he wiped her eyes
each tear a fire drop on his skin
she kept crying
afraid to tell him it was just
glycerine

he'd have noticed
hadn't he been busy
zipping up
that she'd taken off her clothes and
was slowly unbuttoning
herself

the most difficult four-lettered word

mine.

it's my idea. i thought of it first. i'm the one who made it happen. i should be getting this. i must be given that.

whenever i've had to say something like this, it's come out like an apology. i find it much easier to say i had nothing to do with it, it's all someone else's hard work, please pat his back not mine, congratulate her not me, they did it i was just there. these are so much easier to handle. why is it so hard to say that four-lettered word?

what if you woke up one day and discovered that your only child does not want to be like you. i don't mean the profession you're in. i mean the person you are. what if you find out that he's in fact, trying very hard not to be like you. that he's learning from you what not to learn. that he says a prayer for you not because you're so good but because you're so doomed. that he no longer wonders how you do it but why you do it. that he smiles at you not because he's happy but because it might be the last time he's seeing you. that he doesn't even regret that it could be the last time he's seeing you.

it's eerie that everytime i think of him intensely enough to write it down, it's this time of the year. because it's about this time of the year, three years back i think, that he was lost to us. i still haven't visited him. i've stopped asking about him. but i've thought of him. i've prayed for him. if i'm not mistaken, it's his birthday around this time. he's going to turn 33 i think. but we're waiting for him to turn turn 3 in his head. here's to you S. here's to the empty treadmill next to mine. here's to the mirror in which i sometimes see you running sweating and sighing. here's to the magic in your fingers lost in the reality of today. here's to so many hearts you'd have stolen by now. here's to so many hearts still bleeding for you. here's to my inability to come see you. here's to my inability to stop seeing you.

i'm watching six feet under as i write this. every character is so fucked up. like n says, it's a show that makes you feel it's ok to you know, be.

a character just had an outburst saying, "i hate that i'm the lucky one."

brilliant i think.

i don't like it when people badmouth my city. whatever it is, it's mine. i have known no other and the thought of moving out never used to even cross my mind. it was not an option. this was it. but over the years i've decided to buy a house of my own and then given up because i realised that i'm not sure i want to live here all my life. it makes me inexplicably sad. there was a time i never knew what else to do with this city but love it to bits. never knew what else to do but grip the cab doors if they were falling apart. never thought much of it when i had to give up reading while travelling because of the increasingly bumpy rides. never knew there was anything else to do but visit doctors every weekend for the back that's fucked by the roads, for the skin that's fucked by the fumes of the cars that are battling the roads, for the cold that is a constant and annoying companion of the buildings forever under construction. ugly buildings all of them if you ask me. never thought i would have to worry when i had to return home late in the night. never thought i would dread the newspaper after new year's. it makes me look longer at this city's veins and hear harder the heartbeat that carries me to and fro everyday. what if this were my last sight, my last sound byte from here?

perhaps i'm making a mistake.
but that could only mean that i will learn.

some remarkable things i did yesterday and today

stole the sexy salt and pepper shaker from land's end.

discovered that land's end has a copy error in the name.

remembered that shoppers' stop's new logo too has a copy error.

figure them out yourself.

discovered that i've lost 2 kilos.

put my 2 kilo lighter foot down and rescued this weekend from a shoot death.

met an architect.

therefore spent an entire sunday evening talking about things other than advertising.

to be precise, therefore spent an entire sunday evening listening to conversations revolving around current boyfriend's psycho ex girlfriend, the architect's ex roomie.

realised that it's 2 am and i've a brief to crack for tomorrow morning.

happy birthday to the other t

i was ugly in school. geeky, nerdy, sad glasses on a sad face.
and i had a non-smile because i had horrendous teeth. i was a walking award for the most botched up dental job of the century. if i were my parent i'd have either sued the balls off my daughter's dentist or cut them off. but i wasn't so i spent three crucial years at school smiling with my mouth shut and laughing with a hand on my face.
yet i remember having many friends because i had a guardian angel and a sense of humour. coming to think of it perhaps they were laughing at me and not at my jokes. i would too, if i could see my own teeth.
like everyone else, i had a 'best friend', and her name was also t. t was pretty and she had perfect teeth, white, even and lovely.
t and i were inseparable. we sat together, giggled behind big geography textbooks together, prepared for exams together, gossiped together, heck we even took loo breaks together. we liked the same teachers, we hated the same boys, we bitched about the same girls, we laughed at the same jokes and honestly most of the time we laughed for no reason at all. we laughed so much and at so many things that when we went to college (together of course) our new friends would sigh and leave us alone when we would go into our school mode.
i remember at age 10 we even made plans to elope to gokak falls together and between us made an inventory of 6 skirts and tops that we could smuggle out of our homes. the high point was that i was to stand under her window and make catcalls like huckleberry finn in the adventures of tom sawyer and off we would go and live like nomads for the rest of our lives.
every summer vacation, we would write letters to each other, mad, demented stories of what we were doing or not, through those two months. i still have them stacked up somewhere, yellowing yet sparkling.

t was, is, sensitive, delicate and severely wounded at her core. and i was exactly the opposite. i was merciless with her because she was so vulnerable, i would hurt her because she would hurt so easily. walking around with an ice pack around my heart, i often ended up numbing myself to her needs for a listening ear, a sound shoulder. i would be with her and not be with her. i would talk but not confide. i would want to shelter her but was too embarrassed to do it because it was so sissy, so weak. my fists were always clenched too tight to reach out to her outstretched hand. by the time i realised that she was clawing at the coldness i had collected outside me to hide the acid bonfire inside me, it was too late to let her through. i couldn't be with her alone and she didn't think our friendship meant anything if i were to spend all my time making sixty other people laugh. i knew i was losing her joke by joke laugh by laugh indifference by indifference. i knew i was leaving her behind everytime i took a stride forward but that didn't make me stop or look back. i didn't know what i was letting go because i didn't know what i had.

today is her 30th birthday. which she is probably celebrating with her hubby and two children (yes she is normal unlike me). today we've known each other for 21 years. and i feel i've only just begun to understand that i am exactly like her, severely wounded at the core. only, i spent all my life pretending i was the opposite.

the real difference between us is, i never once told her i loved, envied and hated her teeth. and she never once asked me about mine.

saw into the wild. one word review: beautiful.
the movie has knifed out maps deep inside me, exposing spaces i never knew existed. it dragged me to the window and left me mourning, admiring, shuddering at, a life i had witnessed and therefore lived, for 2 hours. the soundtrack has fingers in the voice. every strain plucks out a whole lot of breath and a little life everytime i hear it. which is every single day.

i wouldn't want to touch her with a barge pole, this person i was a little more than a year back.

good vs bitch

i wrote the previous post in a fit of anger last evening. after i discovered that an ex is suffering over me, when it was he who chose to break away. i published it and then deleted it. because i felt terrible that i was so harsh, so razorish, so negative.
and then last night when i had a talk with n, my boyfriend and life jacket, i realised the real reason i had deleted it.
when i found out mr. ex was still aching over me, i was shocked yes but there was something else under the shock that was rippling up. i was delighted. i enjoyed it. i felt thrilled. i think i even smiled a crooked one. because fact is, he did hurt me, a lot, whether he meant to or not. i never showed it or told him at the time because i sort of gathered that i wasn't really in the picture there, it was just about him, his feelings, his confessions, his confusions.
so there i was curled up against the life jacket last night, whispering in the dark, does it make me a bad person? am i evil to feel good about the fact that he is in pain, now that i smile at him like i do at any other colleague? am i a cold and calculating bitch because i don't care that he seems to be hurting over my looking through him when i see him?
n didn't think so. he patiently explained to me what he'd like to do to him and some other people who've been careless with my feelings and what fate he's been wishing for them every time i place one of his eloping eyelashes on his knuckles.
after thinking about it a little more this morning i've concluded that there's nothing wrong in enjoying the delicious feeling that he is going through what he put me through.

i've concluded that i'm not evil. i'm just human.

remember the bitter pill you left on your side of our rumpled bed? swallow it.

it's easy to say life will go on without me when you're the one opting out. it seems like the right thing to say and and the correct sentiment to leave the other person with. it's a simple enough rule to follow. break a heart and leave behind a band aid. erase your intoxicating promises and leave behind a hungover piece of blank paper. yes it's coated with charcoal and you can feel the etchings if you run your hands over the sheet (those are called memories mister) but look there's space now, there will be new words. don't wait for me, don't write me off, i will do the same, you do the same. we will not touch but we will keep in touch. we will smile at each other but not knowingly. we will shake hands but our fingers won't linger for that extra second. we will hang out together but not in a dark corner. we were lovers first but we should be friends now because you're not a bad person, i'm not a bad person, we're just bad for each other, this just doesn't seem right, not right now. that's my opinion and if you have a different one you don't get to do jackshit about it. but it's not as if i'm making the decision i want it to be your equal choice as well, except that you don't get to say please stay or what did those nights mean or where did those whispers vanish or plain what the fuck just happened.
well guess what. it's easy to say life will go on without me, but it's tough as hell to see that life does indeed go on without you. it's blunt and stubborn, the ache that smacks you in the face when you find out that the other person has actually moved on. it's a thorn in the heart, twisting with every beat, too tiny to catch, too deep to pluck, the thought that you are the past now. passe. finite. over.
because when you said don't wait for me you you secretly expected the opposite. when you said this doesn't seem right you actually meant you seem right to take to my bedroom but not to my mother. when you said i went silent on you because i didn't know what the fuck to say, fact is, you were silent because your life was going on.
and then when you said you're so wonderful you'll find someone else, you didn't really think it'd happen. and when it did happen, you didn't think it'd last. or that it'd matter enough to hurt so much or so long. because when you said i won't write you off you'd done precisely that. when you turned your back you assumed you could turn right back anytime you wanted. when you shut the door behind you, you never thought you'd hear it being locked from the inside, the click firm and unmistakable and irreversible.
my guess is that consciously or sub, all you were looking for was an unmessy end to the mess you thought you were in.
well, the end is what you got. about time you begin to accept it.

kkkknahiinnnnnn!

serves me right. i should have known better than to trust the promos of kahani humare mahabharat ki. but i was naive. even at this age yes. i saw computer generated skies and taut arms with re-touched muscles lugging sleek bows and arrows, dust flying in high-speed and i thought there is a god. no not the character in the show, but outside it. i thought i'm finally being compensated for growing up watching the greatest mythological story told by starving crew members wearing empty aluminium cooking vessels on their heads (therefore starving?) fighting feebly on a grazing ground next to the oshiwara cowsheds while ugly women in shiny tube tops stared at camera waiting for someone to tell them the script only no one did, because there was none.
so despite the wide-eyed tongue-lolling spasmodical warnings from boyfriend and flatmate, i decide to watch kahani humare mahabharat ki. in fact all three of us watched kahani humare mahabharat ki last night. yes, last year was apne. this year is kahani humare mahabharat ki. our relationship is going from strength to strength. dhiding. no that's not a copy error. that's the opening sfx of kahani humare mahabharat ki. in fact that's more or less the entire soundtrack of kahani humare mahabharat ki. if you're wondering why the name of the show appears in practically every sentence here, well, it erupts in the background during every scene in the show so i thought it's a legal mandatory or something. basically the entire crew's been walking around in disbelief with arms outstretched chanting "mahabharat mahabharat yeh hain mahabharat" and madame k decided it was howard shore.
so show opens on a long white haired woman who for some reason has a thick greying moustache, scowling at someone who has a nose dangling from a golden oxygen mask stuck to his forehead.
as the cameraman's pressure drops and funny angles happen, during a real close up on nose job's ear wax, the woman speaks and we realise that she's actually makarand deshpande. no wonder he is topless. and the nose job is lord ganesh. what luck - by this time we're ready to say our prayers.
ok. that means makarand is saint vashisht, who dictated the story to ganesh, so the story goes. except, this one's barking it out around a pond into which the viewers have puked so it's green.
at regular points the cameraman decides he'd rather drown himself than shoot this so we kept seeing green underwater shots with pink bubbles. which in turn open into a bubbling brook in ladakh or kulu manali, surrounded by snow-capped mountains.
here a woman without a grey moustache or a single grey cell for that matter, is wearing a six meter long white cape that's digitally flowing against gravity. she is wearing the leftover purple lipstick from her other soap, that she must have been shooting for next door.
enter a king dressed in a seven meter black cape, also flowing against gravity. and sanity. he is wearing the purple lipstick leftover from white cape's makeup. he is also following a digitally created deer that was not completely there because they didn't pay the animator his full fees. or perhaps they showed him the cast and he wanted his deer back.
king black cape introduces himself as "main shantanu" at the beginning of every dialogue, even when it's not his.
black and white cape get married. we get marred.
cut back to drowning cameraman who's back in the pond. topless vashisht is now trembling on one foot with hands raised above the head, palms joined. aerobics? gas? underarm waxing? or just true repentance after seeing the first episode? we'll never know.
anyway, by this time the cameraman's mother-in-law has found out she is not being cast as the bearded king and is beating the shit out of him so there are some sheer drops happening from top angle to dangerously low shots of pond bubbling brook rocks mountains. which incidentally are the most good looking people so far in the show.
oh and by the way white cape is busy drowning her babies. what her mother should have done to her long back. after seeing the same shot many times over, "main shantanu" finally can't stand the body odour anymore - he wants a costume change. so he wears an orange cape and catches the eighth baby in his arms saying, "main shantanu" and asks his wife of several years and seven drowned babies, "tum kaun ho?"
we dare not look at each other.
but that's where the episode ends. there is a god after all.

it's 4 am and i'm wide awake and jim is asking me the way to the next whiskey bar. heaven.

jim morrison, you were not allowed to die.
i've more problems and less talent than you and i'm still here ain't i?

it's taken long stares into a half-rotten window
it's taken strangled screamings
it's taken hoarse silences
it's taken fear
it's taken guts
it's taken an iron-willed humour
it's taken battles lost because not fought
it's taken trembling pillows
it's taken broken mirrors
it's taken three scars on one wrist
it's taken 29 white pills
it's taken 10903 stitches on the heart
it's taken a roll in rock salt with wounds still raw
it's taken a keen observation of a rather long crack in the ceiling
it's taken a lone glass clinking alone
it's taken grinning through the alcohol at one new face after another
it's taken staring at the sun
it's taken coming back to life
it's taken the end
it's taken thirty years for life to start being good to me
it's taken a lifetime for life to begin and frankly
i'm not prepared

sometimes i want a kick in the back of my legs so hard i land on my knees. i want to bleed out every vain trickle from my wrists. i want to snap my head down, the head that at times swells up with a swallow of heady self-gloat. it's like my soul and my ego are each on one scale of a balance. i feel smaller and smaller as a person, the days my ego puffs up its hood. snake that it is, it should stay coiled tight. i want to de-venomise it and leave a bottle of sleeping pills next to it, in the hope that it eats up the lot and never wakes up. so i can sleep in peace.

i'm lazy. i'm rude. i'm selfish. i don't reply to comments. but i read all of them. i want to reply. really. sometimes i even start to reply. but somehow every time i do that my words feel hollow. tap and they'll crumble. so then i delete and shut the fuck up. don't mind me. i'm not giving you a choice in any case.

after seeing enough men
i've finally found someone man enough