so I was wrong. some years ago when I was questioning the boundaries of a life, as separate from those of the lives that produced it. there is a dividing line, I think I understand better now... every individual life has its own inherited genome, a mixture from those of it's parents. even before the umbilical cord is cut, the child is a person different from it's mother. the more I learn, the cooler it all gets. fascinating really.

fame, popularity, impact, influence, and then memory.

the first two are not perfectly correlated with the latter two. and of course, memory is fallible. and trends.

its amazing how many important people were barely known for what they were doing while they were alive. their works went ignored or forgotten until after their deaths. and posthumously they become legends.

and their stories of the stories they unraveled are brought to you and me across eons by some third person. inherited tales.

I'm reading a fascinating book
https://www.amazon.com/Gene-Intimate-History-Siddhartha-Mukherjee/dp/147673352X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510146369&sr=8-1&keywords=the+gene

I've almost just begun, so its too early to attempt anything like a review. but I'm glued, even in a yellow green auto in delhi's poisonous (so-claimed) november air; it keeps me reading on my kindle, and i smile while i take in the interwoven stories, the images created of the people who brought meaning to the idea of heredity. and i shuffle through the contents of my bag because i must write down some words from it. in a scribbly scrawly hand as i jump over potholes and careen dangerously close to other honking unruly automobiles...

"one's imagination must fill very wide blanks" - Charles Darwin

"how small a thought it takes to fill a whole life" - Ludwig Wittgenstein

... inspiration. perspective. meaning in the trivial. i look at people around me. what fills their lives? as they seem oblivious to the question.

photopost

the weather. the poor. the curious neighbors. potholes. social inequalities. family overload. some things cannot be clicked. reverse culture shock.

if change is healthy, how and why do you unravel growth?

I was very sweet to Peter, from Bangalore just now. I used to get annoyed when my calls as a customer were answered by a desi voice affecting an accent and missing the nuances in my problem because of a lack of translation of context. but today I smiled, was patient with him, overlooked his difficulty in understanding my address, put myself in his shoes for a moment, put myself in Bangalore's traffic for a minute and gave him a concession for that. Indians deserve a break if they have to deal with other Indians every waking moment of their daily lives.

but no, I wasn't being nice. If you're leaving a place, or have left and don't plan on coming back, you can be honest and brutal with what you think of it and of them. but now I'll be at their mercy again. I have been disenfranchised.

is there a word, an emotion, that implies wanting to flee one's country because one cannot stand one's people.

there are two kinds of Indians in America. those who are just people, like people from any other country, and those who underline their Indian-ness.

I met a nine-yr-old American born of Indian parents, whose idea of American food was a Subway sandwich. she was ignorant even to the name 'Subway' while she tried explaining why she loved Indian food because the alternative - American food - was too bland for her. I asked her what American food she was talking about, "was it a pizza, a burger?". She was blank on that and her parent had to fill that in for me. I haven't been able to get that conversation out of my mind.

its almost like she was a different person, she who drove my car across this country. bits of what she saw come back now and then, when I close my eyes, or look at the pictures. or like last night when I was talking in my dream to him, about how I would take him across the lands in four more days.

I was she who panicked and cried and made an SOS call to him, believing it was beyond her just the night before the second leg of travel.

its difficult to be contained in this lil apartment after spending days out on the road under the vast skies.

I used to live there nearly 30 yrs ago. and was skyping with my parents today, while they visited the place. and the people. everything seems to have fossilized in that place. but of course so much time has passed. most of those same people, I used to know them so well then, they were the bulk of the world I knew in those yrs. now some have passed away, some others moved like I have, and those that stayed have grown older, and have grown branches - families of their own, kids who remind me of my childhood, of how full of hope, and how ignorant childhood in small town India is. his/her life can go anywhere from there, or can remain there. anything is possible. makes you wonder, childhood is so full of expectations, those small playful moments, in fact, waiting, biding time, choosing one of the many paths of life.

I've been very curious. asking my parents about how things are there. asking my sister, who went on a much shorter visit, and is now back home, her home, in a city which itself reeks of my past. feels a level lower than where I am now. and this place that I'm talking about, feels further removed, a lower level still. like in video games, you pass a level never to go back. unless you die out and have to re-start, all over again. going back is defeat, in a strange never-mentioned way. no one proclaimed it be so. but your heart tells you that.

but I am defeated. and maybe in this defeat is a cloaked blessing.

I wish, in ridding myself of all my grime, I hadn't come away loathing my origins. I wish I could still connect. cos there are some I left behind I would want to care about. I carry that guilt. without knowing how I could have done it differently. yes, I would have betrayed and ignored again, if it came to it. don't demand too much from me, whether you are a place or a people; I often am blind to it, and when I see I rudely refuse. I was taught to be self sufficient, although I have myself been saved and rescued many times. but I ditch any call for help, always finding the sound of it a burden or a taken-for-granted-ness. I am not apologizing, I wish I were.

the past. was it those stone floors and pillars. those corridors where we invented, mimicked, told tales, grew taller, ran about, learned how to use our legs. or was it the people. those who died. and those who are alive, for god knows how much longer. cycles. memory. complaints, of course complaints. why wasn't everything perfect. if only they had done this or not done that. blaming circumstances, and the people, for what I know was (is) my lack of generosity, my lack of gratitude. I was never a generous person, was never grateful. but I do want to go back. to those last words exchanged. where we left a conversation, it must have grown so much, what does it say now? what and who are you? are you happy? do you hope? do you want to see all that I have? do you want to show me and share with me what I missed? before one of us dies? I thought it was sacrilege your confidence then, in this world being godless. I thought it was over-confidence your sacrilege then. do you want to sit down and listen to mine now? do you agree, or have you changed?

sometime later this year, it will be 10 yrs since I created this blog and started scrawling stuff here for posterity. or did I do it to enable imagining myself as a writer, to start off a quiet dream? even I cannot answer that anymore, I don't remember. probably both. probably more the latter.

but over time its taken on quite a different role, much of the time. its become my space to argue with myself, to spell things out to myself. myself. myself.

that's probably also cos I lost all my audience. or since then. cos one thing is for sure, although I self elevate myself to being this talented exceptional person in my head, I am very shy about exhibition. this blog gave me the cover of anonymity that I needed to experiment with showing the world what I wrote or drew. of course, I had to tell that one person then. he was the only one who knew I was writing here. and then I let one more person in - to boast while still feeling shy? I don't know. maybe also cos I was reading hers then and I felt it was unfair this one-sided sharing of secrets. and then another person found out, a lil by accident. but that was it. that stopped there. and anyone else who came here was a stranger to me outside of these white pages. a couple of them became regulars too. but now, now they have all gone. left me here alone, to dig in deeper into myself, to self-censure, to self-pity, to self-aggrandizement; and also to why I called this 'tree house' in the first place - to this secret hiding hole of mine, from where I could shit down onto the world when I so wanted to. without being seen.

I've always been drawn to writers using the people in their lives for their stories. also comedians. it smelt of betrayal, of cowardice, and yet strangely was the bravest thing I could never do. not unless under cover.

for starters, how do I ever write about the little moments of embarrassment my people cause me time and again. of moments when I have steered away or have wished to disown my loved ones, simply because I was embarrassed by their small behavioral oddities. or by their large gaping weaknesses.

nah, I still can't do it.

there's this hard topic to try writing about - self-assessment. I used to think I had some talent with moving my pencil to capture an image. copied images; from photos or life or others' drawings.

this last weekend I saw a lot of skilled people's works. at an outing with them. my sketch was hardly visible, almost childish, not worth looking at, in comparison. since that day I've been turning the pages of my old sketchbooks, wondering if I never had anything.

how does one know? how can one tell?

was I lying to myself all these years? or am I trying to fit myself into the medium of others?

even now I do like my old sketches... and even some of my newer ones. is it just my outdoor stuff that's not good? or was it just this weekend?

how can one tell? esp. when friends and family feign appreciation. when one's own assessment is so biased.

the same in many ways, goes for my aspiring-academic work as well. and maybe also for my writings here, on this very blog.

like a friend used the words 'subjective' and 'objective' to describe academic criticism.

how does one tell?

I have ignored you, my blog. and I just read two lines of some memoir-like-writing that gave me a sudden strong pang of nostalgia for my own. life happened while I was away.

its creepy how signs and symbols exist in my life. an out of nowhere flashback comes, only as a precursor to another end. I kept telling myself not to wish for something. to fear the wish coming true. and here it is. no more the certainty that was making me complacent. here I go, all over again. wish I had made this choice rather than be blown again.

I wonder why everyone else is so worried about my lost job. guess, I really was expecting this, despite appearing not to, cos people didn't think it would happen. like the Hiccam's dictum, or maybe just the occam's razor. sometimes two opposites can describe a situation, cos you don't know which side you were on.

when I was younger, my friendships and niceness would wear off in a place with time, such that by the time it was time to leave I was more than relieved; almost dying to go. but the last few places I have left, I either never warmed up to them at all, or didn't want to leave. unlike all that, here, socially and personally, I was just warming up. professionally, I think I was gathering dust. but what now?

some people become symbols after they are no more. some couples do too; the idea of each fighting and loving the idea of the other. merging and standing out with the other. multiple symbols, co-intersecting, bouncing off.

Plath and Hughes are one example.

Kahlo and Rivera another.

ironically, for both, the woman's memory, her symbolism, somewhat overshadows the man's. (aside: we have been made to believe there are two genders in humans; we are wrong; there are at least three and maybe a spectrum).

ironically also, Plath and Kahlo are somewhat opposites of each other. Plath alive in body but tragically seeking and feeling death in her mind; Kahlo so tragically half-dead and propped up in body but so ambitious and craving to fly in her dreams.

tragic. both symbols of feminism.

Kahlo's story made me want to cry. her stoicism, her detailed efforts at hiding her disabilities alongwith her frankness about her nude body, her exasperated fretting and hopeless despair on her inability to procreate. Frida and Rivera's story hits you with a harsh reminder of the smallness of us all, our vulnerabilities, our being at the mercy of nature and of our mistakes (which is nature again), of our wholesome imperfections, of erring and forgiving, of the hopelessness of fidelity, of the desire and the passion to live and to create, and of course of the beauty of curiosity and acceptance and of a continuous chiseling away at ourselves; because we each leave at least one sculpture in this world - that of ourselves and the symbols we will be used for, if ever remembered.



notes: Kahlo painted from a wheelchair, and sometimes lying down on bed with an easel that propped up above her.
Rivera had an affair with her sister, friend, and mentor.
They divorced for a year, only to remarry again.
My mood right now also influenced by the raw grief in this:
http://www.npr.org/2017/03/16/520013269/first-listen-mount-eerie-a-crow-looked-at-me

bubble tea is the 'f$%# the world' drink for a grown up on a lunch out from work. it comes with a free carry-to-work game of catching black balls and pulling at them with a straw. alongwith a hearty meal with some sea animals whose names are unknown and therefore unacknowledged.

one of those days

got some cool books I'd been looking for, from a hidden bookstore in that far-away city, while doing that rare - travel alone - thing. the owner even looked like the sort of guy I would have hit on (I probably did flirt a bit, or at the very least made some totally unnecessary conversation), if I weren't boringly married and faithful, and yes, the thought did cross my mind right then, given I was there exactly one more night on my own at a tucked-away hotel, the address to which no one knew right then. hah!

this shop in fact had one row peppered with author-signed copies, had no one bothering to dust the orphaned second-hands they must have procured from various sources, and had one of the two guys writing out this chalk-message on a lil blackboard. It took me some time to figure out what it meant, as I had been cut off from the yelling and shouting of Indian news on tv for about a week thanks to the traveling with family and alone. Modi was supposed to address the nation that evening, and the message was prescient about what he would say. I teased the owner a bit by giving him crisp fresh Modi currency notes.

today, strangely, I want to be back on those streets, not just in blore but in delhi and in kochi.

the sun still shines the same. its still peaceful and calm outside. birds chirping, kids and parents fetching or being fetched from school. still those lil worries frowning brows. has my kid eaten? did he poop? did she make friends? is she learning or is she slow? how much time do I have before I must get back to work? when is the next deadline? ...

in the recent very recent past, two mornings I have been stunned with the normalcy of the world around me, with the apathy that results from the practical attending to the minute details of a daily routine. life must go on, the living must worry about inconsequential details because for now, we are safe, we are spared the destabilizing effects of world politics.

there are those that don't understand. and then those that don't care enough. also those, who avert themselves from uncomfortable information. and those who wonder, and keep wondering, what is their role in this, in what led to this and where it will go. and those who actually contribute in ways that have real, immediate or long term effects. those who make the situation worse, knowingly or unknowingly, passively or actively, by saying and doing, or by keeping silent. and those of course, who belong to many or all of these categories together. those who shout themselves hoarse, coming out in solidarity with the destabilized, and those amongt these who congratulate themselves for their voices, and as a result award themselves a break from any real action.

and those who have troubled dreams, feel and allow themselves to feel helpless, crave for the golden sun to calm their minds because that's all they can hope for. and wonder if they are using this as an excuse to feign inability to work, on their daily routine, their weekly routine.

I have already become a foreigner to my own country. A foreigner who needs no translation, though. I find myself sleeping at places full of white tourists and India-wannabes; find myself dressed more like them in just bought colorful scarves and shapeless harem pants while the locals aspire toward the western garb that we try to leave behind at home; find myself gravitating toward eating holes that offer a solace to foreign palates or rundown bookstores that hide dusty Indian pages. I feel at home in places where there are other single foreign women travelers sleeping behind neighboring doors. But I also have stories of a decade ago when I was a local. Of when I had no clue who I was, and now that I think I know better, my identity is much more confused.

I’ve lost a chunk of sentimentality, a huge load of attachment and sense of duty, and now I feel guilty for having made myself foreign, so alien, so heartless.

At the same time, cursed by a beggar child, indifferent to the curse but with its memory lingering, I know and recognize this place but feel disappointed in it.

If not for the people, I would not come again.