i'm upset and when i'm upset i write these good cathartic posts. what is good, and who is to decide that anyway. especially when i'm not blogging for sale and i'm not requesting consumer approval.

so this post is about overbearing women. the kind who love making you squirm in your seat because they disapprove of you. the kind who pointedly teach you that the right way to take group photos is to get people's feet in(?!). so you get the picture. i mean, come on woman. grow out of it now. relax a little. let go a little. learn to cherish life. be a little less step-mother-ly.

the kind who tell you that it's your fault you cannot block the light streaming in from one side. i mean, one would have thought the cleverer and easier way to do this would be to locate the group such that light does not stream in. anyway, let this post not turn into one about the art(lessness) of taking group photos... so these women are the kinds who hold grudges for years. who thrive on baseless fame and rude authority and evil sarcasm. and who train people around themselves to derive humor at the expense of other people, always. no joke of theirs would be funny if someone were not made to look funny.

who genuinely regard it as praise when someone tells them they are "a publishing machine". and will you believe it that the person who said this also meant it sincerely as a compliment!! maybe i'm totally missing the point here or maybe i'd be totally guilty of agreeing with the comment only if it was an insult.

the weird thing is these are the women one does not usually care tuppence for. and one neither likes nor respects them to value their opinion on anything. the kind i could happily push off a cliff some dark evening if i had the chance, and later seriously forget all about it. she is so immaterial to my life. and yet these are the people who can often severely hurt you, upset you, arouse in you such strong hatred for them that you wonder why you're having any kind of strong feelings for her at all. she isn't worth this. she isn't worth a post on my blog. and yet here's to you C.. may you hold that grudge against me till your last day alive. i'm through with you. i wash my hands off of you. its a true farewell. and i do hope i don't see you ever again.

and the weather reflects my moods. so often. when i'm bursting with emotion it turns to torrid rain. when i don't know where i'm headed, or who i am, half the night sky was dark purple grey. and half was clear and light. weightless. the purple grey slowly advanced to conquer the sky. but it took all night. it knocked on my window with very slight rain. telling me something. echoing something within me. it did not sleep either. nor did it fall.

and since morning its been overcast and waiting. intermittently letting off what's beyond what it can hold. and now and then it smiled with some sunshine. it may look like calm, but its indecision. its lost. its tired. its helpless.

morning

what do people mean by "sleep over it"? why do some hours of darkness and semi(or un)-consciousness make a difference? does my mind lose some continuity in those hours? is every morning really a new beginning? what is with it???

or maybe its dreams, those you remember and those you don't and those that leave you just with random visions that make sense. that communicate to this you, this awake you. communication from somewhere deep within yourself, somewhere far away beyond your control, beyond regular access. or maybe i'm reading too much into this. maybe nights just hypnotize the mind into a belief of an end. and when the eyes re-open they search for a lead, for a cue, for a push to a start.

"cloudless every day you fall
upon my waking eyes
inviting and inciting me to rise.
and through the window in the wall
come streaming in on sunlight wings
a million bright ambassadors of morning.."

trust and fidelity are not constrained to the context of sex. for the nth time the realization dawns.

i was right, it was inertia. and like everything else it comes to an end.

found him right in front of my apartment in the morning sun at 7:30AM. I despise summer in this place, but sometimes I have to admit, it does have a surprising charm.

touch wood

being human, i often notice the green grass far away. often think some ppl have had all the goodies. but once in a while, some stories heard, make me stop and think. and smile and treasure the people i've known. the people i have in my life. not quantity but quality. the ones who make you close your eyes and smile and send a quiet thanks to the (questionable) creator.

coming from small towns and segregated gender-wise from society my age, in general till teen age and even after, i always had trouble with friendships with the opposite sex. was all fun and comfort with a crowd but could never really single out a guy and be real friends alone. till the time that it happened and the friend insisted he was something more. i let him have his way cos even i was having trouble stopping him there.

since then men ceased to be 'the opposite sex' to me. it was sex that became irrelevant in that phrase with anyone else, therefore rendering the phrase useless. men were people, just like women were..? not quite, though. they are often easier companions and conversationalists than the fairer sex. so now i had the friends i had never been comfortable to have had before. and yet there was a limit to the intimacy and the exclusivity of such friendships. they were still better in crowds, although not impossible alone. the one or two who were thick and good alone, often made me feel guilty imagining they were falling for me. and there must have been something to suggest this to my imagination. and QED, because these don't last. distances usually kill these because it gives the guy the opportunity to rid himself of the habit of me.

but once in a lifetime does a friend like you come along. and it doesn't get affected by how long it will last. not even when while you decide on that one wish to use when blowing that candle in front of you, you look me in the eye and give me the illusion that you are wishing for us to be known to each other forever. a friendship like yours which illustrates the true meaning of Platonic-ism: not the non-existence of attraction, but rather the conscious realization that there is something higher than sex here which can at no cost be sacrificed to physical attraction. a super-physical connection of being known through aeons. an empathy, a tenderness, a comfort, a take-for-grantedness, like "i am bored and i hate the world, so i walked in here" and "i always have time for you". and the affectionate teasing like "you are spending the only 15 mins you have free in the day with me, i am honored".

not everyone gets what i have. all that i have..

kalyuga

the problem with India is that people are comfortable living below their moral ideals. that they comfortably look into the mirrors everyday without looking themselves in the eyes. its not just the politicians, because they are just mirrors reflecting the general people of the country. in fact they are the general people of the country. the problem is them just as it is us, you me, our parents, all of us. and its an old problem. and its hard to accept, because there has always been denial against it. and for those some who admit to it, there's been hope against it...

Mulk Raj Anand in 1975 quoted a judge regarding an inquiry into the riots in Bhiwandi, Jalgaon, and Mahad (Maharashtra)

"It was a lonely, arduous and weary journey through a land of hatred and violence, of prejudice and perjury. The encounters on the way were with men without compassion, lusting for the blood of their fellowmen, with politicians who traficked in communal hatred and religious fanaticism, with local leaders who sought power by sowing disunity and bitterness, with police officers and policemen who were unworthy of their uniform, with investigating officers without honour, and without scruples, with men committed to falsehood and wedded to fraud and with dealers in mayhem and murder."

and then MRA comments on above quote with "That even one man speaks like this, encourages one to hope."

the problem with India is that people are wedded either to falsehood, or to hope. too many of us survive on threadbare hope, hope without action, threadbare enough to be unable to support so many of us..

what does it mean for a person to choose a partner. to what degree does the person resign himself from the world in doing so. to what degree does the entire world blur before this chosen person. how mindless can the plunge into a relationship be such that the body loses control, loses its sense of orientation, loses its sense of being. such that there is no rising back again. such that there is no u-turn. the world has faded into semi-oblivion, and the person has surrendered to the pull (and hold) of a new magnetism, a new axis. is now a powerless atom in a magnetic field and has totally let go. and what if the partner still has control, still has a will, still has a mind, still has a world.

in yoga class yday the instructor asked us if we could lay on our backs and raise our legs up and then slowly rotate them to come above our head such that the feet touched the mat behind the head. and she said something very important. make sure you don't push yourself beyond where you can go. make sure you don't lose your sense of orientation, your sense of where and in what position you are with respect to the ground... its a deep thought. the fear of falling does not scare one as much as the panic of not knowing how one is oriented, how one is positioned. only when one knows that, can one soften the fall, or pick oneself up successfully after a fall. only when one knows that, does one have any control. without the knowledge of which way the certainty of earth lies, one is utterly lost. and that's why the panic. it gives one a stricken feeling of hopelessness, of extreme vulnerability, of being powerless.

yday for the first time i realized i could do it. that i could actually feel the ground beneath my feet, above my head. that so far i panicked only because my mind thought it was contrary to what it had always known - the head above the ground beneath my feet.

but its not always so simple to be conscious of one's orientation with respect to the force before which one is futile.

birds of a color...

the world is surprisingly clan-nish even today. its not only the bongs and the chinese who remain glued together no matter where in the world they are and no matter how hybrid a society they live in, its practically everybody.

am i the only who is annoyed by an attitude of - you and i are indians, so we should be familiar. even the random indian 'uncles' i bump into at airports, on campus (assuming they are profs), in conferences, etc. think i am obliged to converse with them because i share their home country. you can almost see a sense of adopted paternal/patriotic pride in their eyes and faces as i answer in reply to their inquisitiveness that i am a phd student....??!!!

and today even the hispanics! lord the save the mingling world where i thought the word 'foreign' was losing its meaning (copyright: United airlines). a room full of hispanic student-friends (colombian & mexican; at least they have a liberally large clan = all spanish speakers) proudly tell us how they are so different from the rest of 'us'. mind you, they didn't realize they were differentiating themselves from anyone. all they were trying to explain was that "throughout most hispanic states, people trust their friends (& strangers) more than their family (!!!), because one does not choose one's family but does so, one's friends". and one person goes "because we know that if we extend help to family (one finger), they will grab our entire arms. so hispanics don't stand by and for their families". another goes, "in fact, once hispanics move to the US, they cut off ties from those left behind so that they are not obliged to help them". clap, clap, clap. i'm so glad you guys all agree on that so proudly. while 'us'= (literally the non-friends in the audience) = the lone chinese, the lone brown south asian me, and the few americans, look around and scratch our brains to understand this...

so the hispanics are different from us. and they don't stick by their clans. and yet the room is full of hispanics because one of them has a dissertation defence on. they really do stick by their friends. or maybe they just stick by their own kind who have managed to migrate into this land of plenty. wow. i'm becoming racist, in that i do not like the races who do not not racially segregate.

ok so I'm this Indian girl brought up in a respectable family. what does that mean?
it just means that I have these subtle perceptions ingrained within me, those that are difficult for me to shed, even willfully. here is a short list:


1. a woman's breasts are to be kept hidden as is a majority of the female body

2. sex is for after marriage

3. some things (those above included) are not to be talked about

4. shame is easy to gain and impossible to be rid off

5. women are more vulnerable to shame than men

6. 'money' is an embarrassing topic of conversation


its not an exhaustive list. but it serves the intended purpose of communicating an honest picture of who I was made to be, and much of who I still remain, despite numerous self-taught ideas and behavior that conflict with the above list.

so what is this post about? its an effort at an honest confession of failure to be what I'd like to be. the ideas passed onto one (even without conversation) in one's early years, form the basic sculpture of one's behavior, if not of one's thought. even today, I'm uncomfortable with plunging necklines, not just my own but of other women I'm trying to talk to. even today if you catch me sleeping on my side (soundly), you would notice my arms crossed across my shoulders to hide myself. there have been occasions when I've either lied or kept the truth from my parents and of those I am almost guiltless. even today I think honesty is not the best policy with them, for their own good (and this is a deep belief, not an excuse). even today when I'm asked to relax and lay still and free at the end of my yoga class, I cannot un-tense my muscles. I am conscious, awake, aware, alert. prepared to hide.

some lines from Swift's 'Cadenus and Vanessa'

That women were not worth the wooing,
And that, unless the sex would mend,
The race of lovers soon must end)—
She was at Lord knows what expense
To form a nymph of wit and sense,
A model for her sex design'd,
Who never could one lover find.
She saw her favour was misplaced;
The fellows had a wretched taste;
She needs must tell them to their face,
They were a stupid, senseless race:
And, were she to begin again,
She'd study to reform the men;
Or add some grains of folly more
To women, than they had before,
To put them on an equal foot;
And this, or nothing else, would do't.
This might their mutual fancy strike;
Since every being loves its like.

light years away

and one day you shall leave them all behind. you will have become alien to them all and they to you. and you keep growing, in and out of people. to the point, where there's noone you connect with. is that when you start growing inward? and its not necessarily bad, its stagnation that's bad.

and adaptation and reconstructive memory are both my boons and curses. i can objectively remember what was, and know for sure that its no more.

genes?

research has shown that identical twins separated at birth and brought up away from each other still remain shockingly similar in their personality, choices, and response to situations. so its hereditary that seems to mould them more than their environment.

but what about siblings sharing parents and their environment? no pair of siblings ever resemble each other, whether its their preferences of activities, their choice and habit of food (i.e. once they are on their own and get to choose), their emotional composition, or anything else. what's going on here? why does every human couple produce such a variety of babies? where do the genes evaporate then? in fact, you can expect any pair of siblings to be as different from each other as is possible to be, growing up together.

if you've heard about the Bengali film writer and director Q and are trying to get hold of his movie 'Gandu', I have better advice for you. fget Gandu (which is probably his wet nightmare on screen) and try getting hold of another film by him 'Love in India'. its not really a movie, and yet its more than a documentary. its more like his thesis, his personal soul searching for the meaning of love and sexuality in India; today, yesterday, and aeons ago. he travels far and wide within the country to find the logic, the meaning, the philosophy to sex. and compare it with how Indians today (mis)understand, ignore, and hide, sex.

watching it made me feel sorry for the country. it is difficult to describe all that he has successfully conveyed through the film. its simply very honest. and although he gets opinionated at times, and you may not agree with all his opinions, you cannot ignore the reality in them, and that they apply to many, sorry most, Indians today.

i don't believe in marriage, just like the filmmaker does not. and yet i'm glad i married for love. if marriage is such a disillusion, then i have the guts to marry for love, and challenge my love with marriage. does that sound strange? strange to me are his friend's words in the film - that sex is for before marriage, which itself is just a compromise, a duty, and after marriage sex comes in through extramarital affairs. that that is why Krishna & Rukmini are not a celebrated couple, but Krishna and Radha are the epitome of love and sex.

its sad that we look for excuses in our mythology for our warped ideas, while we leave the beauty and the honesty in those stories, unpracticed in our lives.

today for the first time, after watching his film, i honestly acknowledged to myself that getting out of the country, coming so far away has liberated me in a way. i understand myself better, i know myself better and i acknowledge what i know much more easily. i can now judge Indian misconceptions about sexuality without feeling like a victim trapped in them.

its astounding that most Indians haven't ever seen their parents kiss. that most feel really awkward talking about sex, even marital sex. and abhor the idea of oral sex. its sad that India teaches her women to be ashamed of their sexuality, to keep it well covered, as if it were a weakness she was born with. a weakness that is better protected if the world doesn't know about it.

there's just one thing the film misses out. it digs the legend of Radha-Krishna's illicit love beautifully, but does not even talk about Shiv-Parvati, about the only married (to each other) lovers in Indian mythology who define sexual relations, whose union has been made immortal in the lingam. long ago, someone told me this, that when you bless a married couple, you don't bless them to be like Ram-Sita, you'd rather bless them to be like Shiv-Parvati. and to think of the legend about why the lingam is worshipped - it was actually a curse on Shiv to be remembered by his genitals, by the annoyed sage Bhrigu who was kept waiting while Shiv-Parvati were busy making love.

only an epidemic of honesty can eradicate sexual hypocrisy from India.

a man is defined by the words he quotes in his major inquiries in life and science. and by his family and the love or hatred or memory or kinship that he feels for them. and by his childhood and what he shared with his siblings. and how he preserves some of that as he grows up and moderates the others, erasing or retaining in memory all the while. by his friends, not just those who played and bled with him, but also those he could die for. those he could be silent with.

a man is defined by the woman he loves and she by him. and each is defined by the music they hear...

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." - Henry David Thoreau

its not strange to find meaning in the company of strangers. sometimes even when family does not suffice. but beautiful strangers are rare in the world. beautiful people are rare in the world. and most have buried or strangled their beauty in the folds of their private lives. those eyes are dead. those smiles are fake. they will never be true enough to obliterate the need for words, for time, for acquaintanceship.

corridors of sun-flies

its rare that we notice strange patterns in the behavior of little inconsequential winged insects. some days ago i heard this TED talk about how this random normal bird-lover living in Maldives noticed year after year the sudden swarm of dragonflies flying at a particular time of the year. and by questioning that he discovered the globetrotter dragonflies that fly back and forth the Arabian Sea with the monsoon winds.

as one thing leads to another, since then i've been noticing these really tiny flying things that i now like to call sun-flies. i notice these insects everyday in the hours of the sun swarming around in large gangs flying almost like electrons in a given cloud of space. they don't ever fly out of the limits of these cloud-like spaces despite a continuous flurry of wings and movement within. its amazing to watch one of these clouds, dynamic within and static in its spatial relationship with the outside. and each of these clouds surprisingly, is located exactly at the same spot at exactly the level of my face, every single day. not just that, each of these clouds is always basking in the sun and is in the middle of a pedestrian cemented path. such that i am always walking into these. and if that's not amazing enough, each of these swarms always covers half the air-width of the footpath, almost consciously leaving space for a human head to pass neighborly-by without scissoring the cloud. and yet if i am not mindful of them, my head walks straight into the cloud. and this, when the entire width of the path is equally sunny.

anyone else seen them??

being a woman feels special. in a self-treasured way. in a soft, cradled, pampered way. and i see that reflected in women from all over the world. its extra delicate in the east though. what does it mean to be a woman? its like having a universe of naive, vulnerable, innocent beauty within oneself. something that can be destroyed with the least intent. something that can be inspired with the least intent. the potential for the most gentle, the most valiant, the most loving of all human expressions. or the most vicious, the most dangerous, the most cruel...

I claim to have found the cause of the decline of America. the youth, the typical undergrads!!! if adult America is made up of this material then its no wonder that nothing is moving right. and if I am right, then the decline has only just begun because all these obnoxious 20-somethings have still to grow up into adults and worsen the prophetic trajectory...

and you can't really blame them. most of the youth of America are full of some snobbish superiority. of being American, of having their parents splurge money, of having more than they ever felt the need for. of never being answerable to anyone. of never failing. of never knowing that they were wrong. that they are wrong, in how they view the world below themselves. in how they refuse to budge their asses.

there's something else. Americans have this misconception that competition in this country is the toughest in the world, and they extend that to college competition among undergrads. how it makes me pitifully shake my head because these immature kids cannot even comprehend what tough competition means. for them to have been born in this country implies they are the best. and they want to be rewarded for it every now and then without them bothering to shed a drop of sweat. "sweat? that's dirty, that's for the underdeveloped world. we are the born-with-silver-spoons-in our mouths. S&P has no right to downgrade us! we are golden kids because we are Americans. and so far that's all we are. American spoilt-brats whose parents have money. who cares for when they don't. there's always credit. we are the champions. even if all we do is recognize this fact and eat & watch TV and grow tires of flab. as for college, professors are paid to give us 'A's. deadlines, what are those? deadlines are supposed to adjust after us. failure, that's impossible. grades are supposed to curve keeping us at the top. we all deserve 'A's. don't you get it?".

don't you get it? I pity their parents, for when they were like them, and for now.

i like Fall much better than Spring, especially here, where dying leaves far overshadow flowers in their variety and color. the Fall sky asserts its blue-ness so strongly, the air turns to a reminder of winter, and the sun drips honey onto your skin and is all sweetness and yummy-ness.

Spring in Dallas has a weak character. in the beginning its like a shadow of the gone winter. and then even before it has realized its newness, it bursts in a heated self-implosion into the all consuming summer.

Fall on the other hand melts slowly, deliciously into the barrenness and snow of the next season...