer knew him, or loved him with an everlasting passion like they had promised one another.
Is such a promise viable? Realistic?
People change after all- how can we blame someone for evolving?

You said you were going to conquer new frontiers**


Then there are D. and B.
She went. He stayed.
She tried. He tried.
They both tried- really really hard.
But they fell apart anyway, and she smiled her way into the glimmering life of money, and he stayed back and began to look for love again.

We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?**


W. and P. would have tamed the world.
They would have fulfilled the fairytale fantasy of love-across-the-seven-seas.
Except that W. didn’t make it.
If ever someone has searched in a possessed, frenzied fashion for some sort of saving grace in an unexpected, inexplicable death, it is P.
She’s still trying to find it.
She’s found other things along the way- but there are no more castles in the air.
Perhaps it’s easier to think of them making it because circumstances allow for that romantic possibility..?
But no… I think not.
I really think they would have managed…

We laid her next to him beneath the willow
While the angels sang a whiskey lullaby***


But while distance is an unknown variable… and the past is painful and incoherent… it seems there may be a mantra of sorts…

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
…
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)****


Nothing is known. To attempt certainty is to defy the very laws of life, isn’t it?
Yet we strive and strain and search and seek…
Surely even the most “rational” among us cannot resist the occasional glance at a horoscope prediction..? Surely there is an inevitable thrill of expectation as we crunch open a fortune-cookie after a Cantonese dinner? I know I am susceptible. The temptation to know is ridiculously powerful.

However…it is impossible to really, truly know… So where do I go from here?

It’s easier when you go with the flow, and believe what makes the most sense to your heart.
It’s easier to find a mantra, and let it cartwheel and echo through the void of distance.

So then…that is what I choose, I suppose.
I choose to enjoy the dynamic of love.
I choose to believe in it.
I choose to have faith in the concept of bridging distance, of transforming unknown variables into manageable realities.
I choose to be talk about it, to write about it, to revel in it, to learn not to hold-back-and-keep-some-part-of-yourself-as-insurance-just-in-case…
I choose to believe that I have a choice…surely the greatest illusion of all?

I choose not to be a cynic tonight.

So here we are reinventing the wheel
I'm shaking hands with a hurricane
It's a colour that I can't describe
It's a language I can't understand**

Chaos meets sunshine meets destiny.




* “Vincent – Don Mclean
** “The Pioneers” – Bloc Party
*** “Whisky Lullaby” – Brad Paisley
**** “i carry your heart with me” – ee cummings

--

And then the Gods breathed.

Thus began it's journey. Permeating through the infinite spaces between. Ever gathering momentum, ever increasing in darkness. It was small, but aware of its destiny. It was now here. Passing through the seasons and years. Still sucking in all the darkness, removing any trace of the bright as it kept going. It was viscous now. Thick and heavy. But it never stopped. Through eons, it was in flux. Darkening, thickening and moving.

And then it stopped. It saw a brightness that the universe had never seen before. It finally knew. It slowed down. Chaos in it's wake, but it slowed down.

I've looked into your eyes. The blackest of them all.

Love...

After going through a disastrous attempt at a relationship, the pain, guilt of it broke my spirit ( yes, that is what I would call the monk like existence I put myself through. I had simply decided that if I am not open to people, they would loose the power to render pain. Incase the anger is directed at your partner, you can still get over it as it loses steam in a while. But when u cant forgive yourself for being stupid, the entire thing takes on a completely different dimension.

You run away from people you know, do not want to go and expose yourself to events or give other people a chance to like you. Having a voice in your own head go "yeah right? I was born yesterday" when a nice guy says " you are so interesting to talk to...". Dressing as if you were a man or a grandmother. Letting yourself go and pigging out, growing fat so you can melt into the background and no-one categorizes you in the 'attractive girl-lets get to know her' bracket. I can tell you as I gone through each of this.

I still dont know what happened, the when or the how of it - But I fell in love. I do know that one fine morning when I woke up I was back to being happy. I had a permanent smile etched on my face, I was humming songs walking to my pickup point, I was dancing to some strange rhthym playing inside me and I genuinely enjoyed the many flavors of the people around me. The grand passion of my life, the person who made me happy and comfortable with myself .... was Me. ( I am not attempting a repitition of Narcissus here). But Oscar Wilde actually got it right when he said "To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."

JLT - Just like that!

Does love really exist,

or is it just a rosy veil to cover

the need for emotional sustenance?

Is a sacrifice really that noble and altruistic

or does it hint towards

A self destructive nature?

Has joy and happiness really been felt or

Is it simply in the anticipation of good surprises that

We find solace?

Is one ever actually with someone or

Is everyone forever alone?

I have felt that need for survival in

another’s love for me and

in my love for someone else.

Giving away bits of me has always been a relief.

I have experienced that sorrow always is and

Happiness is forever to be.

I have stood alone in many a madding crowd.

-

***
I once had a girl,
Or should I say
She once had me.
She showed me her room,
Isn't it good?
Norwegian wood.
She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere,
So I looked around and I noticed there wasn't a chair.
I sat on a rug
Biding my time,
Drinking her wine.
We talked until two,
And then she said,'It's time for bed'.
She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh,
I told her I didn't, and crawled off to sleep in the bath.
And when I awoke,
I was alone,
This bird has flown,
So I lit a fire,
Isn't it good?
Norwegian wood.

***

It's so obvious I like her. Well, so much for mutual exclusivity and falling victim to the whole "He likes her... and I like his her" paradigm. I guess that's what I have become; for once I think I fit some stereotype. The irony is sickening.

My head constantly loops images of us. Strange that they are of us arguing, of us discussing weird English words, of us dissecting the lyrics to Pearl Jam... of us constantly agreeing to disagree. Yes, unadvisedly, even "Black". Who else can boast of being hugged in front of engineering undergrads? Who else can tell you that they can make someone feel better by singing Britney Spears? Who else can make a born and bred vegetarian crave for pepper crab... at 3 in the morning?

I look at my new new cell phone. It still says I have no messages. You want to call her; but you don't really want to intrude on her or hear some lady tell you that your call is waiting. She tells you she can't switch calls, but why would she? You put the phone back down. She gave me a chance to be her friend and God knows I don't want to end up breaking and trampling down her carefully constructed privacy.

But then, we also talk. A lot. I act tough. She sees right through me. She laughs. With me and at me. She doesn't giggle. She laughs throatily. She "ish"-es me. I talk about a million things, I flit from topic to topic scared to stick to one. I tell her I came up with another guitar riff. She gets enthusiastic, but she forgets. She tells me of her partaking in drunken revelry with him. You instantly wish you were too... drunk and forgetful.

I want to help her in every way I can. But then, how dare I. I also realize, my helping her will be as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike. You offer anyway. You also silently withdraw. She barely notices. I create this steely exterior and smile on the outside.I bleed.

It all makes sense now. Chocolate, flowers, long walks on the beach, satin sashes and snow flakes on noses. Perfect sense really.

Maybe someone will bleed for me. But what good would that do?

Never Got an Answer...!

“I’ve heard that it’s something that happens between a boy and a girl when they grow up,” said wide-eyed, curly-top Vikram, my best friend in class IV.

“Listen! I swear I’ll complain to Kumud Ma'am if you ask me dirty things like this again!” screeched Sonia the snob, my class monitor in class VII, as we returned for History class after recess.

“Don’t you ask me such smart-Alec questions! Why don’t you just focus on your studies like other 12-year olds? Huh?” admonished Radha - my imperial sister, six years my senior.

“Listen kiddo! I’ve got to rush for my football practice. Later, OK?” Rajan - my brother, my idol, my hero (just two years older than me), barked rushing past me.

“Nothing yaar! All bakwaas!” said Ronnie - the senior school swimming champion, lazily chewing his gum.

“Uff-oh! You’ll find the answer when it happens to you. Have patience dear!” said miss-know-it-all, class topper Surbhi with a saint-like look on her face.

“It’s all give-and-take business, pal!’ said Vanraj - son of a diamond merchant , my colony friend, with whom I had smoked my first cigarette.

“It’s……..I don’t know……..umm………I think…………how do I say………….rather difficult…………it’s like…………” mumbled Udita behind a veil of hash-smoke in College canteen.

“Sacrifice, beta! Sacrifice.” Said Ma and sighed!

“Good question! Hmmm...” said Pa and walked off.

“A time-pass for sentimental fools,” said Aditya- the secretary of the College photography club.

“Who’s got the time dude? Focus on the presentation,” said Iqbal - my first colleague at work - and rushed off to the conference room.

“Kyon pooch rahe ho? Pehle batao. Batao na…..!” said Rani Malhotra, fluttering her eyelashes from behind the office reception.

“Bus hai! Kucch khaas hai, bacche!” said Guruji - my music teacher - with a faraway look in his eyes

“Faaltu baaton mein time mat waste kar. Kaam kar apna,” said Andrew, my trainer at a three-day workshop on interpersonal relationships in Goa.

Never got a straight answer!

Never got an answer!

I no longer ask “What is love?”

I don’t want to.

I don’t need to.

I’m happy soaking in it, showering it.

Whatever it is……………………………!!

The T and Me

T: I didn't sleep at all last night, I am sooo sleepy.
Me: Why? When did you sleep?
T: Around 10
Me: When did you have to wake up?
T: About 8 this am.

My friend T is one of those rare women who falls asleep during the day if she does not get her daily thirteen hours of sleep. She sleeps at parties, movies, restaurants, and during or after consuming alcohol; amid killing din or deafening silence. She is skinny as a reed but can eat half a pound of cake when she is hungry and I am jealous of her.

T (while eating cheesy pasta): Hey I made tossed vegetable salad for you today. Try some.
Me (after trying some): This is raw cabbage and veggies floating in vinegar.
T (totally incredulous): Is it? But I tossed it! I took all the ingredients and tossed it in a bowl. Isn't that how you make tossed salad?

T makes me laugh. Not because she is funny but because she is plain ridiculous.
She is the only woman I know who expresses her anxiety or stress by jiggling her breasts.
She is also the only woman I know who has nursed me to health like a mother and worried for me, sitting on a first floor balcony, like a father waiting for his daughter to return from a date he disapproves of.
It's not that I love her because when she was nine and went to visit the museum, her mum joked that her feet were larger than the 15 feet tall statue of the mythical feet of Bramha and she has believed it for the rest of her life -- reluctantly and ungracefully accepting "big foot" as a term of endearment. It worries me that if I move from this city, our inability to chat on the phone might mean that no one who is far removed from the daily events of my life would be bothered with how well I am dealing with them.

What makes her endearing is, on the rare occassion when she is wearing a delicate shell-pink kurta, in her enthusiasm to dress up, she puts on so much and such uncoordinated make up that people become genuinely concerned.
"Why are you made up like a goth rock chick?"
"Shut up. That's not what she had aimed for." I hiss through my teeth.

She looks at the world through myopic spectacles, which look like she stole them from a home for the elderly. Not just that, this was the pair even they were preserving as an example of glasses worn by the 1940's career man. With these bottle bottoms, an oversized sweater some homeless person may have given her because she looked at them so longingly, she cries silently into her glass when drunk. At times like these, I know, she likes to just be left alone but then people fuss over her.
People of all kinds love her because she is too kind to be rude and has a laughter so loud, Rajdeep Sardesai once forgot his lines because she was being amused at the other end of a very large office.

I love her because when no one is watching she sits alone and keenly observes her feet and sometimes applies mildly shiny glitter on her face to appear glamourous. But I love her most because when I ask her "How do I look?" she is the only person who says, "Not so good. You look like a watermelon."

Monday morning question

I was on facebook recently, and a former colleague of mine (a very intelligent woman) had filled out one of those "25 random things about me" lists. In it, point number 7 to be exact, she'd written: "I believe you only love once, everything else is a compromise." Is this true?

I know too many couples who keep breaking up and getting back together, or who break up and go on to live happy lives with other people... but is that first love, the one that hurt, that took forever to detangle from, is *that* love with a capital L. Are all the other relationships that follow somehow paler shades of the original? I find this hard to believe... yet, my former colleague's question kept resonating in my mind this morning. I've never been in love, I think... so there's no relationship to measure this by. I find myself almost envious of those couple's who've had those long drawn-out college-time affairs... feel like I've missed an important life milestone!

What is love?

It is not the authoritative source on love I know, but why is Haddaway's prophetic "What is love?" followed by "... baby don't hurt me..."?

There is so much love that I cannot find any

Is love this composite chemical or this cosmic light that binds the world that we can only experience atoms of and are then left craving for more eternally? Or is love such a huge volume of emotions that you can see it all around you but can never find any for keeps, or even to hold for a little while? Is love existing in such a myriad of ways that it is difficult to pinpoint one avatar and say I like it best and want it to linger most? Or is love this ability to give up being loved and say I have loved and been loved so I know it cannot last forever? Or is love this magnificent feeling that really can last forever, but that not many stumble upon?

My story in love??? That's too long to keep you riveted... Suffice it to say for now that I have loved more and been loved less. Except for the two tender hearts whose world I have built, I can confidently say. And I am now at a point where I am contemplating what is contemporarily an EMA (extra marital affair). That's material for another post.

Fashioned on a tag, but is really a post.

10 random things about me and love I insist on telling you

1. When I met J, I was already with G. When I met G on my second day of college, I was seeing S. When I met S with the help of a cousin, I was with K. When K met me in Math class, I was fourteen. You walk towards the light, you walk into darkness, either way you are blinded.

2. One of the above-mentioned letters wanted to slap me in public for leaving him. He hatched a plot to get me to meet him in a place crowded by our peers and involve me in a loud row and slap me across the face, to let the world know I had hurt him. Sometimes, I wish I would have let him. I broke his heart and I remember that I did this.

3. There are two novels you will never understand fully, unless you have loved and lost the one person who made you believe in soul mate, or even soul for that matter. Devdas and Wuthering Heights.I unfortunately, wholly, completely understand both.

4. To this day, I regret refusing to kiss my fifteen-year-old first love. In a span of five minutes, he first mocked me, then looked amused and then moved to irreversible and total indifference.

5. When I was 17, G sat next to me under a tree in the rain and said, “You look so beautiful.” It was like he had complimented me into a coma. Not only did I not look at him and speak to him, I disbelieved him. I remember looking down at my muddy feet, shabby sandals and focusing on a tiny scab on my big toe and thinking, “I hate him so much for making me feel so ugly.” You gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you.

6. In my life, I have learnt the hard way, that when you are trying to run away from someone and that someone clings on to you— not just that he holds on, but tries to hold you back with anger and love and resentment and love and spite and love, clings on so hard that he has his feet dug into the ground and his nails are clawing into your flesh— don’t leave.If you want to cling on to someone who is leaving you with your teeth and nails, don’t. They will leave.

7. “ I want to see you happy”…… “Actually, no. I don’t want to see you happy with someone else. I hope you are never happy. I hope you are never well.”I know love is not wanting your loved one to be in pain. But I also know this is nothing but love. Flawed, selfish, human kind of love.

8. I have barely ever had intense romance with anyone other than G. But if you rock the boat too much, even if you don’t fall out, you will get nauseous. I got positively sick. So I decided never to love anyone like a crucifix. I was not being stubborn or careful. I was just being curious.

One night when I got home from work, J and I sat on our beds, silently. The music was on, I was reading, he was playing a violent video game. We had a box of chocolates on the bed. Each of us silently ate one piece at a time, without looking at each other or talking. Slowly it became painfully sweet but we were being so greedy. The need to put one more piece into the mouth became more and more urgent. I don’t know when we both passed out from the chocolate. Through the whole thing, we had not spoken one word to each other. I cannot imagine one other person who I would do this with— abandon control, be nakedly greedy, be sloth, be gluttonous, be completely unmindful of the self—except for my husband, J. I have since abandoned my curiosity.

9. At parties or social gatherings, I sometimes try to make up for my skin and hair, back fat and belly fat with cutting wit and sarcasm. Mostly it works. If I really want to, I can shine and glitter, sending the hottest girl at the club crying to the loo. My eyes twinkle and I become a whole new me. Then I look across the room and I see J thinking, this is not really her. This one quizzical look, the knowledge that he knows who you really are, is being in an intimate relationship in my book.

10. Pick out a scar and explain how you got it. It’s a game I only play with the man I love.

The Art of Breaking Up: Road rage or taking the high road?

They say that there's a formula (atleast according to the yahoo chat groups, which so far have been my font of wisdom for matters pertaining to the heart) for how long it should take to get over someone. You take how long you were together and divide it by half ... and that's a safe estimate. BTW: there's also a formula for calculating if someone is too young or too old to date (very mathematical, and I'll save that story and formula for another blog). But my point is that I get over someone in dog years, as in, take how long we were together and multiply that by seven. My last relationship was an intense one-month long affair in which we talked deep into the night about our deepest sorrows and joys ... we broke up in August, lingered till October, and then entirely cut off contact. It's been four months since, so I have three more months of this dull ache to go by my estimates.

What I'm tortured by late at night is whether I broke up...well...well. I have a tendancy to take the high road, so when we met for our final tea I made a list of 10 questions pertaining to our relationship (yes, I'm a total dork)to get our conversation going in a positive strain. Things like, "What have you learned from this?" "What was one of your best moments?" "How will you remember me?" "What went wrong?" "Why are you such an asshole who doesn't know what he wants, gets me all tangled into this mess, and then leaves when things start getting real????" I didn't ask that last question, and that's the question I wish I had. I've always felt that it's important to leave people better than when you met them; and that when a love relationship ends it's best (just like in an exit interview at a job) to take the high road and not go into the petty nitty gritty of rehashing what went wrong. Something did, you tried, one or both of you didn't want to keep going, and now whether your heart feels like it's been shredded or not, it's over. Why draw blood? Why not remember the best stuff and walk away with your head high and with dignity and grace?

I'll tell you why. Because, then, some night when you can't sleep and the thousands of dogs outside your window are howling in chorus, you'll feel this rage build up in you and a torrent of unanswered unasked questions shower through you like pellets; each "why?" a little dart in your heart. You'll think of a million zillion things that you should have held him accountable for, but didn't. That's why. In the mood I'm in right now, I wish I could rewind, go back to our nice tea (which I paid for) and have one of my wittiest, smartest friends write me a little speech filled with biting and razor sharp points that illuminate how hypocritical and idiotic he was ... all said calmly and with total control of emotion. And then, I'd like to dump the tea on his head and walk away, like they do in the movies.

While this is my current fantasy, the truth is, I still am unable to hate him. I think in life connections are hard enough to come by, so whether they worked out the way we wanted them to or not, there's still something valuable there to keep. Why burn bridges? And ... sigh ... so, this brings me back to my initial question ... when breaking up is it better to take the high road, or is it better to rage rage against the dying of the light?

____ makes your world go round?

What is it that lights up your day?

With sunshine and laughter and rollercoaster thrills?

With moonbeams and sparkling-bright-eyes and tapping feet?

What is it that keeps you going?

Through winter-spring-summer-autumn?

Through the meetings and assignments and the myriad trials and travails of earning a living?

Through the addictions and the despair and the I-just-can’t-go-on-anymore?

If love, or the possibility of it, lights up your day and keeps you going, welcome to Pyar Durbar and do-do-do take a couple of minutes and jump in with your love wisdom.

If love, or the possibility of it, does not make your world go round, welcome to Pyar Durbar and do-do-do take a couple of minutes and jump in with your reality check!

Cheers!