Your fractured mind does not let you see the hole you are burning. And the way you disgrace yourself, is painful to watch.
To what end. Does someone need to show you a mirror.. so you see that your evening lies within you.
But we brought ourselves up well. We develop new skin. Layer by layer. Each one tougher than the one before, you know how a wound heals don’t you.
I can’t remember when, I began substituting the question mark with full stops.
But something has to be said for us, and if I have to say it myself, so be it. Somehow, miraculously, both of us find the strength to look at you with sympathy.
But we are finite. and the day that sympathy dies, you will go with it.
Where i grew up, when the weather gods decided it was supposed to be a gloomy day, the weather did complete justice to it. Sincere and whole-hearted attempts. The skies would be overcast, with a particular shade of grey... one that makes you think that behind the clouds was clear blue sky and nice light... you could sense him covering it delierately, with focussed effort.
And if by mistake it let some light through, the difference in temperature was so apparent that it made you feel small. One step into the light with the other foot under the shade meant you had goosebumps on only one leg.
And gloomy meant it made you want to snuggle up behind thick razais.... old ones that have evidence of years of human kicks and stretches under the soft cotton that was loosely held by muslin-esque cloth. It never moved totally towards 'biting cold'. It always threatened to... leaving us perenially confused as to whether its going to get colder or not... imagine an elogated, slow, lazy threat of things getting colder but never actually doing it.
And you snuggle up under the blanket... tuck it under your feet... stretch inside and hug yourself mummy-like to conserve the heat. And that's enough. You don't need layers, woollen socks and gloves... you just feel like you want all of those things. And then the weather man starts his hypnotics... he creeps slowly into ur bones until any movement seems like an immoral act... you know if you bend your knee a little bit, you would touch that patch of cold under the blanket and who would be stupid enough to do it.
School on dreary mornings was the most cruel thing Bangalore made you do. It was never cold enough to not go... but nothing about the weather made you feel like you could pull it off. And so you tear yourself away... apologising to your knees and cursing your favourite blanket. And the weather always strikes up a personal rapport with every individual... he affects each of you individually... slowly at his own pace... making each of you alone in that misery at that point of time. Hence, for a certain period of time my mom was the most 'sensitive ' of us all... then it was me... then it was the asthma in dad's lungs... and now its probably my sis.
But he will get you. He will use rain on a perfectly sunny afternoon and make you run into your blanket. Its the only place where I've seen people never completely pack off their blankets for the summer... just shove them into a lower shelf in the cupboard. I used to put mine below the sheets I used to sleep on... I loved my blankey too much. Plus he was this heavy, tantrum throwing lazy thing who would never completely stay within my grasp... I folded him to a third of his length, hugged him and tried walking to the cupboard... but the lazy fucker would just decided to get heavier with every step... until i threw him down and fell asleep on him.
Gloomy days meant that the plastic toilet seats felt like cold metal under your bum. Gloomy days meant everyone was excused from talking in the mornings... from greeting each other.... meant that if you told mum you fell asleep while brushing she didn't laugh at you. Only those from 'colder' parts didn't get what the big deal was. Until they came down and stayed in Bangy for a year... until a Scot came down and said she needed a sweater at 12pm while walking out in the sun and until all your overactive cold loving never sleeping in the afternoon since birth skin wanted to go to bed at 11 am and dozed off into a comatose-ey snooze on a 4 day trip. Until that happens, you are probably a weirdo who feels cold at 18 degrees.
And he makes you have an emotional connection with warm beverages... not many people get the notion of a coffee shop... its easily brushed away as another form of creating consumption channels... make people buy into a well marketed sit-down version of the same thing peddled by Hallmark greeting cards... selling popularised, American versions of Parisian cafes.. calling them 'hang-outs' for the youth. They are probably exactly that for most people, who hasn't seen a bunch of 7 college kids buy one cappuccino and sit around a cramped table... trying to pull as much time as possible for them to sit there, chat and get noticed at the 'right' places.
But my bangy doesn't have coffee shops for those reasons. She has tiny, sit-out cafes where the filter coffee kind of people actually come over to sit alone and let warm watered down frothy coffee of fancy names and read books or just stare out onto the road. And you know what, the mood of these places is so apt that you realise the coffee is actually perfect. I've done it so many times that I actually have a mental map of where to go for which coffee on which day in what weather.
CCD is cheap, crappy shit... machine made coffee for when you want to have a quick meeting or if you have absolutely no other choice. The coffee at Barista is a little more careful. They have short, wide cups... generous enough to let you cup your hands around them. The coffee is machine ground but the milk is added later (atleast the ones I used to go to in Bangy). The coffee is a little thicker... but the brew is not that dark... light coloured, bordering on thick beverages that course down ur throat giving you a sense of fullness... with a coffee chip muffin on the side... just to make things look pretty. A lil bit of decoction drip over the side of the cup, chocolate sauce drizzled over the muffin, non air conditioned open air spaces... and chairs that give you the right distance from the table so u can sit and play with the rim of your cup. And then there is Mocha, tall dark coloured glazed mugs with rich robust South American coffee brews… which you make entirely by yourself… its actually 3 coffees packed into one…. So u can add whatever proportions you want… low seating that lets you lean over towards ur cup… hold it with both hands… dimly lit even if you are sitting outside… (I don’t know how they achieve that)… Moroccan furniture… weird trippy music, long bent out forks and good food. Conducive to deep introspection and non-conversation, or maybe a private one.
And all of these versions of coffee simply taste better in Bangy. They get everything right there. And I wont talk about filter coffee or about India coffee house… both are too beautiful to be described and better left un-classified.
But nevermind all that. I miss my gloomy bangy days. Its dull where I live... I keep the dull tubelight on all day and all night.... but its not my kind of gloomy. Its irritating... cos it doesnt lure you to snuggle in... you just sweat less. And the coffee shops here just try.
I don't understand How it is that I can vacillate Between Spewing venom through spoken word And feel my heart melting Progressively From song to song on My 'Random' playlist.
I don't understand how I can push away on one hand And pine, on the other For the same thing.
I don't understand What this vacillation does to me Or to the sole listener. And sometimes I worry I never will.
Sometimes, its delightful what the blogosphere can bring us, isn't it? The lovely pleasures of new discoveries simplified into random .blogspot.coms... so us dreary, too afraid to be non-linear, simpletons are given a chance at getting to smile unexpectedly... or find someone kindred just randomly splashed across a virtual world no one has seen, and everyone has imagined.
It's a nice settling feeling... like that first bite into a much desired bar of chocolate, or sip of beer on a hot, dry, windless afternoon. Something that makes you straighten your shoulders and proceed. Or not. But whatever... I like the blogosphere. Its gives me adventurous strangers, pretty ones with long eyelashes... and even a honey coloured, dimpling keeper.
Having spent the last 3 days in unbearable pain – starting first with bouts of uncontrollable throw-uppings, a bloated tummy, a trip to the hospital, my looks making the nurse mistake me for an ecg scan candidate over the age of 30, and finally a couple of life-saving injections… I happened to think of this poor blog that I abandoned a few months ago. And said to myself, what better thing to do than to share some of the pressing (hehe) queries on my, er.. mind. So here is…
There is apparently such a thing as the Bengali Stomach. I have been introduced to the annoyingly self-important term quite a few times in the recent past. And considering where I come from myself, I figured it would be no different in character – varying in degrees maybe, but more or less the same thing. I mean, after all, aren’t we all Indian??
Or so I thought. Until it hit me, swelled up in me rather (you must excuse the multiple references to my stomach infection… im still in shock). I’m not sure what caused it, or if it was my sub conscious aided by random snippets of info over-working itself… but I think I’ve developed one. A Bengali Stomach, that is.
Often I heard that it must not be underestimated. Often I secretly smiled to myself at how carefully it was guarded. Often I was appalled by the diametrically opposing interpretations of such simple things as, say, curd. I come from a place where curd is the ultimate cure for everything. And while it still holds for my tummy… I’m afraid the poor thing is caught in some sort of an identity crisis.
See… let me explain… (and no, this isn’t going to be boring). The thing is, I was brought up to believe in this rather inter-connected notion of how our bodies work. You know, your head, limbs, internal organs, ear-nose-throat, lungs, bowels… all affect each other. And so, we occupy ourselves with ‘managing’ our bodies at most points of time. Oil bath once a week with your mum literally grinding an entire cup full of thick castor oil down from the top of your head… to cool it down; castor oil on your tummy to soothe it if it’s bloated, castor oil at the base of your foot to cool the body at night. Milk after eating mangoes, curd rice at the end of the day, buttermilk the moment you sense that summer is, I don’t know, a month away?? Hot pepper rasam to soothe an aching throat, cool panagams to beat the heat. And who can forget the diwali marundhu. Heat and cold are the extremes we operate between.
And then are the weird, inexplicable remedies – add salt to sour curd to reduce the sourness, ghee with rice to soothe a tumultuous tummy… and the funny thing is it works. Atleast for me. I think we see our bodies as being heat conductors of some sort. And in the end it’s all about restoring balance. Balance at all costs. And the poor tummy is just one of the various parts of our entire being… treat the whole body and teach the tummy to behave.
It is with such cultural learnings, that this poor south Indian kid, entered the realm of the not-so-far east. And lo and behold, it really is a different world out there! The Bengali Stomach, mind you, isn’t merely a part of the entire being. She is, in FACT, the entire being. From birth to death, they have a different relationship with it. She is pampered, cajoled, protected and put on a pedestal. She comes first, and the rest follow.
While our meals consist of different parts cancelling each other’s negatives out, their meals consist of individual parts balancing themselves carefully. While acidity is a transient state for us, for them it is the all becoming final word. I admit, it is rather confounding even to describe.
I’m amazed at the intricacy of each preparation. I’m amazed at the extent of variety each meal can go upto. And I’m amazed at the kind of detail it requires. Sure we have frightfully demanding preparations… any tam will know how much effort it takes to hear ‘malli-poo maadiri irukku’ for an innocent idli, not to mention koottu or avial, or even see how molaga-podi is made; but there is something to be said for the effort that goes into every single item on their menu. Firstly, there are a gazillion different ways in which the meal is consumed. We follow a rather, dare I say, simple approach – there are veggies, and then there are pulses and we mix the pulses with the veggies. We have non-pulse-ey preparations as well, put its pretty obvious what goes with the rice and what is the curry. But with a Bengali meal, my poor tummy is at quite a loss as to what it has just consumed – did I just have dal without curry, or did I mix the curry with the rice… or is it a different variation of koottu?? And then there are the 7-8 odd things surrounding my plate… how the fuck do I know where to begin??
Secondly, every ingredient seems to play a different role. Curd is added to the preparation, but not diluted like in our mor-kozhambus; vegetables are fried without boiling first, and oil IS the gravy in most dishes, not a mere part of it.
And adding to the bewilderment is the fact that everything tastes finger-licking delicious. Needless to say, my adventures in gastronomics had begun. And my poor tummy finally gave herself up.
She says to me she loves the new tastes, flips out at the options and amazes at the preparations; but I think there is a tiny part of her that is hurt when curd is thought of as acidic. Friend!, she screams, not foe!! And I’m afraid I’m gonna have to give this one to her.
“We live like them, you know… you and I. Not the others. Just you and I.”, he says dreamy-eyed.
When you decide to design your life chasing ideas, moods become even more powerful.
“Hmm…”
She never looks at buildings in the night sky though. Tiny squares of light – white, hospital, old yellow, blue, green, standing out through the skeletons.
It was cold inside, but the warm outside air doesn’t quite thaw her lips.
She weeps inconsolably… another one of those weeps she can’t describe. Only it chokes her. Again.
While dreaming, you don’t think of what it costs to get there. Time. An absolute bitch.
“Lets just grow some balls and do it”, she says
“Hmm…” noncommittally.
Sometimes, you have to use words. To make up for the space between ideas and time. Slip ‘em in so she doesn’t buckle under the Bitch. Atleast until the next time.
“You have to look desperate enough”, she hears someone say, “Act like you have no other option and you are out on the streets. That’s how I got myself a room”
“Hmm… well THAT shouldn’t be tough.”
Only look into flats when you are close enough. To seeing something like furniture, curtains, woodwork, fixtures, laundry. Or close enough otherwise.
“Do you wanna watch it again?”
“I don’t know”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I don’t know if I’m watching it again.”. she snaps. “Am I?”
As I was watching a Woody Allen movie... and there was this scene where he gets back together with his long lost wife but one and only love... something struck me as odd. The mood was New York sunny in the fall with lovely leaves and everything including the dumspter exuding gold... bringing about an innocent warmthness most of us might find only in the movies nowadays. So jsut before entering the car with his regained wife on their way to Paris (could it get more romantic??), he kisses her. And they are in love and they have this innocent love expressing classic kiss... and after they are done... they look into each other's eyes. And for some reason... it didnt click. There was no warm gooey lovey dovey sense in that post kiss linger.
And that got me thinking. I know such ridiculous notions matter a lot to me... and god knows I chase ideas for the prettiness in them... but isn't it important? I mean SHOULDN'T one get to see almost misted over eyes glowing with all the good things in life and suchlike??? Why would they leave it incomplete and hence spoil the whole moment in such delectable setting? The actress does act well... besides she is in an Allen production goddamit. Kissing Allen has got to do something to you... despite his looks. Its Allen!!!!
And then it occured to me that for the life of me I can't remember any other instance when I got to see what I'm referring to here. Have we not gotten one of the classic kiss moments to see recently? Has it become merely a first step towards more carnal pursuits? In fact I can only remember post kiss linger scenes when the woman looks uncomfortable and borderline spastic.
Whats wrong with me?? I'm sure the event isn't a figment of my imagination. But I gotta undo this.... I gotta restore my faith in the post kiss linger!!!! Help me out here!
It occurred to me that there could be a very perverse joy that can be derived from being an unofficial student of popular culture. Firstly, I get to read only stuff that I enjoy. Secondly, and I’m not sure how you guys do it, but I seem to comprehend most of the stuff I read about only in a very personal manner – either as something I relate to and hence, enjoy reading… or with a certain sense of cynicism towards anything I don’t relate to. Whatever the outcome, I notice gleefully that it arms me with a larger vocabulary to describe others. And so in my spare time, I find myself adding or deleting from the invisible cloud of words attached to people around me. Such fun… because it allows me that quiet smile to self once in a while. And I can merrily leave myself out of these self-conversations, and save myself the process of questioning. And any adjectives pinned on to me by others can remain just points of agreement or disagreement.
But I do agree that I can be rather boring at times.
