Don't you blah me.

being thankful for women? That's in here somewhere.

2011-03-07T19:17:00.016-05:00

I don't think I'll blog anymore. In fact, only a week ago I wrote what could be called a diary entry. But the extent to which I intellectualize my feelings scares me to the point of not being able to articulate the most simple of emotions anymore. Another symptom of this intellectualizing has been, ironically, a lack of emphasis on myself as a thinker/person, i think. Somehow, I've wound up thinking it's okay that I don't get too happy-excited about something anymore, or jabber philosophically and holler for intellectual attention online anymore because I had since become a graduate student (in the humanities, no less!) and therefore had sobered up to my intellectuality/ability to have thoughts. Both, are of course naive ways of thinking, and i'm not sure I like either manifestation of personality. But. Consequently, apart from my writing retarding to what i think is a large extent, I now feel like I've also somehow lost the ability to be as sharp as i KNOW i was as a 17 year old - whether or not it's a good thing, I'm no longer as aggressively sure of mylittleself, nor equally eager to please. It's a pity. Because I don't feel older right now, just less of any of those things that I had once been so sure I would become more of. (Though i'm certainly more articulate).

But I wonder if this is really what it looks like. I mean, I wonder if this means that I haven't achieved what I wanted to, because, honestly, I don't think the 24-year-old me agrees with the strong-willed teenager I have been all these years. And moreover, my identity/sense of self has become much more fraught with contradictions than ever. I'm borderline religious but I think to others' ideologies long before I consider their feelings (a habit I only check while handling student writing); I've officially moved out of home and I can feel my ties with everything I knew and named with some sort of unconscious feeling stretching to their breaking points (some have already snapped, painfully), and yet I have never felt more strongly about the ways in which my family owns me, can lay claims on me in a way I cannot control - but I do know painfully that to dishonor those claims is to begin a process that ends in forfeiting something that makes me/my identity and I do know that my mind does not drive me toward that place. At the same time, I'm extremely invested in arguments that deconstruct, devalue, expose the bourgeois-ness of all kinds of emotional security. blah. I guess this last characteristic was true of me as a precocious teenager as well, except that I now only treat them theoretically: personally, I'm much more invested in reconciling the structural relationships that made my life with the tenets of my own life rather than declare them incompatible. I know this is vague, but I'm shying away from details. Writing in my blog about my personal life can only mean my dropping words like 'feminism' and family, even if it means that the intricacy of the whole thing is lost.

I do think, however, that I have forfeit so much of what was before now considered "given," and I don't know what that means for my sense of self. There is the deeper sense of citizenship with India and Indian history that I now won't ever have, the friends I've given up to long distance, or the missed connections (ref. craigslist, well, but not in that creepy way) that could have been so much more. . . Not that I haven't gained at all from my migration, I don't believe I would have this any other way, just that so much I have known and been and conceptualized as 'me' has now slipped away, even before I got to understand and respect them as such. So, strengthening my grip over the invisible but highly structured ropes my family unconsciously hands is, I think, my evolutionary, self-interested response to all these other (geographical, physical, intellectual) changes I'm coming into (good) terms with. Thank god, especially for god and for all those amazing women now lost to me through death or cultural amnesia but whose work has been to make the families work the way they do.

The reason I'm not home right now

2010-02-14T15:17:00.006-05:00

Some of us are unlucky in that we should love our families and indeed, our race, ever so much as to have them constantly hurt us. The point here, however, is to simply define the tip of the iceberg that is my relationship to home, to finally state one of many ways in which some Indians REALLY get it out of me.

When I speak to Indian girls that have the 'family' written all over their faces, or 'husband' written all over their bodies, when i can see most plainly their vain virtuousness and pretentiously successful airs, I want to slap them so hard they should be compelled to examine beyond and within their smarting skin in the mirrors for once. How inordinately it gets to me that one could take on a self-promoted superiority just because they, like good girls let others make decisions for them; and let logocentric euphemisms like "milestones" and "achievements" refer to the hoops they jumped for the world! . . Are these women even real, or do they just exist to make me feel bad about myself?

Who is it that I speak of : Simple-minded middle-class women that stare at you like you're some crazy bitch that cut them off on the road if you mentioned romantic love was just as full of shit as arranged marriages, the dreamy-eyed 90s teenagers that attended college only to meet and settle for some worthless man-child. Years wouldn't change them: from silly barbie dolls of well-to-do families, they have become self-important mothers cloaking themselves with the most overrated axiom: "there's nothing more important than the family." Its not the 1950s. It's Indian bourgeois life as we speak.

Sexual double-standards (not saying this is exclusive to India of course) have shaped these women's lived reality, and oddly enough they revel in this supposed superiority of class and gendered position. I really intend to survey and conceptualize them Betty Friedan-style someday. . . Next, there are the male friends that 'tolerate' your complaints and passively castigate you for not being more thankful to your situation (as upper class Indian). What gives them the breezy right to so dismiss any claims for an authentic bourgeois feminism? Notions of class never obstruct public notice when it comes to men; but the very idea that elite women can have problems, is what, contradictory? Irrelevant? Here I stop, much before I originally intended, but more to come.

Get out of your zipcode and you'll see.

2010-02-11T13:40:00.002-05:00

Celebrity Collage by MyHeritage

2010-01-28T12:51:00.001-05:00

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celebrity - Collage - Morph

Several Notes

2009-11-24T22:18:00.004-05:00

If people are "made for each other", I refuse to be made for you.

2009-11-04T21:59:00.006-05:00

For some time now, I have tried hard to figure out why exactly I get so worked up and offended every time my mother gives me "advice". In many ways, its a typical mother-daughter conflict (when my father is present, he only sort of lamely chimes in to indicate support to mum and tries to leave), and yet I cannot help sensing that what my mother says- and what I react to- point at things that are wayy beyond either of ours' purview, understanding or control.

Before I get further into it however, I must declare that I take my mother to be a terribly intelligent woman. Her mathematical powers, her memory, and her critical intelligence are extremely up above average, and her astute sensibility, wit and perceptiveness make her a delightful companion. And she's really broad minded given her parochial childhood and upbringing. I write this rather defensive description so that you do not, as we so often do in these moments, incorrectly dismiss her as some un-feminist, ignorant woman.

That said, I'm now going to quote her in translation; It's something she once told me at an impressionable age, and I believe it is one of those things that get passed down mother to daughter for centuries- quite understandably so, since its such a convenient euphemism to a rather ugly truth. Here it is.

"Women are like precious gems- it is absurd to believe they can exist without a possessor(!). If a diamond lies unclaimed, people [notice in this sentence how woman translates as the object, and man translates as 'people'] will first wonder why nobody owns it, and shortly after, they will act, as if it were up for grabs"

Horrifying. Not because its sexist and totally degrading, but because, with each passing year, I have seen affirmations of this 'aphorism' consistently. If you're a woman, and you've walked at some point on an Indian street by yourself, you'll know what my mum said is quite literally true. No matter how long your sleeves are, and how many layers of clothing you have on to avoid attention(in the blazing Indian temperatures, mind); if you look young and unmarried, men will stare you down until you cannot BUT feel ashamed.

Because this shame inducing objectification (you're not human but a 'tempting object with your boobs and legs) is not defined anywhere as abuse that can be tangibly fought against, Indian girls consequently learn from the start to be totally frigid and to close off their sexuality (as best as they can) from a man's gaze. (I could go on a tangent from here, but its really depressing, so I won't.)

So, with all those offensive, ubiquitous reminders of male sexuality that are far from exciting or flattering, why are these women so aggressively heterosexual and heteronormative? In the twentieth century? Why do they crave, from the earliest they could, for a boy's eternal love? Or at the very least (do pardon my cynicism), for an ostentatious wedding?

I have a penchant for conspiracy theories, and the converse of them. Do bear with me.

I feel like women instinctively know they are up for sale (which is another way of saying they are up for grabs). They know their utter objectification can be put to an end with an interjection of a male figure (indeed just walking next to a guy cuts down the staring by like 80 % on the street). My theory is that somehow when a man makes a claim for them, (women in south India wear a HUGE ugly gold chain to mark their "spoken for" status), they will be delivered from the shame of being treated as objects. And this effort at de-objectfication is sociologically internalized, and informs a construction of the female gender, so to speak. How they must behave, conduct themselves is clearly cut. If anything, this is apparent in how deeply with relief the parents sigh when their daughter is finally married. Because with marriage, women belong, both to a man and in society, and they become people of worth, gems that are hence proudly displayed.

(disclaimer: The above cannot be taken as me saying indian women are sexless. I'm not saying that.)

2009-08-06T04:19:00.003-04:00

Laughing, and intermittently speaking, people were having a great evening, relieved that the day’s exertions were over. And among these new people, I felt- for once- thoroughly peaceful. Inexpressibly so. Each countenance glowed with good spirit that was undoubtedly enhanced, if not generated, by a common experience of utter contentment in the wake of hitherto unfamiliar souls.

We were, I think, greatly relieved to be away from network reception, away from the ghosts and live monsters that eat into our city lives, away from Worry & Care.

Care, I wonder. Our parents bring us up with such care; attending to every detail, pruning every unwanted development… do they get the perfection they seek/deserve? I doubt it. In nature however, everything grows wild and apparently unattended to, and yet such perfection! The mountains, the stars, the trees… there is so much beauty, so much symmetry in every product of Nature!

Not for the first time, and not in small measure, I felt this eloquent poem.

… The breeze was cold, but friendly. The sun had almost set. We couldn’t see the moon-rising; perhaps the mountains blocked it from us. I walked away, wanting to be alone for a bit. It was breathtaking, but I did not take in the details … Soon, darkness would fall like a heavy blanket, and I would be back, trying to concentrate as my friend pointed out the milkyway and all those constellations.

At the moment, I had plunged deep, deep into a newfound liberation, or perhaps an assertion for myself, bereft of all guilt. I began to understand that I was, like everybody else, quite alone. Alone, I described my situation to myself, in a beautiful universe, with no one to go back home to. No one to please, no one to care for.

I experienced this thought like never before. Indeed, I thought, as the examples of my life flashed before me, it’s selfish to believe we live our lives for others. The might of Existentialist thought stands by this, but I will desist from describing it as anything but a deep, personal moment.

I couldn’t measure- I can’t express- how it felt to know that I had with me everything, everything I needed to be happy in this world. I had Me.

2008-07-14T09:27:00.003-04:00

...I love it when it rains. Today especially, it fell in sheets. Seemingly unaffected by wind current and just the kind i like to stare through....The best thing about bangalore is that come 33-34 degrees, and beautiful, beautiful showers wash all of it away..... We drove out and caught the city's skyline yesterday. It's no rain forest, but the (surprising) levels of green was more than thrilling.

I love my city.

Great summer. Happy stuff, Lots of stories, ranging from dad's place(s) of work to babies being born, from forgiveness to new insights to happiness being found.

The point? All good. And as you can see, nothing to "blog". Lets just hope it remains that way.

Welcome to MeaningOfLife 101...

2008-06-23T07:51:00.005-04:00

.....We've got Nothing.

You may collect your schedules and resource sheets at the desk in the front of the room. Thank you.
(A LOT more than your 10 credits' worth might be needed. You may get ready to HELP!)

2008-05-26T03:46:00.015-04:00

So what kind of a nut job are you?

(And all this btw makes PeopleLikeMe, the mild borderline cases of this so passé. .)

But the pain? I feel for you. Its really a cruel world. However.

Even I don't get it this time. Yes, even Me, the professed Gets-It-All of social pain(!).

Beg Pardon, but it really sounds just a tad ridiculous.

--> "You are facing a serious condition of SNAD". WTF. Seriously? :O

Or maybe I'm at a really un-empathetic place right now. Happiness does that to people. So.. a conclusion to this?- Each to his own weirdness, maybe. So if this is real, Hang in there. The good news is, there's nothing you cannot get over. Intriguing and singular. The mind, it is.

.
.

Later. Or not, for a while. Take care, yo.

Ordinary world

2008-05-19T01:40:00.021-04:00

Well now pride's gone out the window
Cross the rooftops
Run away
Left me in the vacuum of my heart

Dedication: All you guys, and how much you make for general 'meaning' when you come over/send an email/call. You know what I mean.

So The way things get? When it's one of those crappy days that's really hot to be anywhere except under airconditioning; or when you've exhausted the intelligent from your phonebook; when the only emails you get are those stupid "likeness" things from facebook or the "your difficult gre word today" (Which btw is never even remotely difficult)…Suck-y. You've been here, I'm sure (I really feel for the chronic twisted types of these), and after wallowing a bit in front of your computer, you think that you should do something about it. You get out of yourself; you think of possibilities. You think the impending longish trip is a good thing. All the travelling you've planned and continuous change of atmosphere, both social and climatic, must do you good; You focus on all the fringe-like things in your life, scared to death to face the pivotal. People. You think of all the changes you could make, you say things will be different another day, but in the end you know, painfully, you're just kidding yourself. You think that maybe not writing might help- you think of how the habit has taken so much hold of you personally and you're sure the incessant performance anxieties are definitely not indispensable. Or you remember how hurt and pissed you were when some "intellectual" analysis arrived suggesting you vicariously lived another life or whatever, through the 'art' of writing. But then you also really know, yes you most certainly do, that taking out your notebook and feverishly putting things down (for fear of forgetting later) is the only thing that has really made you happy. And you know that being inspired so is something to live for. And then You figure that people and being among them is what really makes for that. Which is essentially why the hermitage motif was never going to work for you... I don't know man, I so want to end this by turning out some wish-wash about everything being a large cosmic joke; but that is just not right. The thing is, Cynics are always secretly hoping for something to come along and disprove them; and I remember talking about this to someone. apart from the wonderful language play, cynicism is nothing but a ridiculous delegation of responsibility. Well, good luck with that. [This you may find presumptuous, but it is true to the best of my judgment.] But I digress terribly. So all this neuroticism makes you wonder why you should be so profoundly affected. Why you hear some songs so well, it could have been a reasonably more gifted you that wrote them. People. You have earnestly set up (almost dreamed of) the very seclusion for which you weep. Your mind aimlessly flits, thinking how sensitive you were when you didn't have to be, how stupidly you softened when you shouldn't have or worse, how really easy some of them others have it. You realise how you want to be unsocial but can't. Or worse, you notice how hollow you sound(ed) when you pretend to be recluse. Fuck this shit, you say. For the way people treat other people, for the way people think, and generally for the way people are, for the way you would totally die without them. You know your problems are small when compared to the real problems of the world. But you can't help obsessing about the whys. You realize that that is probably why some others are social magnets and you are well, you. Doesn't help. Dumb woman, you say, find some work to do. No I can't. I can't help thinking about how weird the thing that is weird is. What remains to be done (at your own time, of course) is marvel at your ability to screw things up.

My excuse to stop now is that this is, as said by someone sapient, just a blog and I immensely fear detection. Yes, for once, I'm not going to claim impassivity at a post; admitting entirely at the moment, to a severe, painful case of loneliness.

MEH.

< The actual end to this post is um, sappy; so you can decide to stop reading right now, if you'd like>

(Gtalk prompt)

We'llcallhimJoe:Hey.

Ehm, lol @ status.

random bad mood?

Me: Hello! heh, of sorts.

(Oxygen. Sweet)

It's nothing really. Tsup?

.
.
.

700 lines. (Who said happiness was unquantifiable?)

And the moral of all this? ( lol. Yes I took this much time for it)

Life's alright man. If you could treat yourself better; others will soon have to follow. Meanwhile, try and blog a little lesser.

Never easy.

2008-05-17T06:12:00.009-04:00

It's quiet now
And what it brings
Is everything

Comes calling back
A brilliant night
I'm still awake

I looked ahead
I'm sure I saw you there

You don't need me
To tell you now
That nothing can compare

You might have laughed if I told you
You might have hidden A frown
You might have succeeded in changing me
I might have been turned around

It's easier to leave than to be left behind
Leaving was never my proud
Leaving New York, never easy
I saw the light fading out

Now life is sweet
And what it brings
I tried to take
But loneliness
It wears me out
It lies in wait

....

I might've lived my life in a dream, but I swear
This is real
Memory fuses and shatters like glass
Mercurial future, forget the past
It's you, it's what I feel.

You might have laughed if I told you (it's pulling me apart)
You might have hidden a frown (change)
You might have succeeded in changing me (it's pulling me apart)
I might have been turned around (change)
.....
(REM)

How I feel this song. And Its cruel when you say "grow up" or "move on". Just so you know.

Disclaimer: Correction, more like.
This isn't 'about' anybody or anything. Remember how much I bask in Existential Dramaaaa. (Sigh.)

Sketch

2008-05-13T08:25:00.015-04:00

So a great way to look at what's troubling you is to pretend (and I borrowed the idea from a cousin btw) that you're answering some random survey of no significance to your life. So the idea is, you frame these questions, and then answer them right after, simulating the tone you use while answering just for the sake of some inane statistical database so there's absolutely no pressure. And since I have no life anyway, I tried it. Very relaxing, and quite fun if you like writing. Also, neat way to allow your journalistic 'skills' to float around a bit. You should give it a shot; here's a fairly edited version of mine.

Career plans? Life. (fine I'm corny, DIE.)

Death? I would like to choose the moment. But if I don't and fate leaves me alone until I'm 60, terminal disease seems alright.

Things you absolutely want to do before you die? Tsk, old-hat question. sex, find some answers, see Egypt blah blah.

Biggest complaint about parents? They talk to me even if they KNOW I'm busy with something.

The ones with self? Too many man, all big.

Anything good too? Hm. Well, I'm losing weight steadily… Generally being like a good person. erm.

Favourite Shakespearean character? Hamlet.

What annoys you the most? Can I write two? course i can, you're a lame ass survey.

-Reading my own writing and finding it either too wordy or trite, trite, TRITE! :| wonly.

-Seeing people who A) believe enough that they're oh-so-smart to not realize how dreary and boring they truly are OR B) despotically presume to "know" you.

So Are you a people person? Um, yes and no.

Yes OR no, please? Fine, yes.

Something you know from your dealings with them? "dealings"? Ok.

People will do their own thing, right or not. Yes, it would be great if you made the rules, but you don't, So. And for god's sakes, don't pretend to be the better person and attempt to "fix" anything.

What do you find most necessary there? To take a slight with dignity. Or to know what goes around, comes around.

Might you hate somebody? I don't think so. I can't maintain a grudge. Walk over me, offend me or hurt me and , if I may say so myself, I will make philosophy. Of course, there's precious little I'll make of your character for a while, but how does that even matter?

What does your hometown mean to you? This is a tough one. We all want favourable illusions; about everything- human nature, god, destiny – which is really the basis of myth- so that we can go on living, maintaining a heart object that pumps life source, wherever you are. A "hometown" (if you think of it as having special significance to your soul, that is) is a similar construction of that 'hub' within your mind that tells you everything is going to be fine; your very own Ithaca if you like. But before I get into some cynical sermon, I'll take the question at face value. Bangalore, to me, will always be about conservative Brahminism (pitifully small as the community is), raspuri mangoes, awkward teenage and yes, heavy rain (joy!) after a hot day. But they really should've let me vote.

The worst thing about being born in your century? Too much advancement. Lets face it, after Shakespeare, there's nothing new about the human condition that you can write about. Which is why post modernism is so appealing anyway.

When did you last feel fulfillment? On editing an entire novel-type thing for a friend. It's been a while.

Austere or Hedonist? Austere, I think. It's a new and surprising development.

The thing you love doing the most? Laughing

When did you last feel "pretty"? This morning at a mirror by the shower. And a bit later. Its true, I'm getting better looking by the day. (and shameless, evidently)

Last somebody else said that? Last tangible compliment was from some Iyengari auntie, I'm afraid, at some function, while not-so-discreetly discussing marriage prospects. Aargh.

The Worst Feeling Ever? Ingrained sense of worthlessness + bewilderment with what's thrown at you. (Ok, a more standard and equally qualified answer would be - ' mindnumbing boredom'.)

Last time you were rather moved? When a friend went really out of her way to put in words how highly she thought of me, and why. :)

What bugs you most about your country? The absolute lack of comfort. Roads are uncomfortable, trains are uncomfortable, hotels are overpriced and uncomfortable, most kitchens and bathrooms are sketchily done…. It's not just that the general affordability is low; one universal Indian ethic is to adjust to anything. Refugees were as much accommodated as the families on the waiting list that still board the train anyway- the reception, just as unremarked although a tad grudging. But everybody gets a spot, people will adjust; conditions are generated accordingly. Which is the only way a billion people could have survived, but that doesn't help lighten the general annoyance.

The best thing you can say for it? About 8-9000 years ago, it produced great literature. (What can I say? It's just not our greatest era, this) Apart from the arts, the two epics of the time are the grandest historical documents in the history of writing. My personal fancy, of course, is for the Mahabharat (NOT the Rajaji version, thank you) for its vast, vast moral girth and literary timbre. Great, great work.

So this was my bright strategy for solving larger existential anxieties?

Well. Uhh. Yeah? :D

Some response

2008-05-03T03:44:00.021-04:00

So the other day, somebody referred to my blog as personal, just as a lot of people do, but whatever I could maintain for the exact opposite, he just wouldn’t listen; to a degree and with a conviction that is just plain irksome. .And, It’s a lazy Saturday afternoon, I’m at my parents’, who are both busy doing some random work around the house, so I am going to sit down to make my case against the ferociously disbelieving fellow.

So. My blog. I want to say a couple of things. Firstly, I don’t nearly take it as seriously as people do (or did when blogging was the height of cool for a couple of years), and its merely some sort of an appendage from a younger age that I refuse to let go of. Why? For precisely the sake of these oppressively hot Saturday afternoons where I have absolutely nothing to do except read or mull over things or be on the internet. Besides, blogging is a very convenient way of reaching out to a random bunch of people without having to go through the dreary social processes it involves. And sometimes, when you want to actually write something but can’t, blogging is the really next best thing.

But, But. Here’s the thing. If you don’t also know me really well, there's absolutely nothing you can tell from the blog, except say, some unremarkable stuff like I'm a student or my writing is too cluttered etc. So while I do largely write about stuff that happens to me and to people around me (who does it any other way?), I don’t mention names, I don’t make any telling references, and I don’t describe any events. Here, I'm extremely circumspect and I abstractize (I don’t think that’s a word, but whatever) everything I say, so you are not offered any um, 'view' into my life. I do this, firstly, because otherwise this would all be a very icky exhibitionist sort of exercise; secondly and more importantly, I want to try and make the reader actually relate. To some things I brood on, some philosophy I seem to chew on, some observations I make. It’s not me it’s you, that sort of thing. The reasoning is that if you can relate to what I’ve described, it doesn’t matter who I am. I am this non-entity you sense but don’t notice. So when I write here, I like to think that it’s some kind of a social experiment a detached writer would make, not an individual’s attempt at some internet social bonding. My BridgetJones-meets-ZenBuddhist life is my own ailment and I'm under no obligation to be clear to you.

So. My blog's not personal at all; it probably would be if I attached fiction or first person 'pieces' to it, (those things that I consider MY work) which is really why I don’t. Surely, if this isn’t your first time, you can tell this. (Yes yes, look at me, I have regulars). But more often than I would like to admit, this kind of writing is almost always classed as being personal; an illusion that probably gets me my readers in the first place. (much thanks to Pi for getting me to think about this illusion bit). Anyway my point is, if you think I write this as an introduction to “me” (you know who you are), all I can say is- Don’t. Most of my writing is derived from some very real pain I experience and I don’t like it to be reduced to some arbit personal profiling that thrives everywhere on the internet. Meaning, don't kill this for me. Please?

So Why am I writing this? To say. Do not, do not read a person’s blog as a way of getting to “know” them. It just doesn’t work that way. I can like write that I get laid 5 times a week, and absolutely get away with it. Besides, If you want to meet somebody, you must try and get yourself a social life. It’s more fulfilling that way. And really, really, REALLY don’t read somebody’s blog if they haven't particularly invited you to. People write in their spaces for various reasons, and by trying to enter, or reading more than what they want to say, you might just be indulging in some strange sort of voyeurism. Unless, of course, you can read purely for the sake of reading some writing, which I've been told, rarely is the case.

Enough said, I think. Pardon me for all the rant, but this sort of post has been long overdue. I'm sure you'll gladly excuse me now to go watch that OC episode I just finished downloading.
Peace out.

PS: this is NOT to be read as an attack to any one person. My rants generally transcend the personal 'level'. If you are offended, however, write me a mail describing why you should be so, and my reply will convince you otherwise.
(swathi.rajan@gmail.com)

2008-04-26T03:26:00.016-04:00

So I've decided to let some good vibes span outward. For after all, Life is not half bad, and even my digitized world needs to hear that from me. Nothing sappy and shit, but indiscriminate pieces of thought I'd like you to hear.

So.

I just got an A minus! It's not great, But. consider that I worked on the damned 15 page paper for just two days (we're advised to take a month) and that it was the asshard course I almost dropped!

Ladies and Gentlemen, (in my own small way) I have arrived.

I quite love Hyderabad. Even with the 42 degrees in just april (which you can escape inside our awesome library) and everything, it's quite alright. Which is saying a lot, because it's a real crappy city. Every 6 am I step out of the bus, the pretty, cool air (about the only time in the city where you can describe it so) makes me feel damn straight wonderful. Like I'm finally like on my own with nobody to notice and correct my mistakes. Don't get me wrong, I'm big on family and everything, but ah, the respite! No cousin working here, no distant aunt, nothing. Bliss.

I'm writing again, I'm writing again! Won't change the world, but it makes me happy. After making a complete mess of your own life (I'm still mulling over the free will thing if you must know), it is quite remedying to have complete control over the destinies of others, yes, made up others too. Even if just on paper, it's nice to feel like some kind of a God. So the other day, I was at eat street, early to meet someone; quiet corner, nice breeze, few people, decent view of the lake and city…the works. Although I didn't have too much time, my notepad felt good.

(Some moleskine would be nice if you're returning from the US anytime soon)

So I don't quite like the whole postfreudian/evolutionaryscientist blah of calling human beings articulate infants. It adds up, I agree, but that's not all there is. If you haven't grown up, don't blame it on evolution (or the lack of it). I've seen some unbelievable goodness around me, and no its not unnaturalness or pretence on anybody's part.

I'm going austere. Like totally. Spending only when I absolutely have to, no more eating out, giving up cigarettes and alcohol, as less human interaction as needed (its not like i was getting any action anyway, so it's quite ok, all in all), anyway, the whole effin' deal. And I'm waking early. That's right, no more going out. Ooh, No telling what bodhisattvic brilliance I'm going to reach now. Yeah, baby. (:|)

I recently came by Virginia Woolf's suicide note. Been tripping about it for a while. (if you can actually 'trip' over the language used within a suicide note).

"Dear Leonard, [the husband]

to look life in the face… always… to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last… to know it, to love it for what it is and then to put it away. Dear Leonard, always the years between us, always the years, always the love, always the hours. "

No reason. I just think that was crazy beautiful.

2008-04-21T09:48:00.016-04:00

It's amazing how right from about the 1920s, New York has been like the financial and intellectual center of the whole goddamned world. And there's more to it than business. The Manhattan skyline, in one breathtaking visual span, gives such expression to the marvel of technology and everything else that is western civilization. So complex, and yet so unmistakable. Its crazy how mundane office buildings take on this mystery, this overwhelming beauty that almost philosophically defines the West and is absolutely inaccessible to the rest except for awe. The Al-Qaeda could not have found a more 'fitting' place to show resentment and anger towards all things West. Really. It is the age of technology, the age of the western, no doubt. (OMG I sound like such a book!!)

Anyway.

Not that I've read too much or anything, but I do believe that some of the greatest twentieth century writing has come steadily from New York. (So has some of the crappiest, but still). My point is, the place writes. There is something these guys can access for creation and constantly so. People in New York so think they're the center of the world, it's not funny. There, one can buy clothes for his dog and not feel guilty; As an Indian, it's unquestionable, and automatically so. Unlike here, people can go about their day to day lives without having to think about how difficult some other lives might be. For India, I think, complacence is all past. An ancient land of history and beautiful legend and vast moral development, today it is breaking up right beneath our feet thanks to ridiculous, local passions, housing about 80 crore families that earn 5 rupees a day; all the cultural pride being mostly from political rhetoric. No this is not some simplistic activist rant, or alternatively, some lame white adoration; If you're Indian, I'm sure you'll agree that everybody agrees, even that call center git that promises you a 'perfect accent' [:|], there's nothing left for them here. I won't deny discouraged-ly toying with the idea myself, although disgust generally does some quick straightening up; I don't condone it, but I can sympathize. Seeking sustenance and glory in myth is not everybody's thing. TSK.

So I think that was harsh, and therefore I'll illustrate. Hm. If you looked at the wasteland that is Bellary, Bijapur, Raichur, Dharwad today, you would hardly believe that just a few centuries ago, the great Vijaynagar empire flourished there in all its might, and that people thrived excellently on their harvest; and that from one tiny corner around dharwad emerged this great poet who wrote possibly the most beautiful translation of the Mahabharat into kannada verse (The idiom and grammar of Pampa and Ranna are too inaccessible to me.); even calling himself Kumara-vyasa. ('son' of Vyasa). There are many such places in Karnataka which were once great fountains of thought but were later so ridden by poverty and depopulation into industrialized cities that they have undergone a steady and irreversible cultural retardation.

So I went to Hampi some time ago, and it was brilliant. There is the palace with the ten lakh pillars, the stone carvings, the bazaar whose streets used to be filled (!) with gold, man, I can't do justice to the description. And yet, now that I think of it, my response is all mixed. I mean, it was beautiful, but the excessive heat and scant vegetation does not let you miss the pathetic 'pastness' of it all. At Hampe, once a site of great greatness, today you'll find desolately poor kids working around in some simulated 'oriental' hangout place where white/rich people do drugs; Persian-like things hanging from the walls, I guess they figure tourists can't tell the difference anyway. Even if the government website talks about agriculture and handicrafts, tourism is the only real income of the place. . This village will not produce anything, anything cultural maybe for like, ever. And if you look at it really, sadly, it can easily be a microcosm for the rest of the country.

So. I was talking about Indian writing. Even if we do resign ourselves to writing in English, and pretend that one's own cultural ethos can be forced into the language (if you've read godofsmallthings for example, you'll agree that it is possible, if difficult), you're faced with a larger problem. There is this india that is so violently myth/ethnocentric, so absolutely resisting any sort of expansion, transcendental or otherwise. I think it was Turgenev who said that the achievement of a reproduction of the truth is the greatest happiness for a writer. But who would like to write about all this! I would really like to read some Indian writing, fiction or non, that does not blatantly echo the immense mediocrity abound.

Sigh. I don't know man, I always seem to be talking longer than I meant to, feeling less meaning than what I started out with. I do sense this though: We need a Whitmanesque figure now more than ever; someone who'll 'laugh at disillusionment' and make everything truly seem at the crossroads of emergence and possibility. Only that could revert us magically from going the Yugoslavia way, eventually.

Yeah, I think that was it.

2008-04-03T07:03:00.016-04:00

Stuck with a LOT of work again. I do this so many times it's not funny. But, at times like these, times of extreme annoyance with self, there's little else i can do, besides a blogpost.

Why is every bit so hard for some people? And why do others manage it so easy? Why are you a complainer because you don't want to "deal with it"? Why are you so awkward when all you want to do is be liked? Why do some people make it so hard for you to...love them? Can you shun someone and long for them at the same time? Can the other be really so indifferent when you feel the way you do? You rip your heart out onto the table, and it could be a coaster for all their noticing. Why must it be all or nothing? And, Why, Oh Why, must your writing be so trite?

Any present such monster however, I've begun to prefer over a Memory.

Our past is no past. It's really some creepy narrative, and a dynamic one at that. It's crazy how it screws with you constantly, stealing into your thoughts when you least suspect it, quietly and ominously transmuting your everyday reality. Some are smart and they can tear it away like a Band-Aid; I, for one, cannot. If you don't catch yourself early enough, your fancy is only too quick and before you know it, your past or a particular part of the past becomes a screenplay you're writing, where every character, every landscape, every emotion is defined by you, and yet, the situation is so autonomous that you are really nothing more than an escort. Something that simulates a third person viewpoint. But this is where it backlashes on you, that is, on me. I dont know man. Break ups are hard, but that is not just it. Its like you're sitting there, absolutely resenting this other person(s) now. And you want to hate them and want grounds to censure them, and more than anything, you want to feel alright about the way you have acted; oddly enough, all you can think of is how much you've laughed with them, how much you've enjoyed yourself, and how much you have, even inadvertently, loved them. Blah. And then goddamned reality shows up again. And you are tormented by the sheer futility in imagination. It really sucks when all you can do is suppose his amusement when you describe your multifaceted performance anxiety or replay inside your head that pretty loving smile you got every time she knew you wanted it. All ghosts, these moments with these people can never happen for you again. There's no end to the conversations that are forced to stay only within your head and the excuses you make on behalf of your self respect. And then you get a bit more real and you deride yourself for not making use of the time you did have to salvage some more happiness and you bemoan a lot of things you are. Self-mockery is so useful an ego-defense mechanism that keeps away self-pity.

But however hard you work at it, the past is never really so sacrosanct so far you are concerned is it? You're always reworking it, changing it so that its projection, your now, could be different. Oh, so different. It takes so much wisdom and resilience to keep from fantasy. But the way things are, I'm not sure I want to. Cowardly and not to forget, gay, but what else to live for if not for people who can or have made for a couple of wonderful moments? You want to keep them in your life, but for many reasons, even unquestionable ones, you cannot. What then, to keep yourself from being, even if temporarily, devastated?

I don't see why escapism is so frowned on, when religion is all acclaimed. It's only natural to hope and believe. At least, with the former, you at some point do realize you're only kidding yourself. So all's good. I think. And even if this makes me 15, rationale really sucks.

News

2008-03-28T12:55:00.013-04:00

Loved the movie. Bergman, it is. :

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Him. Oh, be rational??! People do that, you know, every fucking now and then

Me. okay... because that's what is missing. An algorithm.

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Shoot me now.

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I'm going sober. off people and alcohol.

(ok i didnt say that)

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Sigh. and i haven't even had a life yet.

Cant buy me luh-uuhve.

2008-03-22T00:16:00.007-04:00

Kramer quote of the post: "These eggs are disgusting. I hope the mother hen is ashamed of herself"
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So I’m quite disgusted by my relationship with money these days. First, I must censure my absolute lack of scruples. No, I’m no smart with money. And then, I think, must I feel so bad? I know, people starving- less resources-the point is, what do you mean by excess and waste? Is it really so horrible to spend on things I enjoy and people I love. If throwing away 450 on a drink or buying a glossy book for 1800 is unforgivable, saving it all up so you can buy yourself a piece(s) of land is pointless. Middle class ethics are really so strangulating. I guess notions do fine only when there are immediate needs to adopt them, else, they become annoyances you can’t for some reason, shake off. Both my parents, having been brought up in modest-to-poor means, made it a point for it to be otherwise for us kids, but they will never let go of that dutiful respect for money. It’s not that it has been the main concern of their lives, thankfully, but as any middle class family works, we’re taught, as though it is the natural course, to hanker for ‘security’ there. If you can’t handle it yourself (and we know you can’t), marry a boy who will. Ok, before a temptingly rantsome tangent happens, my point is, my parents need that security, possibly because they have children and things to take care of, I don’t know; Me, I don’t feel too responsible for anything, so I don’t really grasp the concept, no. Of course, I have never felt un-secure, ever. In a year or two, when I feel compelled to stop mooching off parents, I might have a lot more respect for this, but for now, allow me to be all too derisive of it.

Either way, I do more than my share of thoughtless spending, and they haven’t complained much. I don’t know how my sister handled this, but I’m beginning to wonder if it’s really their indulgence all along or sheer spoilt thoughtlessness on my part. Do they really not mind it so much? While always, always resenting my mother’s middle class prudence, I’ve done nothing to help it. Except maybe ask her to drop them every once in a while so she can, you know, live a little? I mean, she will still choose stocking up over splurging on an expensive saree or making a much requested visit to the expatriate daughter. My cutting down on expenses has no bearing on this, I know, but I can’t not be guilty about being the chief consumer of family resources. Or maybe, I console myself, it’s just them. I mean, they live in great comfort and everything, but what about all the real nice things in life? I mean, everything that doesn’t fall within the bracket of ‘requirement’ is regarded as excessive. Wtf? Do you really have to be so self-effacing about expenditure? She always answers me with the ‘you have to think about the future’ shit. It’s like waiting for fucking Godot, this ‘future’ they’ve been planning 30 odd years of their lives for.

What scares me is this. What if all this is for my benefit? I mean, what if my parents (and sister, to a substantial amount) have given up on having a life because they wanted all these wonderful things for me? I know, I know, self-involved yes, but if you knew my family, it’s not a very far-fetched supposition. So I think the reason my parents and I get along is that they are as removed from my life as is possible in the circumstances. They hear about me from me, so well, they get a fairly cropped version. Now, I have no problem with that. I like to work my way toward any principle, moral and otherwise, and I have no qualms in disregarding other teachings. It has been so all along, not simply because I get ridiculous amounts of freedom now. But I’m not talking about me here. There will come a day, when my parents will have to handle a stark confrontation of everything Me. Its not even like they want anything grand, I can't even give them normalcy. They will have to face how I’m everything they never wanted me to be, everything that will only disappoint them, everything that is so un-people of our kind. Then what? They’ll just go, hey, that took just a couple of decades of our prime, don’t worry about it? I feel a little too selfish to take on the responsibility of two thankless lives, much thanks. And if they do resign themselves, it’ll be just out of the goodness and charity of their hearts, which well, can only make it all worse. And HOW is any of this fair to them? I’ve wished to be someone else all my life, but never more than when parents are concerned. I’m not just saying this, You have no idea. Dude, I’m such an underperformer man. I thrive on random things of no consequence and I have no capability whatsoever. I fail at the least provocation and I respond negatively to expectation. I can’t fulfil anything.

Meh. Having Kids. Don’t try this at home.

2008-03-18T10:19:00.007-04:00

So I don't think you can write anything you haven't felt yourself. Think about it. Through life, Words are constantly boomeranged at you. You only learn a new one when you realize it describes something you've already felt, thought about and found intriguing. If not, the word slides right off (unless it's the GRE next month and you have to force the understanding), and returns in an indefinite lapse of time within which you've hopefully had some new experiences. That is the nature of growing up, this gaining of new words. So when you write, it's really just the apt arrangement of the words that are already existing within your system; an exercise almost purging the inarticulate in you.

I'll go straight to my point. Writing is not an Art. (Art as in artistic creation, not like 'art of conversation' or anything). At least, when one goes about it, he must not look at himself as a creative artist. Creative artist, on its own, is a valid term though, I have no interest in going postmodernist here. I mean to say that a mode of expression is not necessarily an art form; calling it so would be mere distortion, and I'm sorry to say people have a ghastly tendency of doing just that. The word art is too often associated with concepts like 'culture' and 'education', both considered luxuries afforded only by secure, well operating societies, and yet, the finest works of art have emerged at times that were least so. I think that the human psyche works that way. I remember reading this quote of a famous pioneering psychologist somewhere, "great poetry happens either because of a depression or in spite of a depression". The crux here, I think, is not that you must have a dismal view of the world, but that you must be so overwhelmed by your condition that you are entirely focused on description, and not the cosmetics. Whether you're bearing witness to your generation's brand of monstrosities, or expressing ardent love; you must have the integrity to quit, if it is a self-conscious exercise. Aesthetics should only be a matter considered in retrospect. Keats is right; there is so much beauty in the 'truth' that you don't have to strive for it (beauty).

The thing I'm trying to get at is this (you see how hard this is for me?) – Writer's Angst is all fine. I hear you there. But the, shall we say, liberal ascription of the condition is not something I can stand by. If you're having trouble with your writing, see what you can do and ask for criticism. No writing is sacred. It can be mortifying, but it's better than using words in an unauthentic fashion. So, ok. Forgive me for the next few lines, but if I can't sermonize in my blog, where else can I? (I make no pretensions to literary talent whatsoever, but i'll give myself this- I can spot problems with that of others straight out.)

Common problems. Here's the thing. Do not, do not, set out to write with somebody in mind. I know it's hard, but that's how it is. If you want to tell someone something, go up to them and do so. Don't abuse your writing for those purposes. And don't hide behind a bunch of pretty words so your reader will think you're smart; just don't show it to anybody if it affects you. Write only when you feel like, when you want a snapshot of that one particular moment of the curious, unique workings of your mind. don't try to be coherent; Rationality is an uglier censor than prudery. Love, love the human being, be willing to penetrate as far into the other's personality as he/she allows; Cynicism is an absolute lack of insight. Live out your life. There's no hurry. One gonewiththewind is more splendid an achievement than the twenty kiran desai will end up writing, surely. So yeah, if you like to write, hopefully someday you'll end up with a vast no. of delectable images at your disposal. You can then take it then if you like, allegorize it, abstract it…..whatever works for you. And this is just maybe. I don't know man, I don't see how you can be ambitious about writing. You can't be a professional. At least, you shouldn't.

(I might redo this, but for now, birthday stuff! later. )

2008-03-16T11:20:00.007-04:00

Well, if you've read my last post, sympathies. Soon as it is, I figured it's time to post again….(just to force the other ghastly one down, if you must know.)

So, when this doesn't fill me with raptures and exultation, it makes me smile and not hate on life as much. and, it makes alive bygone simpler times, simpler me. Read, I shall keep you no more.

"... Ah, poems amount to so little when you write them too early in your life. You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime, and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end, you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines. For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough)--they are experiences. For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning. You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighbourhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings you had long seen coming; to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained, to parents whom you had to hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn't pick it up (it was a joy meant for somebody else--); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quiet, restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along overhead and went flying with all the stars,--and it is still not enough to be able to think of all that. You must have memories of many nights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of women screaming in labor, and of light, pale, sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again. But you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and scattered noises. And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves-- only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them."

--- from Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer M. Rilke.

What it is

2008-03-14T08:44:00.018-04:00

So i've been doing this for a while now. And after all the cursing and deleting, i still find it necessary to maintain a blog, even if merely nominal.

So lately, i've been wondering if eventually everything that delights the human consciousness tends to necessarily turn into something you're bored of; when you're uhm, impassioned by something, you're at it for a while, then it sort of seeps into your general character and you're pretty soon indifferent to it. meaning that how many rich experiences you've had is a function of how many times you've been bored to death out of yourself enough to seek enchantment elsewhere. Its hard not to sympathize, then, with the classic Ulysses old age angst. If human personality is such, i must admit, it is a bleak, bleak prospect. But I’m also beginning to rather resent the inertia with which time passes by, a bit too cruelly steadfast, like that of a slimy mountain river rushing past your foot, not running out exactly, but giving you the fear that you’ll soon only be left with the dregs of everything it can offer. So everything important in your life gets about a couple of weeks' time to be done. You can't take your time in thinking for a term paper or working out a relationship problem, there's really no time to stall. You have to prioritize and make some people secondary if you must. Somehow, in the making of everything that you should, you lose sight of everything that you want.

Aanyway. Blogs, yes. Why.

To tell people what i think? Let me explain. I'm a terribly affected person, and there's precious little I've been able to do about it. It's not that I'm pretentious or anything, but that I'm hypersensitive to judgment or the prospect of judgment, so I don't know man, I just get very, very weird for a while, until I can trust the person or something. I'm too diffident, but I hate showing that I'm diffident. And I'm way incoherent. But In my defense, if it is one, it's a family thing. And this is crippling only because I really love talking to people. Hard as it may seem, I'm not at all unsocial. Or as Indians like to say, 'reserved'. I just have some basic trust issues which some erudite developmental psychologist will easily explain away. You see my point? People are crappy, man. They're pretentious, they're unintelligent and boring, they're judgmental yada yada yada. You really can't do without them. If you think you can, you're kidding yourself. I, for one, would totally go insane if I couldn't have a conversation. Not to say that we're all needy creatures sustaining ourselves off each other, but yeah.. So. The first few times I blogged, was also when, albeit anonymously, all of this performance anxiety eased down a bit. And then, a lot more. At the risk of sounding really lame, I could for once, talk (or write), without being all nervous and fidgety, and this parallel space sort of eased life out for me. Socializing isn't too hard at all. Most people, who for some reason think I'm smarter than they are, sometimes even warm up to what they think is standoffishness on my part. But, you see, I have no patience for random conversation. It has to be smart and stimulating and fun and deep. And most I meet don't figure here. If they do, I'm too scared to talk anyway (Ouch, but it was only fair to complete it). It both surprises and amuses me that I am a lot more popular than i've any right to be, the jerk and nutcase that I most invariably am. But yes, really now. My point.

So. It's really hard to think up a convincing reason for a new blog. What I really think about has never figured on the internet, no. I like to really talk every now and then, but alcohol generally satisfies that need. I don't blog for validation, no. I'm real lousy at writing and not gullible enough to seek or believe in more flattering opinion. And It's just not fun anymore to blog about what amuses me; I guess I've begun to take myself too seriously for that. and inclined as one might be to think, no its not that i currently have no life. People, I can't live without. But blogs are not meant for that. And I certainly don't believe that you need to study one another to be friends and therefore please read my blog for insights into the nuances of my character, no. Most of my closest make no pretense in being interested in reading this, So. Also, I think it's really time, since we're all out of high school anyway, to get over the iloveyoubecauseyouunderstandmeboohoo stuff.

Hmm. I guess, on one front, it's just a question of habit. Writing always helps, and something as simple as being able to articulate or accurately describe that one emotion can help deal with a lot of unwanted stuff sometimes. But more importantly, it is really and sadly, my best yet way of expression. Comes quite naturally enough, and nobody's looking at me.

And it is important, i think. So I'm rather distressed by the amount I've changed since getting to CIEFL. No really. I'm starting to get so disdainful and disbelieving of human nature, it creeps me out. And all the drinking and the not doing right by my skin and health! I worry myself, I do. I don't want to deal with a Plathian Mirror or some such monster this soon. I don't believe I'm ready to take on a full throttle existential crisis, No Sir. Not that a simple blog will help, but it will do what it can. It used to make me happy, I think. I rather miss those days of impassioned commie rants and being totally enlivened by reading something eloquent, naïve as it were. I've a feeling I've left something crucial back there, and I want to try and get it back. Life is so teasing, you never get what you want, but it is still somehow better to die than to sap away into a state of indifference. My writing may not 'fix me', but i guess it can try.

And that is it for today. General sorries about the word dump. I'll do better soon, promise.

Addendum: i have been called a hypochondriac before, yes.