Sling Inc.

2004-01-23T22:57:00.000-08:00

Silverfish
My blog is going all the way downhill and I cannot seem to fish out some scintillating pieces of blogisms to save my life:) It is at times like these that I resort to spilling the guts...and presenting you with my reading list.

I have been reading Henry Miller "Quiet Days in Clichy" a hedonistic, racy, sexually loaded breezy read. I skimmed it breathlessly...smiled at some turns of phrases, soaked up a little of the parisian whore house atmosphere and was done with it.

Amitav Ghosh's "The Shadow Lines" was next ...A slightly dissapointing read. I confess I enjoyed his documentary style prose in 'In an antique Land' more. This was a quasi-exotic oh-so-quaint-calcutta-lanes kind of book, steeped with longing and immigrant angst! *yeah AGAIN*!

I am preparing myself to get down to doing some real work in the weeks and months ahead. I shall be back with jottings of a, hopefully, more sparkling nature soon.

Cheers

2004-01-01T03:47:00.000-08:00

Hello World

Sumptious and Sinful Chocolate Cake, Red Wine, Dreamy Muzac, Balmy Bangalore weather, Stars and the easy laughter of 6 other Women! thats how my my corner of the world looked when the clock stuck 12!

Happy New Year All ye readers, may ye multiply in the year ahead;-)

The past few days have been wonderfully Lazy. I am reading a nice book, The Immoralist by Andre Gide, which my Friend Roopa lent me. Also! I have made new friends & found greater joy in the company of my Family! They seem to be growing sweeter by the day, letting me carve out my own space be it in intimate personal spheres, or gently encouraging me while I make professional decisions.

The year ahead seems to be glowing with possibilities. Here's to a Fitter, Fun, Fabled New Year.

2003-12-26T09:00:00.000-08:00

Sylvia and Inconclusive LIFE

I am reading Sylvia Plath’s journals. In the early years she seems like a headstrong, impassioned colt like figure. I can almost conjure her up thus (*evil grin*! At imagery ahead): copper red curls cascading down her shoulders while she rides a metaphorical barebacked horse. She is blazing with ideas, grappling with and ranting at her various conflicting needs and identities: page after page.

While it might be fascinating to examine the thought processes of a writer as she/he sifts, sorts and selectively remembers…and reams might be written on how exactly a writer creates a quilt of patched revelations and omissions.

Yes while critics might deconstruct endlessly how omissions say more than the revelations. While I can divine and scorn the fact that each one of us deep down is a sucker for insouciance: for it is “sooo bourgeois” to advertise “effort” and craft is always preferably concealed.

While I belong: to that vague clan, that disbanded band: the ilk of writers and I too can spot the need --to strive--- to retain a throwaway air- from miles away…I don’t DO much of this “peeling away of layers” to a book or its author.

Am I then a disinterested and even more grievously offensive – oblivious to nuances- kind of reader? Or maybe I am vain and petty enough to be unable to concede superior writing? Am I every writer’s secret nightmare! Am I like my dad who reads the publishers address with the same care he does the best lines in the book...Hmmmmm. No

Heaven forbid, though I have been known to like a book for the flimsiest of reasons that I promptly forget at the end of it all….I think I am worse than all of the above; I am at time a non-romantic reader. As I reader, I am what I have never been in real life and in my OWN writing: decidedly non-flamboyant. I am a grounded, straight laced reader.

I have never been “overawed” by books. I have been quietly glowingly appreciative of it in parts, quite endearingly, easily satisfied like a child at a single line et al…but apart from quietly cheering when I stumble upon the much touted “answering chords”, I don’t consciously take books and their characters with me, forevermore.

The case in point is Sylvia Plath, though I find points where I intersect with her- I was a bit like her when I am 18 (save for the manic depressive bouts) - I veer towards violence bought upon by schizoid fits instead- I am not overwhelmed that we have thought and felt alike.

Do I sound as if I feel cheated, that I am unable to be swept away by the book-frenzy that people invoke at lunch tables. Do I sound scornful, resentful:) that everyone seems to be having a jolly rollicking time, No. I don’t quite buy the belief that the measure of great book or even life is just HOW much you are swept away. Am I then going to answer your unasked question and tell you what I think IS the “more correct” measure of how powerful things are? No again. How tactfully boring? Hehehe….no in fact the point I think I am trying to make in my irritatingly convoluted, big unwieldy worded way is THAT! I think there is NO measure of how powerful things REALLY are. Most things in life are wholly inconclusive at least I would like to maintain my inconclusive air…and I hope life never deals with such damning evidence that I will have to run into the security that judgment and watertight values- claim to provide.

2003-12-06T02:16:00.000-08:00

Pedestrian Pictures

Some songs become disgracefully familiar- those are the songs that are relegated to usage when cars reverse. Unseasonably unreasonably cheery they chime “Jingle bells” under an obscene summer sun.

Some words too are firmly resigned to a life of omnipresence, omniscience. They settle stiltedly to form dispensable conversations, almost worse than the awkward pauses they share their spaces with.

Forlorn garish posters of heroines in cyber centres and tea shops– in by lanes we absentmindedly throng, Is there a story these over exposed snapshots of our life ache to tell? Would they recount a tale of milk curdling resentment, indifferent appeasement?

These fragments of thoughts, songs, ideas, words, things - hang around with a faint apologetic air, as if they are secretly ashamed to belong- in a world that has left its grubby fingerprints all over it. Do I hear them clamor halfheartedly for the anonymity and disuse of the past, or is just my over heated and ultimately wordy self again asking to be heard?

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I recently visited the Strand Book stall fest. I succumbed to temptation and bought like a DOZEN books, Lord save me. Most of them are books worth owning, non-fictional, non-contextual essays by authors like Saul Bellow, Mario Vargas Llosa etc.

As I was picking out books I chanced upon the- ‘Alchemist’s’ & ‘Fountainhead’s’ & others of their ilk- books trying valiantly to surface from beneath the miasma of mass hysteria to which they had been subject.

As for the newer books, still relatively anonymous, things were not any better. Reading glowing reviews I was amused yet saddened for words used with such abandon. I was bored enough to keep count! Of the number of instances I saw ‘Tour de force’ appear. Every books was ‘a marvel spanning 3 generations’ that exposed the ‘frailty of the human spirit’ ALL while ‘celebrating the quiet strength in each of us. Ah how wonderful that these works could straddle all possible binaries that exist- and then some more.

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Usability is a word that I have stumbled upon not so long ago, but you know what, It does not take an expert to figure out that the new version of hotmail does Not have any of those fancy-shmancy ideas at work. I feel like my inherently vast reserves of clumsiness have multiplied many times over, when I cannot open a mail in a new window by clicking on it. All it seems to be is an unequivocal soothing blue while I string colorful curses together. Ok crib over, can someone give me my old hotmail right back?!

2003-11-25T02:06:00.000-08:00

Strawberry Serenade

If I were a font right now I would be sparkling and doing a shimmery shake~ Today has been a shiny-happy people day. I have just been spent the last few hours being cosetted, having my hair *ironed*, fussed over and streaked! in ruby-red and copper bronze no less.

Rita Spratt, the hair salon owner was a Marvel. I was watching as she brought in insight, expertise, charm and a non-snooty assesment of her clients all in an elegant way! It is a such a pleasure to watch people who enjoy what they do - they help me renew my glow and goofy life-grin all over again.

I have been playing pretend-fashioniasta, reading the scrumptious Martin Amis in fits and starts, working-writing and having a string of late nights lately. Nothing much in my life is blog-worthy:) and I am still waiting to be swept away by an epiphany, moved by a raphsody...until then I shall make do wonderfully with my delecatbly pink shoes and matching hair to boot!

2003-10-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

Purple Prose!

I am here, at work at 7 am - racoon eyes and bedraggled jacket et al. I looked at the misty mirror in our *ahem* graffiti-stricken, wood paneled lift and felt a sudden pang...In less than a week I shall be nowhere near my workplace of over 1.4 years:)

Purple conference tables, a plaque that proclaims to no one in particular 'Attitude Yogi', espresso downstairs and a chiller-than-thou attitude are just a few of the things that Made my life at PurpleYogi special. I smile to think of the wet-behind-the-ears big eyed chica I was when I breezed in here...seemingly, not much has changed if what I looked at 7 am is anything to go by...

Braving the risk of sounding syrupy, I cast an indulgent eye at our lunches, when conversations would be peppered with stray references to Derrida and Altaf Raja. Existential Angst would attempt to displace animated discussions about the vada pav wala on the 4th street off the 5th bylane (yes in Mumbai).

Hmm, I am happy to leave, but it is not before I wallow in fond rememberances of the people I have met, the conversations I have had and the grown up wings I have sprouted, all while I was supposed to be working.

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2003-10-17T01:42:00.000-07:00

Kohl

Brown fingers sear the silky gray
Of my dress as I dab a blue to line
The tumult of my eyes
I smile a smile that is smudged
By your raspy request
that lay, cloying-perfume like in the air

2003-10-03T05:52:00.000-07:00

Death throes & Green Papaya's

I saw a Vietnamese movie, 'Scent of the Green Papaya Tree'. Though the camera work was wholly non-intrusive, as a viewer I had the whole map of the maze-y, old sprawling mansion it was shot in. The attention to detail, the intricate design on tea cups, the steaming rice bowls, porcelain vases and green vegetables....it was unabashedly a 'nature' movie. Simplistic; and very 'Osheen-Like'.

Mui in the movie, is exceptionally connected to the life around her. She has a wide-eyed fascination for how the sap drips from the papaya tree...how cooked vegetables sizzle and spit in the wok. She has pet Crickets! You get my drift, I presume. It momentarily made me think that she ought to have been a vegetarian!

If you can coo to leaves, and tickle the underbelly of chameleons it seems like a natural extension of your 'feeling' for all things 'live'. I later reckoned that maybe I am reading too much into a non-malicious life instinct that eats animals for sustenance...I bear you no illwill Mui Mine:)

The movie contrasts Mui's 'feeling' for all things with another child who takes wild pleasure in dripping hot wax on unwary ants, capturing dragonflies et al. Children are cruel because they are unschooled in the art of hiding the animal streak all of us posess. Our veneer of civility has been thin at the best of times, hasn't it?. Why else would we be transfixed animal-like under the steady gaze of pain.

I for one still posess great dollops of this morbid fascination. I shuddered with disgust, made all the proper noises of outrage, yet soaked in scenes when in a movie I saw yet another gory and rivetting scene of Life ebbing out. This time- it was a butcher slitting open mid-squawk the necks of chicken. As he uncermoniously dumped into a drum-full of birds battling pitifully for life, the wall was slowly splattered with blood and the last attempted wing- flap was silenced. I don't recall blinking my eyes:) Very....American Beauty-esque. In which the 'weirdo-with-the-camera' holds a dying bird in his hands...claiming that in those moments, he can feel "God" looking right at him/bird.

The reasons might be difficult to crystallize, but there is a streak in us which feeds on pain and the sight of death. Does it nourish Your life instinct in a perverse way...to watch one in the throes of death?....Do tell coz I am
*dying with anticipation*.

2003-09-23T00:06:00.000-07:00

My equation with the Alpha Male

I have recently thinking a lot about Gender Stereotypes and my idea of 'male-ness' and 'female-ness'. I notice that somewhere along the line I have perpetuated certain myths and I hope that thinking it through will banish them.

Gender Stereotypes, like any good student of psychology will vouch for, exist everywhere. Denying their purpose or influence is an exercise in futility, and I won't even try. Also I lack the unerring activist streak, which helps when you want to get militant - about barbie dolls, wearing bras or dental floss- as and when required.

That said, Let me as always get firmly into my self referential mode.

In hindsight, all the men that I have been with, have notbeen overwhelmingly male. Even until a few weeks ago I would have found this fact a teeny weeny bit irksome...but not anymore. Could I then regale you with a few thumbnail sketches of these men?

The first had a rather sing-song voice, not unlike Ross in 'Friends', and most of his confidantes were female. Another who took my fancy had an absoultely *ahem* exhuberant? dancing style, rather at odds with my repertoire of exactly two and a half dance moves. The third guy was so laid back, I suspect, he had been half heartedly conceived, as an afterthought, on a suitably lazy noon - on a hammock, in the middle of nowhere.

None of these aforementioned guys could repair a leaking faucet or open jam bottles. They perhaps would be flummoxed if I asked them about how many BHP the Ford sxi was. If you pointed out their apparent lack of machismo, they would good-naturedly *pretend* to be offended for a few minutes, rightly suspecting that you had gone to a great deal of trouble to rile them...

Now I am rather wistful about those times, when, fantasies of ideal mean always starred aggressive guys in cars- driven- with controlled anger. The designer-stubbly dude- The kind of man who could clean my carburettor blinfolded.

I am not so sure anymore, if I even want what I think I wanted. Agressive, go-getters, life of the party, great with Map reading and barely restrained anger? My choices so far seem to indicate otherwise. I figure rather belatedly, that the men in my life deserve some more slack. On their part, Men have been enthusiastically accepting of me- my *lack* of feminine grace, mystery, demure demeanour- all inclusive:)

Upon closer inpection, I think that my idle preoccupation with such 'male-symbols' can be attributed to -Culture sterotypes and to a lesser extent- perhaps- insecurity! To be accepting and knowingly attracted to men who dont fit the 'Alpha Male' tag to a 'T' requires some heavy duty self assurance. Niggling doubts about 'am I woman enough' 'Is he male enough' do creep in.

Am I saying that I am another tiring offshoot of the new age, one of those women who cheer when her man gets a 'pedicure'- No!. I am not so far gone, I do listen when my feminine instincts holler, but I don't let the Mills & Boon brand of philosophy sweep me off my feet.

This post was just my befuddled way to tweak, fine tune and change my ideas about the kind of men I like. I am much more accepting of 'person's' now and truly the checklist of male traits has been firmly banished- into the pink-ruffled perfumed lace box-buried-at the back of my rosemary and thyme garden:)

Batting my eyelashes

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Bedecked

The Bath-water droplets shine and jostle
To hollow where the belly dips, the music necks...
Whispersoft, as light licks at my earrings, to tease...
A blush, that fashions a coral wrap for my nothingness

2003-09-18T01:20:00.000-07:00

Heisenberg over Heineken

It has been a while since I wrote here, I am in probably the most tumultous phase of my life, and well am neither overjoyed nor monumentally worried about it. I think Heisenberg would approve. Over a lazy beer or two, I began to see parallels between his theory and my present attitude. With my knowledge that has been sketchy at the best of times, I gather that he says in his uncertainity principle that : 'One's obsessive analysis and observation of a phenomenon could perhaps have an effect on the course of things'.

I am rather amused at what I am sure is a word driven overly simplistic account of his complex theory...But, I want to let things and the events in my life unfold they way they might, without me around. It is not as crazy or self-defeating as it perhaps sounds. I dont know anything more. I dont particularly care about being right, certain, detached, attached, fatalistic, driven by the world, driven by the 'self'...I just know that I am tired of these labels, my at times half baked attempts to agglutinate my thoughts and come to blanket conclusions. I think I am not in a mood to look at my 'implusively vocal' side with my usually indulgent air.

2003-08-01T03:48:00.000-07:00

Gnarled, misshapen yet so…personable, I ran my fingertips around the hulk of driftwood that formed the base of the glass table, the glass itself almost translucent in its delicacy. The floor lamp threw patterns on the cream rug and I stood up gingerly looking back at the flutes with dried wildflowers.

‘Enough!’ I repeated to myself…. it wasn’t as if this place was forbidding- I was just unaccustomed to being absolutely alone in a stranger’s house. Early on in the evening, I had come home to change for a party…soon realizing that I had locked myself out. As I stood rummaging for the key I knew I didn’t have, Malini emerged from next door. Malini- my enigmatic neighbor- as always left me feeling faintly out of my depth.

“Oh you are locked out poor dear”, she had trilled…“I was just going to run a few errands, why don’t you wait at my place until your roommate returns, Tarun will be coming in half hour or so….” It had seemed like such a reasonable offer back then, but I had been tightly wound up ever since she left me all alone. I laughed at my own dramatic fancies…sounding strained.

Fanciful, that is what I am- about everything, even objects…. I thought of them as – inhabitants of a parallel society almost. I desultorily wondered why ‘material’ love was so easily dismissed. I loved every nuance of the inanimate- textures, colors, smells and their sight. At times I would screw up my eyes in concentration and see my everyday possessions as a stranger would…succeeding for brief moments before I felt of kilter…I guess I am forced to improvise- in such utterly meaningless, innocuous ways- just to liven up dreary days.

Did Malini ever do that? See her lamp anew? I thought I detected the wildflowers stop glowering, ah, yes they all warmed to me sooner or later… Malini and Tarun- big black and white pictures stared back laughingly at me. It was evident they had traveled a lot; they had curios from all over. A Turkish blue vase, an ochre oil painting of a stark Moroccan wall…running my hands along the niches in the wall…I traced the svelte neck of the liqueurs vials in burgundy and pumpkin gold…I felt like I wanted to steal- take some fragment of this perfect little idyll with myself.

Suddenly- sinuously sinful I padded across to the hall into the study with its more muted tones. A beanbag sat brooding beside the paneled bookcases, looking out of sorts among such literary company- Camus jostled with Wilde and tapes of Dylan Thomas’ poetry. I picked up a book bound in a rich cream – had this couple matched book covers to the heavy drapes- I wouldn’t have put it past them. My! Dripping with venom this evening aren’t we I said to the hollow room.

I disjointedly felt that perhaps, just perhaps I was transgressing boundaries- as I climbed up the single flight of wooden stairs into their bedroom. When I would marry, I wouldn’t let a woman like me alone in my house- the door was shut- and my heart was thumping. Of course I had to turn the knob, a peek would do, it was just- vulgar curiosity I told myself. Irritated with my warring voices- I walked in- I imagined Malini with me- giving me a guided tour- in her perfect sonorous guidetour voice.

Oh no, I was driving myself into a quiet frenzy- Malini in reality would never be caught dead induling in “Ah, we bought these sheets from Taiwan” revelations…Was she always that classy? Ok! Stop I almost- stopped myself from imagining them riotous in bed. Furious yet amused, I went to her dressing mirror. I picked up her brush, ran it through my hair. Oh I was so certain Malini would drag me by the same silky strands - screaming if she walked in right now…but she wouldn’t. I churned out a dozen different scenarios of how I would handle the embarrassment if she walked in, all while I applied her mascara, dabbed her perfume along my veins.

I looked at the mirror- I looked very inviting- though I say so myself- I leaned across to blow my breath and steam the mirror. Then I wrote T A R U N in the fine mist, after a heartbeat, I wrote T A N Y A…the letters stared at me momentarily entwined in cursive passion. I knew what I wanted- I wanted a man- and a house with yellow walls in the kitchen and book covers matched to drapes- I wanted ochre paintings and scarlet sheets and a skylight-ed study. I shook my head, softening as I took in my sloe eyed longing glance.

I didn’t quite feel so sinuously sinful as I wondered if Miss mascara would spill my secrets, or divan sahib would whisper to Malini about the love letters whispered across a mirror.

Nimbly alighting the staircase, I settled myself in the settee willing the doorbell to ring- after some minutes of furious willing- it rang and in walked- Tarun- the hero of my 'breathy' fantasies- bedraggled and slightly worse for the wear. he flashed me a noncommittal smile Looking past, across, over, around me for- Malini. Lest he have an untimley embolism- I cursorily told him my story. Of course he made polite little noises, motioned for me to sit down…and I swear I heard the rug crackle, stray wildflowers spit and cackle- even the glass flutes chimed with laughter when he told me, "Please…I insist...feel free, make yourself at home”

2003-07-21T04:36:00.000-07:00

Perfectly lazy smoke rings drift across the room, faintly drunk on the atmosphere of eloquent Hindi lyrical songs, rum, books, and voices raised in childlike passion...I try to melt into the corner of the bedroom. I desultorily observe the coral like embers and ash cling and glow. French Beard narrates an incident I have heard before. I am sure all the guys in that room had heard that story more times than they would care to remember, but none of them, including me... thought anything of it. In that fleeting moment I felt that friendship is when you hear the same story told many times over...and you wait for the punchline nevertheless.

2003-07-17T11:32:00.000-07:00

The Magical If

My mother is someone who reads Napoleon Hill; she warily proceeds to recommend the occasional Deepak Chopra column to me. Unfailingly I trot out my lecture on how she should try Indian Fiction, or any other genre but this claptrap…and roll my eyes in exaggerated despair. My dramatics dutifully over, I do read the proffered pieces with an open mind. This time Deepak Chopra talked about ‘Learning to Love our own selves’… He says that some of us promise to love ourselves only if we are ‘creative’, ‘secure’ ‘confident’… the list of desirable qualities is endless. We keep deferring self acceptance to some vague day in future, instead of joyfully living in the given moment. But this much bandied term- ‘unconditional’ love does not come easily to most of us. Chopra recognizes this and suggest a quasi-conditional model for love.

This is what I would fondly call healthy subterfuge. If we wish we were ‘confident’, we ought to ‘Act as If’ we already are. Many a time all that these difficult-to-pin-down qualities need is a conducive atmosphere. Once our ‘As If’ principle is at work, the initial awkwardness wears off and truth blossoms into being. I had been applying this principle to my life all along and Chopra’s essay just alerted me to this subtle process at work. This seems to suggest that we are more intuitive than we give ourselves credit for. Our ideas are intricate, and unbeknownst to us we act in ways that ‘self-help’.

Confidence, Creativity many of the things which I now rightly or wrongly associate with myself are all an offshoot of my baseless ‘affirmations’…This thought was running through my head, when I stumbled upon one last intriguing thread. The intriguing thread was spawned by ‘Stanislavski’!

I had vaguely heard of the Stanislavski approach to theatre, his influence on Film Theory et al…suddenly struck by a hunch that there were parallels between my attempts to stage managing my thoughts and his theories…I researched him a little. It turns out that there exist definite connections. Stanislavski specifically refers to a ‘Magical IF’method to powerful acting.

This helps actors get into the skin of their character and exhorts them to assume the mantle of the on screen person in every possible way. When the artist feels and acts as IF he were truly in pain, delirious with joy, blank with despair….only then is he able to convey ideas most convincingly.

There are many layers to this, and one should ‘give’ oneself and be consumed by the feeling…letting it gloriously wash over him. If there is constant awareness of this thought ‘subterfuge’ then one ultimately fails- be it at cultivating the quality or ‘acting’. If the ‘As If’ principle is unconscious, unobserved and beautiful, it does not degenerate to a farce. It is then that we can transcend the actualities as it were…

2003-07-09T02:15:00.000-07:00

Pentasyllabic gobbeldygook

Yes, I think my journal has had an overload of big words and I am beginning to tire of it myself. I am not saying that am have purged my system completely, but yes I will make an *earnest* attempt to be lucid:))

I enrolled myself in a Tai-Bo class, it is high intensity aerobics and kick boxing, or so they tell me...am breathless with excitement, yes already.

*Making like Neo, flying and screaming through the air*

2003-07-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

Seamier Sides

If you have ever experienced an acute sensory overload, you can perhaps relate to what I have to say. Let it suffice to say that as I hungrily drank in the visuals of a fashion show I had an epiphany of sorts. Every single sinuously saturnine body was quite simply a “composition”…The rustle and swish of fabric was exaggerated, I could observe the cleverly coiffed wisps of hair. Bronze, white, tawny gold, cream, toffee and tan… my pallid vocabulary cannot hope to describe them un-smudged oil like beauties on stage.

What consistently made me take double takes was the designer’s excruciating eye for detail. Apart from an ability to conjure up delectable confections one had to have considerable skill, patience and resources to translate them into the realm of reality.

One of the shows I remember was a dress created out of saucers another had coffee cups plastered to his head like a Mohawk hair cut. I belatedly realized that “fashion shows” are never burdened with any overwhelming point (not unlike this post of mine). For those of us (me included) who keep wondering who wears those outlandish clothes, the answer is perhaps no one does and no one cares.

Our concerns reflect our way of looking at things- with its emphasis on utility. Surely I am not saying that I have just now become aware of the bohemian “art for art’s sake” school of thought…rather I felt that these bohemian attitudes are ‘especially’ out of place in an Indian context.

Due to the inherent comfort in the western world, their relative freedom from concerns such as poverty, hunger they have more artistic space. This is not to suggest that just because we are a materially-poorer nation, we have less artistic abilities. What kept recurring was that they had a system that seems to fund and promote even the most whimsical of ideas…utility was easily subordinate to expression.

Contrast this with an Indian situation, and you will see that there is less indulgence and even lesser patience for it. ‘Happy arts’ such as fashion only form the basis of desultory conversation in elite circles. Will art be less insular…will“we” be privy to that throwaway, commonplace sense of luxury?

P.S: I saw Pulp Fiction for the first time, yes i am a Jane-come-lately. It oozed with style. Am reading Pico Iyer. 'Falling off the map'...

2003-07-04T05:05:00.000-07:00

Freeze Frame

That last post is leaving me a little winded so I sink my teeth into something delightfully fluffy. The talk at our much touted?;-) lunches at work drifted to the recent spate of risque movies (Jism, Khwaish of the 18 smooches fame et al). Enthusiastic nodding at the start of the talk notwithstanding, I soon discovered that I seemed to be the only one who saw some good coming out of such movies...

Concerns were expressed about the deplorable lengths movie makers went to package shoddy content. The objectification of women, the effect on young impressionable minds were some of the other charges levied (rightfully) against such movies/videos. The vulgarity of such programming and their lack of aesthetics is not debatable...but I see a stong case for letting such trends run their course.

Though the west has its fair share of trashy cinema, problems with violence and explicit demeaning content, they also have the luxury of a high degree of openess. Let me draw a parallel...I recently saw Truffaut's Jules and Jim. It was a finely nuanced potrait of the mind of an free spirited woman...her take on love and the men in her life. The "sex" was incidental, it was but natural. The film was engaging and multilayered because the maker did not have to grapple with mundanities.

Until and unless sex is seen for what it is...a natural cog in the wheel, we cannot hope to develop an "aesthetic" sense. What I am hinting at is a near dismissive attitude for the sex in Indian cinema. I am quite convinced that when reams of newsprint are devoted to the hint of a G-string, when columnists churn out pompous sounding critical analyses on what is quite simply substandard fare...we are far from openness or comfort.

Tasteful excecution of material is to an extent a function of the equanimity about the subject. We can hardly hope to explore the many "subtle dynamics" of a man-woman relationship ala J & J, when we are terribly aware about the "sex"!

Art arises out of context, and we need to create our unqiue 'noveau' Indian backdrop...let us not waste our breath deriding the fumblings of this callow youth, for the best is yet to come....eh?

2003-07-02T11:24:00.000-07:00

To Consonance

I have always maintained that writing is a very deliberate activity, at the same time it should be un-self conscious…unforced. If I pause too long to observe why I write, what it will achieve…I start feeling crippled, overcome by my bouts of ‘awareness’

These bouts occur when I am in my ‘cosmically amused’ mode…it lets me take in my-self in one sweeping disdainful glance. The awareness is like being suddenly handed a snapshot of my life, which I can detachedly observe…till I flinch or laugh or cry.

This cultivated ‘awareness’ which frees me, which gives me a renewed perspective… that keeps me from taking my own self too seriously, this very same awareness also ‘cripples’ me.

My ‘awareness’ believes that things are most powerful when they exist for themselves. I have a vague feeling that my ideas ought to exist solely for themselves. Writing or talking- expression of a ‘thought’ seems to dwarf, drain and diminish it. It is perhaps that I am more at home in my thinker persona than in any other… The writer in me never has measured up to the thinker in me.

Though writing affords me pleasure it has always been subordinate to the pleasure of the thinking itself. Writing is imbued with a deliberate purpose…it does not exist in and for itself. Is my writing then nothing more than a cleverly crafted gimmick? Even that clever craft is fleeting….most of the times my thoughts seemed to have mutated when I set them on paper.

I recognize that now….even my writing clamors for attention and perhaps someday it will go away. Only then will my being and writing be in perfect consonance, till then my words will be at times pretty, at times grotesque marionette like extensions of myself.

Wordy wise

My fumbling attempts
To write, to cloak; my thoughts
Spells an uneasy cadence
Creates Ink marionettes
In stilted worlds
Who lie sentence’d...

2003-07-01T01:49:00.000-07:00

My being was once succintly summed up in two words- '21 and Vain', all that now stands changed...I turned 22 last week:)

2003-06-24T06:44:00.000-07:00

Tsunamis of Thought

I have thought about exhaustion and the edgy pleasure that runs right through it. That rush boringly labeled 'Jogger's High' had also found expression in an article titled the 'Aesthetic Wisdom of Exhaustion'

I am going through a similar buzz from the thoughts clamouring inside my head :) . This brings me to how I view my body....I remember hearing Mahesh Bhatt say in his charecteristically imapssioned way that "true art" moves you, it causes those goosebumps, brings that lump to your throat...and I couldnt agree more. Our truest responses are visceral, unguarded and swamp our soul. That is one reason I have a love for my body that borders on reverence. It is something that is intuitive...In a world that rewards rationality and learned responses every inch of the way, it pays to tune into the unlearned part of you.... every once in a way.

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There are a few idea threads I want to research, Some realted to Ethnographic Research and others to Sustainble Development. I intend to unspool these rather doggedly- perchance Googling

might come to my rescue eh?. My Interest in the functional empathy that can underlie art was sparked of in Auroville, which is a hotbed for innovative yet ecologically-correct architechture. There are so many furniture designers/functional artists who imbue their work with many new dimensions this way. This emphasies my view that great ideas catch our eye due to their 'extensibility'. They provde insights to people across geography, industry and time. People who display a matchless expertise with the details of their work, yet manage to have a broad empathy...quite simply...awe me.

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I think this is singularly clever : Fly Interface

. Do let me know what you thought. Blogs like these present me with nuggets of thought I could have previously never dreamed! to find.

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2003-06-20T06:41:00.000-07:00

Go Cosmic!

Old berth

Shrill whistles, tea and bustle...
A train load of memories tumble...
Of childhood trips and coaches that rumbled

As I look through my rain steaked window I recall trips to Jalpaiguri, Mirik, Kalimpong, Chopta Valley, Tapovan, Kedar....suddenly I am overcome by affection for my earnest dad. Though he was brought up in a typical Tamil Bramhin family, he has had an irrepresible sense of adventure. A streak which made him fish out huge tomes of 'Roads of India' and plan out the most un-patel-point of all holidays every summer. Not surprisingly I have rarely endorsed the tour-bus school of siteseeing. Holidays for us meant stopping by a little known places...cups of chai at the homes of grinning shy locals. It meant listening with rapt attention to the tales of forest guides and traipsing along with drivers to fetch water for dutifully overheated engines.

If i trace my thinly disguised love for being one of the boys, It all began poring over maps with my dad, my rapt attention when he would casually talk about cars, his bullet. Him quizzing me about cormorants, painted storks on wildlife safaris... I now get a sense that i have not been spurred on in that greedy way for a long time now....I should rediscover that saucer-eyed child with her constellation of longing to hitchhike galaxies!

P.S: Ladakh, Andaman, Bhutan are on my travel-log, watch this space u star gazers all...
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Just a quick note to explicate the origins of SLING INK, here is the transcript from the Roget's Thesaurus, which you will agree suits my purposes rather perfectly.

1 entry found for sling ink.
Entry: write
Function: verb
Definition: record
Synonyms: address, author, autograph, bang out, chalk, commit, communicate, comp, compose, copy, correspond, create, dash off, draft, draw up, engross, formulate, ghost, indite, inscribe, jot down, knock off, knock out, letter, note, note down, pen, pencil, print, record, reproduce, rewrite, scrawl, scribble, scribe, scriven, set down, set forth, sign, sling ink, take down, tell, transcribe, turn out, typewrite, write down, write up
Concept: writing

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Shlomo eez SupahKewl

Yesterday I revisited the writings of Shlomo, a 30-something Russian Jew writer who consistently blows my mind. He is by no stretch of imagination a writer of any great polish...but his ideas set off mini-explosions inside. Deeply perceptive he has an endearingly self deprecatory sense of humour. He lays no grandiose claims to 'artistry'. He is first and foremost an 'Idea-ist' and I see echoes of that in me all the time. Visit his personal essays @ www.unnu.com

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2003-06-18T02:35:00.000-07:00

At Repos-e

A delectable getaway to Pondicherry was what this last weekend was all about. I was last @ Pondicherry during my college days and I distinctly remember sitting with Padmini on Repos beach and talking about her love life. My 'Intellectual Mulishness' apart I had had a wistful longing for some romantic dalliance...which I am sure I ruthlessly rationalised away into nothingness. Even now I will shudder at M*U*S*H, but those shudders are more tastefully feminine:)

We stayed in star spangled shacks by the sea. We swam, ate french food, got tipsy, took B n W pictures of hammocks sunning themselves beatifically! I also fell in love with a vouyeristic higly risque open-air brick bathroom furnished with a rusted hand pump and wooden framed mirror et al. Our bamboo and coconut shacks came with a machan like ladders. Akash and Rajeev showed us some neat architechture. The sloping house with skylights & the whole aura of Auroville was positively enchanted.

Things I wished I could have done........Shopped for trinkets in Pondicherry, lazed around and written a few reams in the blessed shack, played football with the phirangs, taken a few more pictures of the architect workstations, houses. I wish I could have rented a bullet/yamaha or any bike and practised riding it. I wish I could have build sand castles at dawn, visited a lighthouse, gone out fishing with some fisherman, volunteered to work for free for an architect in return for bread and toddy!

I am utterly taken in by lighthouses, i feel compelled to note that i bought Virginia Woolf's hardcover book 'To the Lighthouse' solely for its cover, and have not and doubt I will ever read it, lest my indulgent affection for it change. Also I want to read Fitzgerald's 'Tender is the Night'...

If truth be told all this holiday cheer is a tad contrived and there lurk some heavy thoughts I am loath to grapple with. Also I am toying with the idea of visiting a Pyschologist, I half wonder if that is solely beacuse it will give my blog a suitable morbid and *alternative* thing to talk about. Lest I really encourage such unacceptable mental whimsies I am recording the idea here, before it has even materialised:-)

*Grinning in a suitable Macabre way*

2003-06-09T11:40:00.000-07:00

I have no bling bling

I

Today has been a delicious day, and yes I am reconciled to having no bling bling (a reference to elaborate jewelry and clothing, and the appreciation of it)…one of the many new words added in the latest edition of the Oxford dictionary. Blipvert warrants a hurried mention too I reckon, being subliminal ad’s flashed for an instant.

Nothing vexes me more than a single-mindedly utilitarian approach to life. Unashamed hedonist that I am; words fascinate me…each being imbued with its distinct flavour and feel.

'Taint' is not same as 'sully', replacing every instance of 'rife' with 'widespread' might not be a stellar idea. I doubt a writer who places lucidity above all else is ever going to endear himself to me. What makes writing special is that it is a “work of love” as Darylmple said of one of his books. That is one of my grouses with Journalism...it has no space for fripperies.

II

I have some mildly amusing reading preferences online, I take inordinate amounts of pleasures in reading Judith Martin’s Miss Manners and today I found myself lapping up Cary’s column on Salon…’since you asked’

Sheer style of writing that makes you chuckle and cheer!

See his takes on flirting: “A special kind of warm, pleasant hypnosis that leads seamlessly to breakfast.”; “Flirting is friendly but with an edge of aggression; what you're trying to get across is that this may seem very casual out here in public and we're just having a few laughs but if I ever get you alone you won't be chuckling…”

How true, I would flip for that suggested mixture of humour laced with masculine aggression. He also remarks that relationships are increasingly seen as some sort of active-puzzle-decoding operation. Constantly trying to figure out, read another can get tiring…I for one find it very natural to let the man just be. Inspite for my penchant for conversation I am not really keen on getting inside his ‘head’…a phrase that caught my eye was…Sharing thoughts...it is a mental 'narrative of disrobing’, consequently something I do not want to rush.

I do one of the things he describes, I talk with an easy camaraderie: I Pretend that we…”share a whole language and I don't need to translate, I don't need to explicate my subtle ironies…”

III

I came across this phrase “kaleidoscope of consciousness”…in Steven Berlin Johnson’s ‘Interface culture’ and that singular phrase redeems the book many times over, if it needed any redemption to begin with. I am so taken in with that phrase, it like a snapshot of my synapses. A few other phrases I trot out with reference to my life: dispassionate intensity, a series of unrelated events…more on it later.

IIII

Shobha De, I don’t begrudge her the brand of writing ala novels with tawdry sex- (I was under the misguided impression she is a hot writer, but the few excerpts I read in Darylmple’s soon extinguished all such claims!)

At times I have found her to be mildly amusing as a column writer, but nowadays I see her viciously attacking ‘commercialization’ of writing. That’s rich! coming from her…first was her take on the recent dowry ouster heroine saga, in which she cautioned us/media not to glorify the woman as it would lead to many other girls falsely? accusing prospective grooms for their 15 minutes of fame. Fair enough, but this doesn’t gel with my image of Ms.De.

Next came her vitriolic and ungracious attack terming ‘Hilary Clinton’s’ new book as just a cheap marketing gimmick. She claims that it is clear to anyone with half a brain cell that Hilary and Bill had a convenient arrangement to stick together to fulfill their political ambitions, and finally she exhorts “why on earth would one publish intimate details of ones life”. By the same argument Madame De why would one publish one’s letters to one’s own daughters? A case of the pot calling the kettle black eh.

Writers and journalists sadden me sometimes; I can just imagine Shobha De reading a book so she can cut it to shreds/praise it to the skies. I can imagine every single experience wrung out and turned inside out for a middle, a feature, an article. Satya Saran of Femina was like this too…it seemed she would travel in a car only so she could be moved by the image of an urchin selling ‘Femina’ on the street, or that she shopped for subzi only to be distraught that we used plastic. I can’t think of a worse fate than every moment of my life being afflicted with ‘purpose’.

In a slightly disjointed aside, I resent a standard notion of a purpose/success or ‘settling down’. This isnt because I am some sort of flighty bohemian, but it has been captured perfectly in these lines that follow ( I didnt write this) : Do not use the word "settle," which implies some vast hypothetical better whose infinite size ensures that you will never exhaust it; if you allow it to, it will always haunt you, at 40, at 70, at 90.

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Footnotes:

*I enjoy talking with Craig (the conversation about insularity, the room description by Huxley and everything gave me a story idea), Vikram and recently Srinath.
*I want to watch ‘Frida’ again… Salon Says the opening sequence shows us the courtyard outside of Kahlo's home, a clatter of sun-warmed royal blues, marigold oranges and brick reds...It doesn't seem like a real-life courtyard, but like one imagined by an artist, its colors intensified a few notches beyond reality. It seems to be a trick on Taymor's part to plant us inside Kahlo's mind, to start us out by making us see what she sees in precisely the same way she sees it, and it's an effective one. Instead of lengthening the distance between us ordinary schmoes and the exalted artist, Taymor foreshortens it. It's a clever bit of Marxist artistry. But those are flourishes, not burdensome trappings. Colorful as it is, "Frida" also has something of a somber, stripped-down quality.
*I want to read ‘William Faulkner’.
*The Kawabata mission was aborted…too vague for my frame of mind now...

Other words:

Preternatural,founder, flounder, function of, uber. tantric twaddle, constellation of longing, perfunctory sex in clumpy intervals, through the forest hallucinating little diamonds and trolls, trotting out phrases, whole new realm of engagement and sensation, fin de siecle, solipsism, gulag

vig* : Things like this happen to people; some say it's the vig* on cruelty, paid exponentially.

as•pic1 (as'pik): A clear jelly typically made of stock and gelatin and used as a glaze or garnish or to make a mold of meat, fish, or vegetables. Conditions that contribute to that kind of thing can take the edge off it; rather than lying there as an isolated fact it can then reside in an aspic of information and thus be less vexing, less singular.

ag•it•prop: Political propaganda, especially favoring communism and disseminated through literature, drama, art, or music: “It also is a conspiracy movie, agitprop against today's targets, big government and big business”

Posit: To put forward, as for consideration or study; suggest: “If a book is hard going, it ought to be good. If it posits a complex moral situation, it ought to be even better”

Cojones: need to look it up offline.

2003-06-05T06:30:00.000-07:00

So I finally seem to have a blog going, here i feel an irrepressible need to mention that my first attempt at blogging say 2 years back never took off, My sign in name used to be 'bluezbanned' :-) *Sufficiently fond look in my eyes* that done! let me scorn-ichle some thoughts about blogging.

Rambling online has always seemed a tad- self indulgent to me. Why else would one stuff down the collective throat's of people inane details like... 'dinner last night' or '5 things i never leave home without'. The initial cheap vouyeristic thrill apart there is nothing substantial about compulsive blogging.

Yes it is slightly romantic though to see your thoughts beautifully worded and floating in cyberspace. Maybe 'that' very trite/stray thought will spark off something in a reader in Turkmenistan!... but, once u expunge this self obsession that ails every writer you might chance upon something of value which is worth chronicling and analysing. Agreed.

So having denounced the self-indulgence of lesser mortals i jump in with glee on the blogwagon. This is surely going to record with uncharecteristic earnestness my writing so i can masochistically amuse myself by revisiting it. On that evil-ly smirking note, Sling Inc. Zindabad!

FOOTNOTE: Words that i tried not to use and in effect purging them by grudginly placing them here... smidgeon, anoint, engaging intellect, bauble

2003-06-04T02:25:00.000-07:00

If I lay in wait for a 'just right' feeling for this blog trip, it most likely will never happen, so, I shall not attempt to begin with a 'flourish' ...settling instead for a grocery-esque list of books I intend on reading.

Graham Greene- 'Brighton Rock'
Jorge Luis Borges- anything at all
Umberto Eco- any simple book not something as multilayered as say 'Name of the Rose'
Andre Gide- specifically 'The Immoralist'
Colin Thubron- 'Lost Heart of Asia'
William Darylmple- 'City of Djinns' and 'In Xanadu'
Pico Iyer- the older ones - 'Falling off the Map' and 'Video Nights in Kathmandu'
Peter Hall's- Book on Cities and Civilisation
Margaret Atwood's 'Blind Assasin'
Yasunari Kawabata's (I love the way his name rolls right off my tongue) 'House of the Sleeping Beauties'
Tom Robbins ( The one Parimal gave me)
Kerouac
Camus. Ideally i want to read 'The Stranger' but i am likely to settle for 'The Plague' (Routinely I profess to Lurrrve Camus backed up by a pleasurable-quickie like reading of 'The Outsider', this is just an example of how i exaggerate things in my own head. If truth be told my liking for Camus is one the verge of becoming just a conversation peice- a trite glib thing i say. No am not tooo worried about such deceptions i toy with, but i would like to rediscover the pleasure of alienation that Camus 'first' brought forth...
I would like to Re-Read 'Picture of Dorian Gray' By Wilde also
Ishiguro's 'Remains of the day'
Nirmal Verma the short stories book I have 'Indian Errant'
Marquez's 'Love in the time of Cholera'

Long Term Reading
Read something realted to Indian Philosohpy
The Upanishads and such heavyweight books
Read classics like 'Anna Karenina' and 'War and Peace' et al

As i write this I can think of a zillion books i wanna read, many of them easily accesible right now, the ones i can borrow and read 'I am Red' by that Turkish author...I also want to read some books which all well researched about political theory and all the stuff that makes me a more ummm...'wholesome' person. Once i achieve a modicum of sucess in this i can go onto to fine tuning and develop a taste/style.