Smack my bitch up. Please.

Or, Chaos, serendipity and reflection

Pondering: What’s the longest that pubic hair can grow to? Can’t Google-it in the library, dont want the admin to think I am surfing porn. Sad.

Learnt: Too much reflection will never get the work done. I reflect all the time. It’s inversely proportional to word count dished out.

Felt patriotic when: One, Shashi Tharoor was being interviewed on an Aussie news channel and despite never having any particular fondness for him, felt an immense sense of pleasure seeing him up there. However, he didn’t sound too convincing when explaining why India is not a willing party to cutting her carbon emission rates in ways that would make the US and Australian governments happy. And the world a better place. Presumably, since no one wants to guarantee that.

Two, on discovering a Karsh Kale track when uploading Windows Vista on new laptop. The tabla is divine! Three, when teaching how to say “up your mother’s” in Hindi to two Sri Lankan chicks. One of them should soon be saying “thik hai” too.


Inspired: By Aussie lad-mag called Vice, had a picture of a 35-something mother, holding a rifle with a 6-year-old boy suckling on her right nipple. Also some pictures of bums, the photographer felt that since everyone shoots face-pictures, he needed to do something about it. Poorly executed idea, nice bums though. Guess no one minds the execution then. I am going to shoot bums too.

Realised: Relationships can be a pain in the arse. You are forever doing something wrong. Or forever looking for something wrong. Perhaps some of us like some pain in the arse. Or are plain stupid. Have you ever had the feeling that if there is nothing wrong (or nothing going wrong) in your life, it could mean there’s something really sinister happening somewhere? And that it will hit you in the face when you least expect it to?

Confession: I am really angtsy today, have been so all day. I could be missing the Delhi chaos. Maybe. The daily fights with autorickshaw drivers for one. Here everything is mechanical. Punch preference, put money in, get on with it. No humans. Most things are very efficient, so much so they can be boring. Like all my glassware is intact. No maid to rush through washing dishes who would break them. Funny that the song playing on the laptop right now – of the five songs I could download before the Internet died at home – is Ironic (Alanis Morisette).

There are fond memories associated with the song.

First year of college, N and me going to participate in the intracollege annual festival at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. The fest is called Rendezvous. She participating in the western music competition and me in the on-the-spot story writing one. She sang an acoustic version of Ironic. I wrote “I am a bitch but I didn’t want it to end this way”. It won the first prize. Shrug. College did not publish it in the college mag, they wanted stories on feminism, not psychopathic killers. N never made it to the western music society and I pulled out of the creative writing one.

That was also the time both of us would while away time at the bus stop outside college concocting imaginary stories about what-would-life-be-when-we-grow-up. I was only 19 then, ten bloody years AGO. Where? When? How? What the fuck happened? She was the only one who said that of the 22 girls in class, I would be the first to get married but it would end in a divorce. I had scoffed at being the first to marry. (Smiles) She is married today, I am not. Fortunately or not so, I’ve always been quick at undoing mistakes. Or running from them.

Right now, thanks to all the author names that people throw around, sitting amongst other “writers” seems like a BIG mistake. “Have you read Umberto Eco?” Er, yes, but put down Focault’s Pendulum after page-four because it made no sense to me. My best friend though has read most of his work... but she is into management now. Ironic?

I also want to fight, kick, scream, lunge, lash, hit out. Writing requires sitting in one place. And reflecting. I can do that, perhaps. But what about action? There’s no chaos here. I miss chaos.

I miss home.

PS: Dont think Golu would like it here, he wouldn’t be able to run around freely.

PS2: I think I saw Tinkuji in the market today...