I have a strong sense of intuition. even other ppl have said this to me, ppl who know me well and have heard me a lot. these days I'm feeling like I also have some premonition. kinda scares me that. 

but now in hindsight I wonder if those falls on my runs were a warning for what lay ahead (I fell once more, soon after buying new shoes). I also remember telling him around that same time that almost every year the coming winter encourages me cos I do look forward to these few months of not continuous sweating but this year it felt strangely dark and depressing. 

even my plants are dying one by one, some red tinier-than-ants-insects feeding on the spotted croton.

there are my memories, 

and there are his, 

and they don't often align. 

and half our life, 

spent together

is a lil hollowed out.

even though I dream his memories now

and there is no 'truth'

only what we manage to construct together,

feeding each other's version

in and out back and forth,

sometimes losing touch of the boundaries

between us and the walls within.

it's hard to explain. I've read a decent bit about mental illness, I've seen friends who refuse to get help and family some of who have been blurred from being due to medication. I've always found the topic captivating, dark yes and scary yes, but enigmatic and mysterious. I've met ppl who almost brag of their struggles and those who are surprisingly open and matter of fact about it. There was also this girl once in hostel I was getting friendly with and then one late afternoon in her room (very dark I don't know why) she told me things about her family and childhood and violence which spooked me enough to avoid talking to her after that. Ive wondered many times since then if I could've helped her and I didn't. But what I feel often when I think back is not guilt but a strong sense of self preservation. 

In a similar way I have avoided some family members because I couldn't bare to see or hear them in their state of being. Sometimes it's very hard, you don't want to hurt them in the slightest but that means allowing them to bruise you quite a lot. 

And now, now I want to read a lot more about it. I remember that time I ate that spiked chocolate on a not great day, almost dehydrated and tired, and how it felt like my mind had gone across. That was soon after reading Plath's Bell Jar. Since then I've been ever more curious, of coourse because I crossed that line back in my mind but the fact that there was a line, right there, made it all too real. 

Now I want to study it professionally I think. It's becoming more and more irresistible. And these words from The Gene keep hanging around in my head, something to the effect of (I don't remember the exact words) 'where does the illness end and the person begin' or 'how do you separate identity from the illness'. 

some theories I have formed over the years and some words I need to put in writing so I don't forget and can quote later. "being human is becoming difficult" ppl who suffer from anxiety depression and related issues can't help becoming more self centered. can you ever really know someone? if you confess something to ppl, they will sometimes extend/impose their idea of things onto you in that moment of your vulnerability. ppl love to equate themselves to you especially in moments of defeat or other types of low. even if you know ur a much better fighter in life than them, even if that intent to equate kinda humiliates/underestimates you. It's hard to be objective, but it's not impossible. Reading has been a trove of wisdom and empathy, from where my sense of right and wrong emerge and evolve. And if you write, try and make a deep incision; don't barely scratch the surface, you can be better than that. And if you daren't do that, then ball and crush the written surface, obliterate it. Language is secondary.

photopost and a recommendation

sometimes the sky even in delhi is Blue.

these are from my terrace that I'm going upto a lil bit more this winter. Peepul keeps taking root along the water pipes. 

Today was esp beautiful, cold breeze blue sky and strong sun, just like I like December to be. 

birds were playing with the wind, floating weightless.

Oh and yeah, do watch My Octopus Teacher on Netflix. and then look up Craig Foster's other works.

a strange encounter

i had gone to le marche in vasant vihar (a supermarket where the clientele is often the embassy crowd of expats and their friends) the other day. just wanted to pick up 2-3 things while i waited for my fried chicken at the korean place nearby. many of these supermarkets these years have more aisle-help than one needs, and they make themselves obvious, "Ma'am do you need any help" or some such. there was this young girl who asked me that and because I couldn't find where the garbage bags were I did ask her. now I know the sizes of the bins at home in inches, or actually the sizes of the bags i usually buy. but this place had all garbage bags sized up in cms. i couldnt remember the conversion from cms to inches. and i wasn't carrying my phone cos i often leave it at home now to save up on sanitizing it after public exposure. so i asked the young girl if she could please tell me how many cms were an inch. i think i said it in hindi cos i do know a lot of the help around are not fluent in english. she asked me in turn what the size of my bin was. i do get annoyed when ppl answer a request or a question with another one, so i was already beginning to lose my patience but i told her that i knew the size in inches but not in cms so could she please translate for me as i wasn't carrying my phone on me. she said she didnt know. i asked her if she had her phone as i wasn't carrying mine; she took one out of her pocket; i told her she could look it up on her phone. she opened her calculator app and said she couldnt see how. i suggested gently that she should open up a browser and search on google. i had to somehow say it more than once explaining that a lil bit. the trusted google blank page came alight, and she didn't know what to do after that. i was trying not to show my surprise/shock on my face, and i just tried to lead her to clicking on the search bar and asked her to type "inch to cms". she even missed the lil virtual keypad that appeared and didn't seem to know what to do with it. because of covid and keeping my hands off her phone i simply tried to point out to the keypad and asked her to click on i-n-ch . she got the i, but no more beyond. even after 3-4 attempts. i realised not only did she not know that she carried a trove of information in her pocket and did not know how to access it, she was also unaware of the english alphabet. what surprised me then that she wasn't using the phone in hindi. i kept my mouth shut though and simply gave up at that point. i just picked up a medium sized pack of bags and told her it was fine, and thanked her. i came home and told hubby, told my mom and sis the day after, and have been thinking about it since. all those statistics that count and estimate the spread of smartphones and internet access in developing countries and use them to imply how these devices empower people's lives, etc. etc. and this was not an old person who had missed the internet revolution and could never seem to catch up with it. this was a girl of probably 18-20 years of age, belonging to a generation of people who use smart devices like physical appendages to their bodies. yes, i understand she probably didn't know english, she probably didn't have much education, that it was probably a new phone too that she had just been able to afford. but it was right in her pocket, it was a not-cheap smartphone, right in her pocket, and she worked in a store where she would probably see and hear and learn a lot about how things and people commmunicate. i was stunned. i still am despite the fact that i sort of know that india is a country where paradoxes are abundant and where dichotomies often do overlap. i was stunned at what i saw and understood to be the relationship between the young girl and her phone, probably that of dialing numbers and calling and receiving calls in turn, and maybe adding/subtracting amounts of money on the calculator. i was stunned at me being stunned. i mean this is my country and what do i know about it. what do i know about its people, my people? i could have been that girl, if i was born in different circumstances; could i really? there was a time when i remember marveling at someone's typing speed in college (Masters years!) when all i could do was use my two pointer fingers to click on one letter after another much much more slowly (now i do use multiple fingers to type much faster or i wouldn't be writing all this down). maybe that strange encounter will help her question what her phone is capable of, maybe she will sit down with it after dinner that day or with some friend and ask/explore how she can interact with it. maybe next time i won't be so surprised, and maybe i will actually try to teach her something. and maybe i've actually learned something from it already.

I bought my first pair of running shoes (nike air) in 2006, after a few days of running in my converse sneakers because I didn't want to splurge on expensive shoes if I wasn't going to like running. in about 2013-14 running started to hurt. my left knee would click every now and then and going down stairs was especially difficult. i ran funny somedays then, swinging my feet out to the sides, cos it seemed to help, slightly. round about then I also fell one morning on my run; scraped my knee (I forget which one) and my left hand between the fingers and the wrist on the non-palm side. I still have butterfly shaped mark from that bruise on my hand that now looks like a birthmark. I remember I also tore my leggings that day on the fall. I stopped running as often, especially after my knee aches and then after someone suggested my shoes might need a change I think I stopped running altogether. there was new found yoga then. sometime after I moved to Fort Worth in 2015 and found myself by the river (Trinity) I wanted to run out in the mornings again. I remember some running discomfort again. and then I bought some cheapish Asics on sale, online, not sure changing shoes was the answer. the pair turned out to be so snug I couldn't fit socks in it and I think they were beyond returning giving having been bought on sale or some such. I started running in them without socks and felt like my free-er toes simulated barefeet running. my knee felt fine again just like that. although without socks my shoes got a lot more stinky and dirty on the insole. I had them till a month ago. this monsoon I started running outdoors again. then maybe in October I twisted something just above my right ankle. felt like I had hurt my achilles tendon. rest for a week, but it was sore even after hurting when I ran. then it kinda went away. and then one day I just fell headlong. probably got my shoe on a stone protruding from the park path (there are many all over). probably distracted by the cricket croud laughing (at me? there are often comments directed at me in a park where I am the only running girl). and I suddenly found myself hurtling toward the sand colored earth ahead of my with my hands outstretched to embrace it or push it away. I scraped my left knee and my left elbow. a few old uncles asked me if i was ok and told me about some woman who had just the day before suddenly fainted in the park. i said i was fine, i brushed the dust off, the elbow just looked like some dry blades of grass and the rough earth had scratched it, and my knee clothed in my grey leggings felt strong. so i started running again, finished the lap and a half that was still due. my knee was singe-ing by now and by the time i got into my car I saw that the leggings were staining with some blood although not enough to emerge through the fabric on the outside. got home washed it, was a bloody patch for about 3-4 days and i couldnt bear fabric on it so i wore shorts although it was getting coldish. new skin has covered it now. i always find the melanin spots so symmetrically arranged in any patch of new skin (golden ratio?) pretty cool. also the bruise colors. i didn't run for a few days again. next time i ventured out i was very careful looking at the ground and watching my steps. then in my final lap i felt this guy's eyes on me, sideways, right next to me. I looked reflexively. and then I fell again. he turned back to see me on the ground, didn't offer to help thankfully. i cursed myself. but thought i wasn't hurt this time. and then I saw the palm of my right hand; blood oozing out. probably my car key had scratched me; I usually have it in that palm while I run. the key itself had flown off to the side. I grabbed it, wiped it on my legginged leg, this time didn't try to finish my lap and drove home if only to wash the earth off the bleeding palm. for a day or two I obsessed over a bit of skin around the piercing that looked muddy and I couldn't seem to reach within it to get the brown out. inspired by all the reading about microbes and diseases I thought a bit about tetanus bacteria spores. but it healed beautifully, no bruises or scars, just a slightly darker spot left in the pink palm. by the way i once read (or heard) that we don't quite know why our bodies leave scars. its not like a scar is necessary in the skin's process of closing up, sealing in, and healing the wound. its probably a reminder to our past accidents, mishaps, foolishnesses, pain, etc. etc. dunno if that makes sense but to me it seemed cool then, like our body communicating to our minds, across time and place. anyway, two falls in two runs in a row. i initially attributed it to change of running speed cos i had then started running with a mask as October is PM2.5 month. maybe running slower upset my balance somehow. maybe. but then, anyway, i also blamed my shoes. each time its time to change shoes something like this happens, multiple lil incidents and injuries. so i bought the third pair of running shoes in my life. online again. asics again. but not pronated ones this time (i am slightly flat footed). ive been running like a charm since then. and these are half a size larger than the last ones, so socks fit in too. don't seem to ruin the barefooted feeling too much, I still splay my toes (within my socks) before they hit the ground each time. running is quite a natural muscle memory art. the other day two guys commented (talking to each other) that I had started coming to the park very late these days. i wanted to tell them: its hard getting out of my blanket as it gets colder. a couple days some men commented on my shorts being too small, and my tshirt being too big almost covering my shorts. this where even in hot summer other women walk in skin tight leggings. and today some middle aged uncles (maybe younger) weren't quite as appreciative in the right way when they commented on how active to them I looked. I've heard other women complain that delhi isn't a city for early morning runs alone for a girl. i've run alone at 6-ish mornings since 2007 on and off. somehow these men never bother me enough. 2 years ago I used to go out with my pepper spray, now I don't even bother with that given the pandemic has got the park so busy with ppl channeling their energy into new healthy habits.

pandemic instrospection

a cousin had some insomnia, lack of appetite, and anxiety issues. one day when I was talking to him he was trying to explain how he and his best friend feel like the world post covid19 is despondent. it leaves just work and home and family, stripping away diversions and crowds.

his friend is quite outgoing and extrovertish, but my cousin is not. I was trying to understand, gently pointing out that crowds and socializing can be tiring such that the pandemic can offer a valid excuse and thus some relief (?).

I later thought about it a lot. work and family and home. what else is there really? yes, once in a while exploring untrodden paths and swimming in unknown tides. and staring at trees, the horizon, mountains and lichens, into the distance and the sun, dreaming out onto old town roofs, talking to strangers yes and exchanging stories and smiles and foods and wines, and sweating happily in all that exploration in many different ways. but only temporarily. till one feels drawn back by the need to work or that to get home. to a one person family or more, or even to an alone home so one can work. 

is work what is exchanged for a means to a living? or is it one's effort to contribute in some way what only one can. I feel like that's where the answer lies. between work and home and family being enough or not. similarly, whether home and family are truly an extension of one's self or are intrusions, uninvited and inescapable.

I've been reading a lot of book samples these days, not knowing what I want and choosing more carefully, spending a lil more wisely. there are good samples that I will still not ending up buying, where the 50-odd pages are somewhat enough even if they soothed me, informed me, helped me calm down before dozing off. but then there are samples where I so badly want to highlight words, phrases, sentences, thoughts. even if I know I'll rarely come back to read them. these books I must buy. last night the sample mostly consisted of an introduction, something of a literary review of the book by another author/critic. samples don't allow highlighting; so I had to buy the book. and now I'll have to look for this second author, this critic, and his books too. if his intro to another's text was so highlightable I hope his writing is too. btw below, a few highlighted bits from Philipp Meyer's introduction to Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.

"When you are judging a literary masterpiece, you are judging first the substance and ideas behind the work. Are they true, are they worth saying, does the book articulate them organically (without talking over the characters) and in a way no one has done before? You are judging the artist's ability to capture a world and the people in it and the ability to work in a mode so distinct it can only be hers or his. You would not confuse a Van Gogh with a Rembrandt - in fact you would be able to identify both at a glance. At the highest level, prose should be no different."

"the Judge is constantly recording things in his notebooks, sketches and observations, in attempt to replace or supplant the real item (which he physically destroys when possible). This is not so different from what the artist hopes to do. Few of us know anything about fifteenth-century Danish kings, but most of us know the story of Hamlet. Such as it is with Chamberlain and Cormac McCarthy. Art has eclipsed the Real."

"a man moves about the barren plain "striking fire that God has placed" in the earth. He is digging holes for fenceposts, creating the demarcation between civilization and the wild; or, depending on your point of view, between a new civilization and an old one. Other men follow him blindly. They see only the holes he has dug. They don't see the man. They don't see his fire."

in other stories, watching Mira Nair's A Suitable Boy is bringing back not just the book and it's visual scenes and heartfelt characters, but is also bringing back the time and that past me when I was reading that book about 10 years ago. I read it partly in India and partly in my first home alone (technically with a flatmate but not really a companion) in Texas. I remember being immersed in it, moved by it, remember even that I read the stampede scene a lil after a similar one had occured in India in reality. And now it's all coming back, not just the emotions that the story and the characters whip within my soul, but my frame of mind then when I read it, my innocence and my optimism, my lack of disenchantment and disillusionment. one thing that strikes me now (and it did not then) is how there's a common theme in the stories of many characters in the book: that of Faiz's "humse pehli si mohabbat mere mehboob na maang ...". another is how the horror of partition that till now always felt so in the past now feels so much more like an ever present threat.

anyway, from India to Texas and back, between books and stories, I'll be smiling some more nights in my bed as I highlight words that resonate deep within somewhere. the act of highlighting though has changed, I don't need a pencil or a fluorescent one, now my finger suffices.

Somedays this life is just too much work to live. I am a misfit, I still don't know my work or place here. 

plumber was supposed to come this morning, said around 9:30/10. my pot cistern has been overflowing, so I've been controlling it through the open/close switch/lever on the inlet pipe rather than call a plumber, cos it's too much work esp now. but this week one day i forgot to close it after peeing when I was sleepy and water ran for about 40 mins before I heard it. so I decided to get it done.

dreamt of pots and crap and the latter spilling and overflowing and me carrying it and what not. woke up 4 times during the night for various reasons of controlling temperature and one of us going to the loo. then at about 6 he goes again. this time it's a bit much and cos the sun has started to creep out and I can see its bright outside of my eye mask I find it harder to slumber off again. think I'll get up to throw in the laundry before the plumbers visit blocks that bathroom. and then I want to pick up my bed stuff and get a few hours on the sofa. but my bed stuff includes my phone and somehow the bad dreams tell me I shud look at what's waiting on my phone for me. of course, rejection email from yet another journal. I doanage to give it one full reading, debate whether I shud wake him up but he isn't responding anyway. sofa then, try some sleep. dunno why wake up v happy and contented, although remember the email. kinda feeling like not giving a f about it. 

laundry is calling out. dryer, some on the rack, morning stuff. breakfast and complaining to k. bell rings, plumber is early. but of course. 

cut short and fast fwd. finally have a working flush. it's just 10 in the morning and I'm exhausted of the effort it takes to live this life. k is upbeat goes out to get our fav pizza. I've said to myself before, every rejection has got to be celebrated or else it gets to you. might as well. 

I'm looking at job postings. Facebook is looking for someone to help with it's forthcoming payments app, waiting to show up on ur whatsapp as well. aarghh. I'm also still too idealistic. 

oh well let's see how this day goes. I'm becoming superstitious too. and more defiant. slowly feels like I've disconnected from this world. it began with the work without a job, then covid and associated isolation, now I'm not even talking to mom in law for something she said. had an argument with sis cos of her messed up love life, now staying out of that too. what's left then? k and pizza and my unsellable equations, and running. missing the swimming too big time. 

pandemic 2020: streaming tv worth watching

Borgen (Netflix)

Masaba Masaba (Netflix)

Stateless (Netflix)

Handmaid's Tale (Amazon) 

Rasbhari (Amazon)

yes Indian Netflix/Amazon shows are growing up after all. the year before (or maybe two years ago) Little things and Made in Heaven were pushing boundaries.

unconnected

a few months before the virus was known (or maybe before it travelled outside of China) a cousin of mine visited us. I also called my sis to come over that Friday evening. we played some card game late into the night, slept on sofas to accommodate the numbers in our one bed tiny apartment. and next morning we suddenly decided to go have breakfast at one of our favorite cafes. barely a 12 min drive in the mornings, this place is a 2-minute walk from my Mausi's. so said cousin called them also on our way there, although k me and sis were looking forward to spending some time without older ppl. anyway so we were all sitting around two tables pushed together digging into our sourdough toasts, eggs, avocados, mushrooms etc. when the conversation turns to our impact on the environment. someone mentioned plastic, someone mentioned incrreased packaging cos Amazon had spoiled us waiting for shopping to come home, and someone mentioned saving on gas/petrol if you shopped online, and so on...

I suddenly blurted "human numbers have exploded on this planet. people really should stop having kids." I hadn't expected it but this was too radical for my uncle and aunt (they are grandparents to a sweet lil girl now) and even for my cousin. K of course teased me by asking me if I was also proposing reducing these numbers in other ways. I made it clear I was only talking about reducing the increase rather than that of current numbers. 

People don't think of themselves as animals, as part of tiny blocks in this natural ecosystem of the earth. on another occasion I remember same aunt asking out aloud, rhetorically, what if any was the purpose of mosquitoes in ecologies. I've been reading David Quammen's Spillover, and I was thinking y'day how mosquitoes keep human (and ape) numbers in check by spreading various types of malaria. It's our superciliousness that we think we are at the top of (or disconnected from) the natural food chain and world ecology. the very fact of our exploding numbers makes us easier prey as it becomes easier for microscopic and near invisible half-dead pathogens to colonize our species. everything is food for something else, and sometimes is fodder simply to reproduce.

I've started going out for runs again. the first day I realised how my quads were atrophying without distance running. running on my mat only uses the lower leg, so much so that I had stopped feeling my quads alive at all. for two days after that first run in the park last week, they were sore from being woken up from their long slumber. same park where I used to run in 2007. now I drive to get to it but it's still not far. moreover, it's mosquito free, which is a miracle this year what with healthcare having other worries and having ignored spraying against the insects. 

we are urbanized wildlife, and so are Anopheles, and SARS CoV2. 

two things I have realised in the last few months and been very surprised with. first, people have very shallow memories, especially when it comes to conversations, words said and heard and their conveyed meaning. they forget so much so easily. when for me it's all still so visible and audible and real. for example some ppl who interviewed me on skype had no recollection 4 months later of how bad the connection had been, how we kept losing each other and then ended up having a no video, them typing their questions (cos I couldn't hear them) and me talking my answers aloud kind of an interview. and I can think of so many examples of so many ppl forgetting so many things in such short durations of time. I have been blessed/cursed with remembering other ppl's words.

and while I keep obsessing over and over again about what I said or how I said it.

second, ppl don't have half as keen a sense of outrage as I do. they are just told they can't do or get something, and they listen nod and move on to (settle for) what else is possible. and they probably soon forget. whereas I get all outraged and keep asking why, keep trying to show them they are wrong for blocking my way, keep falling against their walls and keep picking myself up. but why not? how dare they? f them, I'm going to get not just that but something better. 

sometimes I play an important part as audience. as someone who will feel the story, feel it's horror and disgust and feel each thread of its messy moral dilemmas tug and shred my heart. someone who will get into the character, feel his pain his desperation - that which makes him adopt a story in which he is not his daughter's father, so that she is no longer haunted by his life and his stories. I can also see her demons come alive just as they do for her, while in the moment separating myself and watching as if an out of body experience; that little shield saves me from going where there's no coming back from, that she wouldn't have. I can feel that loss of grasp too, even though she is just a story. I also feel responsible and complicit, on both sides, on all sides, because I am her and him and them who traumatize them. and I am me too, the one on the outside of it all, protected and unscathed and probably therefore somehow the reason. 

we all play a part, each complicated and with unforeseen impact. the important thing is not to let their stories fade. so watch Stateless on Netflix and let yourself in.

life is coming apart at the seams these days. I can't believe the things I'm having to do. I flit between hopelessness and anger at the world. In fact, if not for the anger, it would be hard to wake up every day and continue on from where I left the night before. 

Apparently I am too old for entry level AP positions in govt funded universities. In the US, I had gotten used to people telling me that discrimination based on age (or anything else) was illegal. Here, they close the door for you at 35. Plus, a school got back to me saying I wasn't eligible because I didn't have first class in my Masters degree; regardless of my PhD. They asked me if I had a second masters in which I could show first class. The irony is that an American PhD contains a masters in it but most of us don't bother to get a degree for that lesser milestone cos we have bigger things on our minds. So guess what, now I have enrolled as a masters student again, at my alma mater, to use my past coursework to get a new degree. So I am doing another masters now, five years after finishing my PhD.

Going through setting up and activating my student account, communicating with admin and academic advisors, is driving me nuts. Plus because the degree will only now come at the end of fall 2020 semester, I am requesting an official letter certifying that I finished the course requirements in the past and stating my GPA that can be translated by Indian authorities into a class/division. And guess what, after repeatedly asking the academic advisor to include my GPA in this said letter, I received it without it. I already have a masters degree, so a letter stating that I completed requirements for another is useless to me without also certifying a first class equivalent.

Arrgh. 

On top of that since June the interviews have started again after 3-4 months of coronavirus shocks. But nothing has so far translated into an offer. People just keep talking with me, and talking again and again. 

Oh yeah also mother in law keeps going on about the "beauty of Hinduism" and ranting against minority religions. Forget how I deal with it, more important is how hubby loses his shit on the phone with her and then roams around with chronic sullenness. If it goes on, I will have to ask her to stop calling. I have anyway stopped talking to her, maybe once in a fortnight I show her my face on his videocall or sound out a hello. I've stopped bothering any more than that. There's too much shit in this world anyway, to allow polite nodding in response to more.

we are watching The Handmaid's Tale on top of that. Quite a mirror for our world these days, maybe not literally in every sense, but you can always recall or find some event/context in this world we live in that matches the horror in the show. 

I keep wondering, how do people bring kids into this world? 

Oh yeah I forgot a more interesting detail to the whole first class masters eligibility requirement. A couple years ago someone had forwarded a news piece about automatic future eligibility for PhDs from well ranked universities from abroad. So when above school said the requirement was from MHRD, I dug up the facts. Found a UGC requirement for 55percent (not even first class) in masters that had been scrapped in 2018 to allow automatic eligibility for PhDs from universities ranked globally in top 500 according to some rankings. Dug up the rankings, forwarded all of it together to the communicating person. No acknowledgement, no reply. So I don't know if they threw my application in the waste bin or not.

How can one go through this life without anger??

Update: so I now know that I was wrong, UGC rules apply to universities, not to institutes of national importance like IITs and IIMs, that are the bulk of where my CV has gone. Apparently, AICTE regulates those and most rules are based on engineering and physical science timelines; most of those ppl probably don't work before going for a PhD. Anyway. 35 is the age cap both for entry level school teachers and assistant professors in this country even though eligibilty between those two differs by a 5-6 yrs PhD!!

some people write so badly. reading their writing gives me this ugh feeling, and it has nothing to do with the subject of their writing. it's about how difficult it is for those words they forced in those sentences to be together. there's this one guy whose writing in general is pretty good, and then when he thinks he is writing poems, oh my god, the rhymes are so forced it's almost like the words have been forced to copulate together under some threat. there's this other gal who writes as if it's an excuse to use big words in her sentences, and as if she still hasn't learned how to form them smoothly. and these are two people who think they write well. so therefore they post their prose and poetry on facebook, the platform where good writing gets discovered, where amateurs practice and depend on their audience's impartial criticism <sarcasm>. in response, people rave about their writing; god knows who these people are. I've thought many times of leaving an honest comment, "your rhyme is very forced. your prose on the other hand is beautifully written." Or, to the gal, "please don't write, just to use words that don't belong together." but of course I can't do that. 

recipe, for 7 years later

about 7 years ago I ate dinner some evening, alone in some lil eatery behind a produce market in Jerusalem. today when I stared into our fridge vegetable tray, wondering what to cook, and saw these beautiful round eggplants, bought about a week ago but still taut and fresh (eggplants in India are v fresh that way, the tiny ones and the long ones often get worms v quick but the big round ones somehow defy them), I suddenly had this strong sense of recreating that dish. so here goes, what I did with the memory of my tastebuds and the ingredients available in my kitchen and fridge. 

first things first: the dish uses some ground red meat in its original form, but I took out a couple chicken kebabs from our freezer in lieu of that. Let aside to thaw.

Slice eggplants to resemble the pieces of an orange, not too thick, about an inch of skin at its widest on each slice. On a flat pan, cook these in olive oil (eggplants and extra virgin go very well), with some salt and pepper. Each slice on both sides of the bare flesh. I did two eggplants. You can cover the pan on low heat for more even cooking.

Slice some onions, squash and peel some garlic, and slice a tomato or two. Brown the garlic and onions in olive oil on a wok (while the eggplants are cooking on the other burner). By now the meat should have thawed. Chop it up if it's not ground. Throw it in once the onions are brown. Cook a lil, and then throw in the tomatoes. Stir in some salt and pepper, if meat doesn't already have some spice in it. Can add other masala too in that case (I didn't need to, but I'd suggest powdered cumin, turmeric, cinnamon, etc.). Cover on low heat. Throw in a tablespoon or two of coconut milk and stir and cover. When meat is kinda done, and the tomatoes soft, add some tomato puree as well. Stir, cook a bit, add water, bring to boil, and simmer and cover. 

The original had some pinenuts, but I used frozen corn from the freezer instead for similarity of shape, color, crunch, and sweetness. Throw it in and let simmer covered. 

When u feel like the meat gravy is kinda done, taste for salt. Dip the cooked eggplant slices in. Push them in to submerge in the gravy and simmer just a lil bit more. Turn off the gas/heat. You can add chopped cilantro/coriander or some other herb. Can eat with naan/bread/rice/paratha or even some plain noodles if u want. The flesh of eggplants should literally melt in your mouth. Lick your plate clean after.

hace trece anos

I used to run almost every morning in this park, almost thirteen years ago. That makes me feel ancient. It's also unusual for me to return to the same spots in my life. Strangely I've come to live in delhi thrice already. and vasant kunj just coincidentally features in some central way each time, the first time only as weekends and guardian address away from hostel, and now as second (out of four) home(s) in this city.

All these trees were mostly shrubs then. The park would get very sunny and I therefore came very early before the sun. Even the paths made by human feet that kill the grass and expose the sandy brown earth below were barely there. The park felt smaller then, probably because its boundaries were lost to untrimmed bushes, probably because my memory deceives me. Also ppl didn't visit parks that much then.

It's one of those close getaways from the rudeness and roughness of this city now. Both in how it calms my senses and in how ppl behave within its definitions as if they aren't fighting for everything the way they do in this city. On any good weather day you can see a combination of fitness freaks and families with kids, just doing their thing. Families from all heirarchies of this society. Sometimes a sole woman in a saree will suddenly sprint a length of the track before panting and walking again. And unlike another park closer to my home, here the dogs have never bothered me, even when I used to run, although running for some reason excites the strays closer to my apartment and they come bounding after and on top of you sometimes, their claws pressing through your clothes unbeknownst to them. It can be scary even if you know they are just playing.

I'll be spending some more time here. (There is at least one hiding dog in each of the above 3 pics, and two in the last one. They were also 6ft distancing while doing so in a row.)

if you've seen people mourning over a break up you will probably understand this. often the predominant emotion is that of rejection, sometimes it is that of having failed especially when they had known for a while that something was wrong and they were giving it their best, trying to fix it but couldn't. anger yes of course, but usually lower down, beneath disappointment, rejection, failure, a sense of loss, of not knowing how to start to live afresh; unless it was a case of unfaithfulness and abrupt breaking up. what i have been surprised with is how many people just broken up are afraid and insecure, their predominant worry being left alone, single, for the rest of their lives. in fact, once a friend of mine who was then married also voiced these concerns wondering aloud about other people who broke up but talking about how she was so scared of being left alone. the older the person concerned, somehow the sadder and scarier this sense of abandonment.

i've been getting that lately about my professional self. its three years now I have been without a job. and this birthday i noticed a lot many white hairs down the sides of my head, those that get exposed when i tie my hair up. ive crossed that age when i saw my parents start to get wide around their waists, my aunts start to color their hair. and i am starting to get the feeling that a professional marriage (aka tenure) might not be possible for me in this life. in fact, that's not even the scariest bit. i'm starting to feel complacent in this city, in this situation, with the people of my own country all around me, with family members close and far flung peppered through the geographical space (even though i still avoid many of them). i am beginning to feel that i'm getting too old to start afresh, again and again. i look around this flat, the kitchen with its windows lacking curtain rods on which we have pasted craft squares of various colors to block out the sun (we do this every year for some months), our yellow sofa that has collected a myriad of shapes of grey spots on its body in our years here, even our kitchen dish rack neatly placed on our green absorbent mat collecting our washed stuff: two plates (carefully picked by me from fabindia someday after i had broken another plate at home), spoons hanging upside down from a lil spoon stand that had come free with the dish rack, a bowl or two, a small glass he likes to drink in that remains the only one left from a pack of six we began with (5 others shattered by us, one by one), the hand vacuum sitting quietly in one corner of the living room waiting to be used to suck up miniscule glass pieces or the dust of drilling after a handyman finished his job and left the place in a mess. our plants, or rather my plants that remind of our first year here when i'd keep going to the nursery getting lil pots of flowers, i got some bigger ones for his office too, they died one by one. how many times can i pick myself up again and start afresh, throwing away the familiar crockery and buying new ones, looking at an empty place and imagining it as home. this has in fact been the longest he and i have lived together at a stretch. but this marriage needs two others - a professional marriage for each one of us to a place that is both encouraging and supportive of the work that each of us thinks we want to do. i'm getting too old and the longer i stay unaffiliated the bigger a problem it might be for me to find a match.

houseplants sketch #3

potted plants in the balcony below my window. the camouflaged crotons I've tried to raise myself but that died on me.

there are many names for God. but I like to think of it as probability. there are also many words for that - call it luck, chance, odds. God is probability. also people have a hard time understanding probability. It can work in your favor despite the low prior sometimes, and sometimes it could go against you despite its prior assurance of being on your side. sometimes the former coincides with your prayers, giving you the perception of them having been answered; in the latter case you feel abandoned and cheated or worse punished.