The Idea-smithy

On the first week of June, Mumbai welcomed the monsoon of 2008. I watched it arrive, alone…which is probably the best way, with the rain.

The skies heralded the season of water.

And then I watched the drops paint the sidewalk a shiny, sheeny gloss of life. Read the rest of this entry →

He picks out the notes to a vaguely-familiar tune that I recognize as a part of the ‘Beginner’s Basics’ on a guitar. Mornings are practice times. During yoga class, he’s the only one who can bend over and touch his toes gracefully. This following week, he’s signed up for a workshop on Kallaripattu, that ancient martial art-form from Kerala.I am not sure but I’m willing to bet that in the second, just as in the first, he’s the oldest member in his class.

He’s well over 50.

He’s the first man in my life. Also The First Man.
Read the rest of this entry →

I’m back! Yes, on Friday the thirteenth. Firstly tell me that you think it’s a great day already because if you don’t I’m going to make you say it. I was born on a Friday the thirteenth!!! Not this one obviously but another one long, long ago (uh, not that long ago). I’ve been so terribly thrilled to know that I picked a big day to be born that I’m almost disappointed that no one’s making a big deal of it today.

Now to other things. I’m posting after a week. No, this was not a self-imposed exile, not another case of blog-i-cide. I’ve been busy. And for a real change in a long, long time, busy in a satisfying way. You know in the way that drains out every drop of energy from you and fall back into bed, asleep almost as soon as you hit the pillow, thinking that what a lot of things happened to you today and weren’t they all great?

So yes, I’ve been busy (in a good way) and expect to be so for a few weeks at least. I’ve managed to do much that I feel good about though nothing that I want to write about. I still don’t have much to say but I’ve been experiencing - how do you say it - bloggydrawal symptoms? Lekhni kindly points me a way out of it and gives me something to talk about today.

I’m cheating ever so slightly on this since the tag is meant to use the nearest book you find lying next to you. I picked a book in the morning, knowing fully well that I’d do this tag today. (What kind of a loser plans to do a blog-tag, huh? This one does, compulsive to-do list-maker coming up!!)  So I kind of bent the rules if not actually break them. Good thing too, the damn things needed flexing and exercise just like my back. Speaking of which, I really should join the yoga institute now instead of just stretching along my instructer’s lessons. And I need a mackintosh and no one tells me where I can find one - the rain gear not the computer!!!

Okay, okay I’ll come back. *Huff Puff* It’s been awhile since I did this. Sticking to the point that is. So here the tag be -

• Pick up the nearest book.
• Open to page 123.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the next three sentences.
• Tag five people, and acknowledge the person who tagged you.

The book I picked up is The Good Husband of Zebra Drive by Alexander McCall Smith. Sentences 6, 7 and 8 on Page 123 are:

She reached across and laid a hand upon his wrist. He looked down at where her hand rested.
‘You mustn’t be sad, Rra,’ she said.

Blah, I wish I had more than 3 sentences to go by. At least there’s an entire action in this set and a conversation bit as well as two characters. Which is much considering it’s only 3 sentences. What’s more, they’re as good a representation of the book as anything. I haven’t actually gotten to page 123 as yet. I’m savouring this book page by page since its the very, very, very last (or just most recent I hope) book in the Mma.Ramotswe series.

And I’m tagging five people I suspect would have a good selection of books to pick from:

1. Sensorcaine
2. Rada
3. E Vestigio
4. The Saint
5. Chronicus Skepticus

Boy, I wish I had something profound or interesting to say about my contribution to this tag. All I can say is that it is a reminder of the emotion of compassion and probably one I could do well to remember.

Gah, I can do better than this, I know. Oh please tell me that you believe it too. Foo (as the boy would have it), I’ll let you go and take my blogger’s blocked self off to enjoy Friday the thirteenth.

Todd Faber, in SANDMAN: “Fear of Falling”

Sometimes you wake up.
Sometimes the fall kills you.
And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.

I’ll take my chances.

Hmph. I’m surrounded by wise guys, Alec Smarts and evil pranksters.

Working from home for a day and when I get back, I realise my things-to-do list from 2 days earlier is still lying on my desk. As is my habit, I scan through it to see if there are any *shudder* carry-over tasks. And I’m stumped when I reach the end of the list…

14. Treat SNC and SFOS to lunch
15. Buy sweets for the whole office

I look around discreetly to see who’s giggling but the faces remain blank. So I tear it up and throw it away.

The other day I got up to get a printout and then stopped to have a chat. When I got back, my screen had turned over sideways. No kidding! The monitor was in its place, the keyboard didn’t look like it had been touched but the image on the screen was….well lying on its side. And whats worse, the mouse pointer seemed to have followed suit. Don’t even ask how I got out of that mess. 

It’s a conspiracy, I tell ya! While others battle office politics, I’m waging a war with a silent practical joker.

(image courtesy ComicBooks)

I promised a new section and here it is! Of note, I haven’t received that many contributions as yet (*disapproving look at readers*). Arre…you expect me to do all the work or what?

Alright, alright I will! So here we go and welcome to a a new episode of I Style! Don’t you just lurrrrrrve the things people think up?

Isn’t he hot? Isn’t he cool?

Meet Parmesh Shahani, one-time crush, now that-ubercool-stud-I-know. Parmesh is the author of GayBombay:Globalization, Love and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India. (*sob* Why’re all the great men gay?), owner of rockstar attitude and the wearer of the kind of attire that gives I Style! its raison d’etre.

Parmesh has the attitude and you can see he wears it as well! (Do I get some brownie points for claiming an acquaintance with him?)

Okay now stop drooling people…I promise you’ll see Parmesh here again!

I wrote about a copycat blog which had passed off one of my posts without crediting back to source. That was more than fair warning, I think. But the offending post is still up there with no response. So here it is again:

My original post

and

its copy.

Shame on you, Mr ‘Teens to toons’. Do grow up and learn to write something of your own. And in the meantime, at least understand that copycats get caught sometime.

And oh, this may be a public-access blog but at least to its owner, you are definitely not welcome here anymore.

I’m really happy to know that my posts are liked. I’m thrilled to bits when people comment or mail me to say that they identify with my posts. But attention can be a double-edged sword, what? 

Awhile ago, someone tipped me off to a blog that had lifted one of my posts. Before I had a chance to check it out, however, the copycat post had been removed. What’s more, the author of that blog turned up at my blog to apologize. A short while later, he also put up a post that was a glowing testimonial to me. Err, well…thank you very much…is all I was able to say.

Soon after, I had a chance to chat with one of his friends who told me that he often quoted my posts and spoke about me. Well, what does one say to that? Everyone likes admiration. I did too even while I found it disconcerting that someone I had never seen, met or spoken to, was praising me.

Today I discovered that another of my posts (and one of my favorites too!) has been picked and posted on his blog. It does say that he read it somewhere, though not where. I’m rather doubtful that such a long post could have been relived from memory without any recollection of its source.

I’m still reluctant to let this become unpleasant. So, to my imitation-as-sincere-flattery copycat reader, I say,

Thank you.

But I value honesty far above admiration. If it’s a choice of one over the other, I’ll pick the first any day. You however, don’t seem to be giving me a choice.

I’m not pleased or flattered about this at all. If that matters to you, don’t bother apologizing. Just take that post off right now.

You know who you are so I won’t use your name. Not just yet.

I trust you get the message.

I am really hoping that I won’t need to allude to this matter again.

I shut down Behind Cobwebs over a year back. I miss it today. I shut it because I thought I was getting to be too negative and that just having a place to put it was encouraging even more negativity.

Today, with nearly three times more visibility and so much more cheeriness that I’ve dredged up from the bottom of my barrel, I miss it. I miss the safe darkness so much I want to scream.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Six people have gotten in touch today to ask me where I am, how I’m doing and if I’m angry with them. I don’t know what to say. I haven’t been myself lately. It feels like I haven’t even been inside my own body, my own mind lately. And my soul has gone missing.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Years ago, someone told me, someone who isn’t a part of my life anymore and I never speak of him but I haven’t forgotten - told me,

Sometimes, you just want to feel sad. And then you need to be able to feel it. Not cheered out of it. Sometimes you just got to be sad.

I was reading a post about a happy girl two minutes ago and suddenly I was crying. Almost, the tears didn’t fall but they rose right to the very top and fogged my eyes. I used to be that girl…I think…I thought.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

I am so tired, bone-weary and exhausted after a really nice weekend.

I’m angry, so wrathfully so, at some people and I don’t know how to find my way back into forgiveness.

I need someone to hold me and tell me it’s okay to cry.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Yes, I published and then immediately privatized (!) this post yesterday. And yet, enough of people caught it. I’ve replied to most of them but would the Anon who dropped me a note please look in this direction? This is the person who left no address behind but wrote the following:

I have been reading your blogs for a long time — And have enjoyed reading them.
I was concerned when I read “Sometimes you just need to be sad” — Do you often have mood swings? Or bouts of anger?

To which I reply, yes my dear child/friend/reader/stranger, I’m moody, I’m volatile, I’m irrational, I’m harsh, I’m bitchy. Family and friends are sometimes scared to tell me things because I’m perfectly capable of picking up a chair and hurling it out of the window. And equally capable of sitting them down, patting their arm and asking them to lay it all on their good ol’ buddy. Sometimes I care, sometimes I don’t and often even I can’t tell when one stops and the other begins. I often find myself unable to express what’s going on inside my head and all this ranting/poetry/fiction/posts are but a pathetic echo of what I experience.

I doubt you’re really interested in all this but it’s possible that that’s just my cynicism talking. Perhaps you’re someone I know and have burned my bridges with a long time ago,  but you’ve still stopped to ask me how I’m feeling. Maybe you are a total stranger.

Whichever you are, whoever you, all I can say is - Thank you.

Yes, there’s more.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Do banished memories go to hell? I hope not, ‘cos I’ll only end up meeting them there again. Besides they deserve better, so much better than the  darkness in my mind.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

A friend who hurts you
….is the one most likely to come back and apologize 
….is the one that deserves forgiveness the least.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

If intimacy is what happens when love and hate collide,
Then seperation is when they lie together in the same bed…or grave.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

I would hold onto any scrap of you that I can get,
Even if it is only a painful memory.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

I would make sure the memory of me never fades in your mind
Even if it means having to leave only a memory of me behind with you.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Love means never having to say you’re sorry.

I take that to mean, the situation of being sorry never arises. After all, what else is love but taking the other person’s happiness as one’s personal responsibility? Even if that’s impossible, so is love.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Forgiveness is admitting the humaness of the other person
And divinity in oneself.

I think I can live with being just human.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Forgiveness is for the world at large, a fair exchange for our own peace of mind. But anyone who is special enough to love, is special enough to never be forgiven.