I wished I was blind so I couldn't see them together. But wishes don't come true in the first place.

It isn't just Cinderella...

On a random count I found, on an average I have about 10 of them. I also pick up a season's favourite, and get addicted to it. I love them all.

But I recently found that this love makes my world go round. 

There are tough days, and there are troublesome days. And I have a well thought out strategy for all the horrid looking days. 3 points. If there were less, it would not be so well thought out, if more, then wouldn't be MECE. So 3 it is.

One, close the eyes. Sometimes, it feels like I can't quite keep my eyes open. As if, everything becomes more pronounced if my eyes were open. Like darts- aimed at me. I've spent days trying to keep away troublesome thoughts with eyelids shut. I see Orange. Closed eyes give me Orange, when I need to keep the blue away.

Level 2, on above average horrid days, there's extreme action that helps. Change of hair. The three(!) Cs- Cut, colour, condition. Everything works.

Level 3, on extremely horrid days. Get out there. Get another.

And there it is. And then on good days it works. And on bad days, I remind myself while also looking at others that, it'll work. Like it always has, like it always does, like it so should.

Today, it doesn't matter if they're not looked out for. Cos, I am not leaving them behind. 

I love my shoes.

An update for Jenny of fifth floor

When I write about love, Iwill write here. When Iwrite about all other assorted emotions, I will write here. I hope that's OK.

My personal blog stalker...

People said I was too cryptic, hence I thought of this wonderful thing to share. I am not sure, whether it fits into the category of love, but it's surely something like i(the dude)-lost-my-mind-and-I (the dude)-am-hallucinating-love. 

So, I got (yet another) mail from my blog stalker. The guy first "noticed" my blog in 2005. He is disillusioned* to think that I actually write for him. I do not know the guy, and do not feel the need to know him too. 

Here's an entertaining (sorry, but!) mail from him. I just hope for his own sake, he goes to a doctor. I don't even want to write back and be bad to him. I don't even know who he is. I know he is sick (for real, mentally) though.

Dear Upasna,

What you call "perennial torture**" isn't exactly clear to me. But this phrase indicates that something isn't going the way you would've liked. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Upasna, at some point in future I would like to meet you. I really want to. It's not a new feeling. It's just that it seems more feasible now.

I'm hesitant to give this relationship a name.That would stereotype.

I'm at peace after whatever I write to you. If I had enough money right now I would've bought 2 nearby apartments , one for both of us. Then I would indulge both of us in long chats. I would take you to the nearby coffee shop . Weekend movies would be indespensible. :D

I'm on the move with you.
Please don't call this "perennial torture" !!

*He reallly believes that I write for/ about him

** A post I wrote on my blog

And so it is...*

I am not a firm believer in the first sight. Though these days beliefs change by dime a dozen, and I don't quite know when, I may loose my cynicism amongst all other things. I do think however that there are signs ( like the dress tears up suddenly and jazz like that). It's weird sometimes to think that the whole universe seems to be scheming against the perfect good-on-paper stuff. Often times, the shoe is reluctant to be left behind. So, that's that.

* the shorter story, no love no glory, no hero in her sky

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