Thursday, January 28, 2010

Your name is the splinter.

He adjusts the wick with careful fingers and reaches over for the canister of palm oil.He lights the lamp and joins hands in prayer.Outside it grows colder as the oil gradually solidifies.

The crow has flown

The past few days have been going so well, with every little event making me go "I'm so going to write about this!" and then promptly letting it slip my mind.There used to be a time when there were so many words and phrases going through my head that I just had to pen them down.I miss those days.Sure I wrote a lot of stuff that was silly, unoriginal and hackneyed but I did write, dint I?Maybe I'm just too, un-feeling, these days.You know, I write when I'm either too depressed or too high(hyper excited, hard to settle down type).Lately I have been happier, and not just sporadically.The graph is going constant and that bugs me a little.I have been reading Murakami and I'm still too speechless to write anything about him or the book('Kafka on the Shore'). I will write something about him, he's too much on my mind to let go that easily.Let me get my thoughts back.Right now they are off tracking cats with Nakata.

P.S- It is sad that the first few searches that come up on Google when you type 'palm' are something to do with Personal Digital Assistants and Operating Systems.Palm is so much more.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

She looked at the air conditioner with disdain. Just a few minutes ago, as little drops of sweat rolled down her back, the spoiled brat, her employer's son, had turned off the AC muttering something about a bai not needing it.She swept the dust off the floor in precise movements so that little specks of it would not remain behind.The brat had now moved to his room, after trying to avoid stepping on the dirt and making an even bigger mess.She sighed.Kids were so clumsy nowadays.She remembered how she'd had such a graceful gait growing up that everybody thought she'd make a great dancer.Even now, men looked at her retreating figure with appreciation and women with envy as she strolled past the Saturday market, picking up tamatar and methi, never bhindi(Rs.12 per kilo!). She sighed, dreading the prices that'd be put up this week. She continued sweeping, beneath the couch, behind the bookshelf, stray strands of dog fur(they had a big dog with long golden fur, it was quite ugly) kept entangling in the broom. She stopped for a few minutes and looked outside the window.Her eyes automatically searched for the wall clock on the wrong wall and then rested upon it finally and she registered the time.Rich people and their tinted glass windows, no sense of what time it was and how the day would be. She remembered how cloudy it was that morning.Maybe the same weather had continued.After all, she'd already spent three hours on the twelfth floor.So many things could have changed outside.She took a few steps towards the window.She had the strong urge to push it open and let the fresh air in(it was a sliding window, she instantly realised a second later).There were little droplets of sweat on her upper lip and her scalp felt wet with perspiration.Her breathing was heavy.Somehow, with the subtle, invisible beckoning of the window, she felt her day and her life letting go of her.There was nothing to worry about, not the absent husband, not the son's education, not the dwindling currency in the small, metal box she hid under her bed, not the past which she rued so often, the longing for days in school before she left to join her mother to see the inside of people's dirty laundry and hear the scrape of steel wool against aluminium.Life would all be good if only she opened the window.She felt light and easy as she slid the frame and let the air in.Behind her, the gathered dust particles scattered and settled into positions they were looking for.

P.S-No title yet, if you can think of a good one, please do.
P.P.S-If you relate the Rs.12 per kilo bhindi thing to 3 idiots, you have serious issues.However if you do realize that tamatar was once Rs.40 per kilo, you've my blessings!

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Resolutely irresolute!

Yeah, I tried to resist this whole new year affair, you know, wondering how freaking quickly 2009 passed(it so did, I swear!) and looking back on what was good and what was bad and the usual attachment of great importance to such a trivial event.I did not wish anyone voluntarily, just managed to say 'Same to you' to anyone who believed that a year that started with an examination(O.S exam at that) can be happy.Uber-optimistic.Whatever.

I make resolutions every year, announce it to whoever will listen like a classic jackass and then get laughed at when I break each one of my resolutions the very next day(I think the shortest span has been two hours, when I promised myself I wouldn't eat any cakes and assorted high calorie junk and ended up gorging on three pieces of horrible, chocolate cake, not that it being chocolate had anything to do with it being horrible, I think the eggs were bad or something) But this year, I somehow have a stronger resolve to keep up at least few of the resolutions I make. Here's a list of things I plan to achieve by the end of 2010(Brain says "Achieve?Yeah right!"):

1)Read at least 50 books.
Which implies at least one book per week.It is not a very big number but inspired by Falstaff (who happens to be someone I sort of worship), I'll keep a count this year.Started off with 'The Motorcycle Diaries' by Ernesto 'Che' Guevara. It was a delightful read, some larger-than-life phrases strewn around unnecessarily and surprisingly not very descriptive of the natural beauty of Latin America.I took three days to complete it, which is terrible by the way.But hey, I had an exam to write!(I hear laughter in my head.) Started with 'The Trial' by Franz Kafka today.Will complete it by tomorrow hopefully.I plan to read all the novels written by:
i) Jane Austen.
ii) Virginia Woolf
iii) E.M Forster
and also any novel(at least one novel) written by Roberto Bolano, Philip Roth, John Updike and Ernest Hemingway. I hope to read more of Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Ian McEwan. Anybody interested, my birthday is on the third of February and I celebrate most of the national holidays.


2) Do something about my *ahem*
Well if you dint get that, I plan to somehow do something about my(in hushed tones) weight. I usually never keep up any sort of a regime when it comes to diet and exercise.2010 might be different.Fingers crossed.


3)Learn a new language.
I want to say a foreign language but I'm open to any right now.


4)Try to be a 9 point someone.
Yes, I actually typed that.This semester was spent being over confident and dusting textbooks a day prior to my exams which led to quite an average performance(decent in fact) but it was abysmally disappointing to me. I'm hoping to take more of an(a long pause) interest in my present domain.Who knows, might turn out to be fun.


5)Try and be good.
It isn't all that hard.This includes fighting less with Amma, being punctual, helping out Amma at home, hanging out with my friends more often, keeping to myself, trying to be not depressed or apathetic all the time.It can't be that hard, can it?


6)Be less self-involved.
Wait a second.What do you know?This is the fastest I've ever broken any of my resolutions! :)


Have a good year!

P.S-I really must come up with better titles.