If you’re looking for some great literary utterances, or even a string of lucid and edifying thoughts, let me warn you, they aren’t to be found here.
At Shout, as a policy, we don’t indulge/ massage/ feed brains. If anything, we’re quite happy to suck on yours [accepted with thanks at the comment box.]
This is the personal weblog of a self-professed bottom feeder, in the interest of bottom feeding [not to be construed as nibbling on nether parts] and has never pretended to be otherwise. Any coherence or smattering of perceived intelligence is to be overlooked as an unintended glitch or the result of an unlikely obsession [a recent one being with a certain sparkling shortlistee on the booker forum.]
If I were as sharp and dazzling as my paranoia insists you’re expecting, I wouldn’t be offering my opinion here under a single-letter alias, I’d sell it to you at posh seminars with my entire ancestry on a handout cv.
Now.
If you’re still around, good luck. There is much to muck around in and I’m sure you’ll have a promisingly thoughtless time here. 107 posts on nothing is consistent, if little else. Go on, nose around. I don’t mind, as long as you don’t burden me with sharp observations about the world and its clattering revolutions, in anticipation of an intelligible response.
In fact, now that we’re on the topic of intelligence, I’ll let you in on my thoughts on it. I dislike the term deeply. Its use reveals a revolting, discriminatory and self-aggrandising perspective that is despicable at best. It suggests an idea that a certain kind of verifiable, quantifiable grasp of reality is laudable. It assumes a standpoint, wherein the judge of another’s ‘intelligence’ is armed with the tools to qualify and quantify another’s capacity to process information.
It is presumptuous.
It is as insulting as the label “dumb”. To be called intelligent by someone is tantamount to being told that someone is able to sum up your mental processes. And what do they base this judgment on? A few words? A few actions?
Is it not extraordinary that someone thinks they have the right, or capacity to judge what your brain – the only faculty that helps you make sense of your life, drives your perception of the world, allows you your identity – is capable of?
The audacity.
The naivety.
The delusion.
There are as many kinds of capacities as there are beings in the universe, and each, unique as it is, is just one.
So before you call someone “intelligent” or “dumb” the next time, try assessing what your own head is able to retain and assimilate.
Well I did leave you nugget after all, didn’t I? Incredible me.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
On why Jaanwar doesn’t need the Booker Prize
This is what the First City blog had to say about Animal’s People, one of the six books shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. The Prize was announced last evening in London. The winner is… well, inconsequential to this post.
I had commented in defense of the book in their comments section to the piece, but I deleted it for several reasons.
One is that I think it merits an entire post [long overdue now], and isn’t meant as a defense as much as it’s about my [selective] views on the book in the context of these remarks. So here goes…
On befriending Jaanwar [Animal]
“I used to be human once” is how he starts, hinting with his first words, that a genuine friendship between you and him is, if not impossible, a questionable proposition.
Jaanwar walks on all fours. His arse is higher than his head and he can smell out people who haven’t washed their crotches, in a crowd.
Jaanwar will have you know at the outset that he doesn’t value your opinion much. He’ll deliberately mislead you. He’ll pretend to trust you. He’ll have you buy into the ostensible innocence of his most outrageous deeds. He’s manipulative and he thinks it’s all well within his right to be so unreliable, because, after all, he isn’t human.
Jaanwar’s words are clever because he is clever. Chaalu. Street smart. You [Eyes] are meant to get beyond this cleverness. He’s very clear he doesn’t want your middle class friendship. It’s nothing but a burden to him unless of course it can either a.) help him walk straight b.) get him laid. At least that’s what he’ll have you know.
He’s telling you this story because it must be told. Because he has a duty. Because he has been infected, by the end, by your [Zafar’s] middle class notion of fairly won justice. So he thinks you will appreciate this story, because inexplicable as it is, that’s how, according to him, your world works.
The New York magazine had it spot on when they called it “scabrously funny”. Jaanwar is a wily mischief maker, and he’ll offer no apology for it. He, who shares an unspoken bond of mutual respect with scorpions, doesn’t care whether you think he's adopted an appalling trick of glorifying misery – his scabrousness as much as his disdain towards you and the many people who’ve expressed sympathy over ‘that night’ – or whether you feel pity. He is unmoved. Show him a miracle, not your sympathy or your hand in meaningless friendship.
He clearly wants to goad you [Eyes] over your assumption [which may well be a clichéd perception on his part] that all villains are bastards, and those that they perpetrate their villainy upon are allowed a meek dignity that comes with acceptance or then the haloed righteousness that must burn through nothing less than a raging rebellion. But it is possible, isn’t it, for someone to be both [in this case – a bit of] a bastard and the survivor of another’s bastardry.
Bhopal in a poor guise as Khaufpur
The metaphor was meant to be ‘ill’-disguised. Given that Bhopal does exist, that IS has spent 14 years writing and editing for the Bhopal Medical Appeal, and that Khaufpur is Bhopal, it would be unfair to suggest that setting it here is merely a gimmick designed to milk the most of Indian exotica. That said, the cover is a seriously unforgivable disaster, and I wouldn’t blame anyone for feeling this disgust, purely for its lack of visual appeal.
The Booker Prize
I’m not surprised that Animal hasn’t won the Booker. It is not ‘expansive’ enough in that it does not speak of generic things that are of interest or relevance to an ‘international audience’ [the definition of which is at best truly confounding] like American paranoia, sexual angst or dysfunctional social constructs; it doesn’t creep around sturdy, time tested pearls from English literature – either Biblical or non… and I’m sorry I cannot draw up any pithy observation about the fifth book.
And really, it doesn’t matter. The Booker forum has already brought it as far as it could in aid of what it [the book] set out to do – [get you past the cloying 1980s development sector imagery of the cover, and] be heard in what it tells you about the deep, alive and spreading roots of poison that Dow has sown in Bhopal, in the words of someone who continues to live with the repercussions each waking moment long before and well after we’re done dispensing our opinion on the literary merits of his voice.
I had commented in defense of the book in their comments section to the piece, but I deleted it for several reasons.
One is that I think it merits an entire post [long overdue now], and isn’t meant as a defense as much as it’s about my [selective] views on the book in the context of these remarks. So here goes…
On befriending Jaanwar [Animal]
“I used to be human once” is how he starts, hinting with his first words, that a genuine friendship between you and him is, if not impossible, a questionable proposition.
Jaanwar walks on all fours. His arse is higher than his head and he can smell out people who haven’t washed their crotches, in a crowd.
Jaanwar will have you know at the outset that he doesn’t value your opinion much. He’ll deliberately mislead you. He’ll pretend to trust you. He’ll have you buy into the ostensible innocence of his most outrageous deeds. He’s manipulative and he thinks it’s all well within his right to be so unreliable, because, after all, he isn’t human.
Jaanwar’s words are clever because he is clever. Chaalu. Street smart. You [Eyes] are meant to get beyond this cleverness. He’s very clear he doesn’t want your middle class friendship. It’s nothing but a burden to him unless of course it can either a.) help him walk straight b.) get him laid. At least that’s what he’ll have you know.
He’s telling you this story because it must be told. Because he has a duty. Because he has been infected, by the end, by your [Zafar’s] middle class notion of fairly won justice. So he thinks you will appreciate this story, because inexplicable as it is, that’s how, according to him, your world works.
The New York magazine had it spot on when they called it “scabrously funny”. Jaanwar is a wily mischief maker, and he’ll offer no apology for it. He, who shares an unspoken bond of mutual respect with scorpions, doesn’t care whether you think he's adopted an appalling trick of glorifying misery – his scabrousness as much as his disdain towards you and the many people who’ve expressed sympathy over ‘that night’ – or whether you feel pity. He is unmoved. Show him a miracle, not your sympathy or your hand in meaningless friendship.
He clearly wants to goad you [Eyes] over your assumption [which may well be a clichéd perception on his part] that all villains are bastards, and those that they perpetrate their villainy upon are allowed a meek dignity that comes with acceptance or then the haloed righteousness that must burn through nothing less than a raging rebellion. But it is possible, isn’t it, for someone to be both [in this case – a bit of] a bastard and the survivor of another’s bastardry.
Bhopal in a poor guise as Khaufpur
The metaphor was meant to be ‘ill’-disguised. Given that Bhopal does exist, that IS has spent 14 years writing and editing for the Bhopal Medical Appeal, and that Khaufpur is Bhopal, it would be unfair to suggest that setting it here is merely a gimmick designed to milk the most of Indian exotica. That said, the cover is a seriously unforgivable disaster, and I wouldn’t blame anyone for feeling this disgust, purely for its lack of visual appeal.
The Booker Prize
I’m not surprised that Animal hasn’t won the Booker. It is not ‘expansive’ enough in that it does not speak of generic things that are of interest or relevance to an ‘international audience’ [the definition of which is at best truly confounding] like American paranoia, sexual angst or dysfunctional social constructs; it doesn’t creep around sturdy, time tested pearls from English literature – either Biblical or non… and I’m sorry I cannot draw up any pithy observation about the fifth book.
And really, it doesn’t matter. The Booker forum has already brought it as far as it could in aid of what it [the book] set out to do – [get you past the cloying 1980s development sector imagery of the cover, and] be heard in what it tells you about the deep, alive and spreading roots of poison that Dow has sown in Bhopal, in the words of someone who continues to live with the repercussions each waking moment long before and well after we’re done dispensing our opinion on the literary merits of his voice.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Streaming odious
It’s so much easier to write when you’re bleeding thoughts. Contentment is a spoilsport.
Not to say that I’m contented. ‘Twould be blasphemy [even at my age] to admit to such a horribly common state of being. To be so unthinkably indistinguishable from people.
When I was a teenager, brimming with inconceivable potential, I bled poetry.
One poem, my first, was about a candle. Burning bright, shedding light etc.
Another was about Anger.
A third yet, was about Hate.
I’m not sure if I wrote one on Love, but there was one about a Kiss.
Another was addressed to God. But I never completed it because I realised it was either going to use up all my words, or none.
I also sang “Those were the days my friend…” [learnt at a private school we attended, run by an ancient, crumbling British lady in Calcutta], with a special, reawakened understanding of a time I hadn’t yet experienced, but could already look back into my past from. Confusing. I know. It wasn’t then.
I wore a frown. I hated everything with consummate passion. I brooded deeply and darkly and inexplicably. I wrote my diary daily, often in such moods. I curled the ends of my ‘d’s. And I moved in an aura of being perennially misunderstood.
Now, however, I find in times of distress I can only muster up mildly ironic and largely vapid jokes that are amusing solely to my head. I laugh. And my laugh lines are actually deeper than my frown.
How did I get here?
How did I regress so significantly?
It is a question that I do not wish to ponder. Clearly, I have lost the capacity to question the order, significance and point in Being with such consuming intensity as that from which my teenage brain drew much sustenance and succour.
So I will respond to a tag [or two] instead.
***
My P-list
This one is from my beloved soul sis in Pinoy land: I’ve to compile a list of seven words with P that are especially meaningful to me [I think].
1.) Pinoy is a word I’ve included in my dictionary very recently. Post Blogger. My first Pinoy awakening [I believe I have some Pinoy blood that has been stirred] was when I ‘met’ HB on blog. I have come to adore him, as I have come to love my sister in spirit Lizza and the sassy Barnsleyian Diva. The latest addition to this tribe is the enchanting Migs Bassig. Someday I am going to indulge the Pinoy blood coursing through my veins with the most debauched holiday across this fascinating archipelago of 7107 islands [can you believe it?] with this delightful extended family of mine.
2.) Potty is self-explanatory, and part of H’s uniform – head to toe. The other day, exhausted from spilling gin-and-tonic on the dance floor, my very vivacious [and possibly as inebriated] friend Go(ld)phish suggested a theme party – “we *slur* must preszhent ourszhelves aszh our online identiteeszh”. It was decided unanimously that I must attend as a deranged turd.
3.) Posterior and posterity: which for me are so close in meaning and colour, that it matters not which I use, and where. I have both in abundance. One – with due thanks to my paternal grandmother’s very insistent and domineering genes; and the other – creditable to a humongous and long-standing delusion of imminent greatness. Someday, both will get me stuck in something very murky. I am almost certain.
4.) Pig and pink: which are again very close in hue and weightiness. They have in different ways ruled a large part of my life, and I have been undeniably enslaved to both at various junctures of H-history [which is not a stutter]. Sometimes the [Golden] Pig has been the boyfriend. Sometimes the boyfriend has been a pig. Sometimes the pig is pink. And sometimes pink is pig. It is confusing and time consuming to differentiate between the two, and frankly, I don’t see the need.
5.) Pert. Sweet, short and sassy. Something that my posts never are.
I’ve completed the quota for my list of Ps. But for the record, I also like more literary sounding words like prosaic, probability, pernicious, pestilence, percolator and potential-packed. I also like double-entendre [which could perhaps sometimes start with a 'p' depending on how cleverly you enunciate.]
***
Five Nights
This one’s from Brothah HB.
I must recount five of my most remarkable nights. I will add here that this tag was actually about the five best nights, but I’ve taken the liberty to modify it a bit. These are nights that will remain forever imprinted in my memory for reasons that you should best judge for yourselves, fair readers.
1.) The night I discovered the Dehradoonis – an elderly couple from Dehradoon – were actually a pair of evil blood-thirsty ghosts. They had a lime green passenger bus into which they lured unsuspecting travellers who Mrs. Dehradooni, in all her tiny old-lady frailness, proceeded to disembowel with a large glinting carving knife, spilling great rivers of blood down lime green steps. I haven’t yet lived down the full horror of how I escaped their clutches. But what really traumatised me is the memory of my family howling with laughter when I recounted my brush with this evil couple the next morning.
2.) The night I discovered I was a Nazi. I had a ginger beard when it started. I was on a trawler, hunting down members of the Jewish resistance, much against my wishes, scouring the river, seeking signs of life amidst the densely packed stream of bodies floating along the current. I was labouring under a deep underlying sense of discomfort. There was something that I needed to be aware of. At one point I too was in the water, floating on my back beside a body. Suddenly its head turned, and a pair of very large, bulbous, angry eyes glared at me. I turned the other way, pretending I hadn’t noticed that ‘it’ was alive. Suddenly there was talk of breasts. I looked down to discover that I had a pair of breasts and no ginger beard. Those big glaring eyes still haunt me. As does the sudden discovery of breasts and no ginger beard.
3.) The night that Carlos cracked open the baby’s head like a lizard egg. I was playing with the baby, tossing it higher and higher in the air, when my hands missed and the baby fell on its head. Carlos said it had a clot that must be removed immediately for the baby to survive. He cracked its skull open and sucked out the clot from the baby’s brain. It survived. Then Carlos became a spy and a few years later turned into me.
4.) The night the big pink spider and the big black spider waged a war. I had to write a script, I was sitting in a room, fretting over my lack of inspiration when the pink spider – it was as high as the doorway with legs that looked like they were made of shiny pink plastic detachable links – appeared. I was so frightened I spent most of the night battling with it. When I had almost managed to wound it fatally, the enormous black spider appeared, carrying a distinct aura of evil. Suddenly it became clear to me that the pink spider was the good spider that was going to help me complete my script. Shit, I thought.
5.) The night I was pottering about on an empty stage. I was sad. I wanted desperately to be part of the play. As I walked from end to end, contemplating the futility of it all, my footsteps became faster and faster, lighter and wider, till I was suddenly airborne. I had grown a pair of delicate silken muslin wings and I flew blithely around the stage, happier than I’ve ever remembered being. My mother said “I knew you could do it. See it wasn’t so tough was it?” The Sibling and my father waved out to me as they cheered me on. The next day I was cast as the fairy princess in the play and the audience applauded with abandon.
***
Not to say that I’m contented. ‘Twould be blasphemy [even at my age] to admit to such a horribly common state of being. To be so unthinkably indistinguishable from people.
When I was a teenager, brimming with inconceivable potential, I bled poetry.
One poem, my first, was about a candle. Burning bright, shedding light etc.
Another was about Anger.
A third yet, was about Hate.
I’m not sure if I wrote one on Love, but there was one about a Kiss.
Another was addressed to God. But I never completed it because I realised it was either going to use up all my words, or none.
I also sang “Those were the days my friend…” [learnt at a private school we attended, run by an ancient, crumbling British lady in Calcutta], with a special, reawakened understanding of a time I hadn’t yet experienced, but could already look back into my past from. Confusing. I know. It wasn’t then.
I wore a frown. I hated everything with consummate passion. I brooded deeply and darkly and inexplicably. I wrote my diary daily, often in such moods. I curled the ends of my ‘d’s. And I moved in an aura of being perennially misunderstood.
Now, however, I find in times of distress I can only muster up mildly ironic and largely vapid jokes that are amusing solely to my head. I laugh. And my laugh lines are actually deeper than my frown.
How did I get here?
How did I regress so significantly?
It is a question that I do not wish to ponder. Clearly, I have lost the capacity to question the order, significance and point in Being with such consuming intensity as that from which my teenage brain drew much sustenance and succour.
So I will respond to a tag [or two] instead.
***
My P-list
This one is from my beloved soul sis in Pinoy land: I’ve to compile a list of seven words with P that are especially meaningful to me [I think].
1.) Pinoy is a word I’ve included in my dictionary very recently. Post Blogger. My first Pinoy awakening [I believe I have some Pinoy blood that has been stirred] was when I ‘met’ HB on blog. I have come to adore him, as I have come to love my sister in spirit Lizza and the sassy Barnsleyian Diva. The latest addition to this tribe is the enchanting Migs Bassig. Someday I am going to indulge the Pinoy blood coursing through my veins with the most debauched holiday across this fascinating archipelago of 7107 islands [can you believe it?] with this delightful extended family of mine.
2.) Potty is self-explanatory, and part of H’s uniform – head to toe. The other day, exhausted from spilling gin-and-tonic on the dance floor, my very vivacious [and possibly as inebriated] friend Go(ld)phish suggested a theme party – “we *slur* must preszhent ourszhelves aszh our online identiteeszh”. It was decided unanimously that I must attend as a deranged turd.
3.) Posterior and posterity: which for me are so close in meaning and colour, that it matters not which I use, and where. I have both in abundance. One – with due thanks to my paternal grandmother’s very insistent and domineering genes; and the other – creditable to a humongous and long-standing delusion of imminent greatness. Someday, both will get me stuck in something very murky. I am almost certain.
4.) Pig and pink: which are again very close in hue and weightiness. They have in different ways ruled a large part of my life, and I have been undeniably enslaved to both at various junctures of H-history [which is not a stutter]. Sometimes the [Golden] Pig has been the boyfriend. Sometimes the boyfriend has been a pig. Sometimes the pig is pink. And sometimes pink is pig. It is confusing and time consuming to differentiate between the two, and frankly, I don’t see the need.
5.) Pert. Sweet, short and sassy. Something that my posts never are.
I’ve completed the quota for my list of Ps. But for the record, I also like more literary sounding words like prosaic, probability, pernicious, pestilence, percolator and potential-packed. I also like double-entendre [which could perhaps sometimes start with a 'p' depending on how cleverly you enunciate.]
***
Five Nights
This one’s from Brothah HB.
I must recount five of my most remarkable nights. I will add here that this tag was actually about the five best nights, but I’ve taken the liberty to modify it a bit. These are nights that will remain forever imprinted in my memory for reasons that you should best judge for yourselves, fair readers.
1.) The night I discovered the Dehradoonis – an elderly couple from Dehradoon – were actually a pair of evil blood-thirsty ghosts. They had a lime green passenger bus into which they lured unsuspecting travellers who Mrs. Dehradooni, in all her tiny old-lady frailness, proceeded to disembowel with a large glinting carving knife, spilling great rivers of blood down lime green steps. I haven’t yet lived down the full horror of how I escaped their clutches. But what really traumatised me is the memory of my family howling with laughter when I recounted my brush with this evil couple the next morning.
2.) The night I discovered I was a Nazi. I had a ginger beard when it started. I was on a trawler, hunting down members of the Jewish resistance, much against my wishes, scouring the river, seeking signs of life amidst the densely packed stream of bodies floating along the current. I was labouring under a deep underlying sense of discomfort. There was something that I needed to be aware of. At one point I too was in the water, floating on my back beside a body. Suddenly its head turned, and a pair of very large, bulbous, angry eyes glared at me. I turned the other way, pretending I hadn’t noticed that ‘it’ was alive. Suddenly there was talk of breasts. I looked down to discover that I had a pair of breasts and no ginger beard. Those big glaring eyes still haunt me. As does the sudden discovery of breasts and no ginger beard.
3.) The night that Carlos cracked open the baby’s head like a lizard egg. I was playing with the baby, tossing it higher and higher in the air, when my hands missed and the baby fell on its head. Carlos said it had a clot that must be removed immediately for the baby to survive. He cracked its skull open and sucked out the clot from the baby’s brain. It survived. Then Carlos became a spy and a few years later turned into me.
4.) The night the big pink spider and the big black spider waged a war. I had to write a script, I was sitting in a room, fretting over my lack of inspiration when the pink spider – it was as high as the doorway with legs that looked like they were made of shiny pink plastic detachable links – appeared. I was so frightened I spent most of the night battling with it. When I had almost managed to wound it fatally, the enormous black spider appeared, carrying a distinct aura of evil. Suddenly it became clear to me that the pink spider was the good spider that was going to help me complete my script. Shit, I thought.
5.) The night I was pottering about on an empty stage. I was sad. I wanted desperately to be part of the play. As I walked from end to end, contemplating the futility of it all, my footsteps became faster and faster, lighter and wider, till I was suddenly airborne. I had grown a pair of delicate silken muslin wings and I flew blithely around the stage, happier than I’ve ever remembered being. My mother said “I knew you could do it. See it wasn’t so tough was it?” The Sibling and my father waved out to me as they cheered me on. The next day I was cast as the fairy princess in the play and the audience applauded with abandon.
***
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Globe trotters
Waking up to a phone alarm is like dipping your toes in acid. You’re sharply aware of how it pierces through every membrane of dream, thought, eyelid, brain.
This morning my phone did a relentless little discordant vibratory jig very not in step with the alarm audio. It is certifiably the most pissing-off thing to wake up to such flagrant disregard for rhythm [this, despite my evident lack of any sort of aural perception.]
*Unnameable Cellular Phone Company*, bumshines, at least get the spurty vibrations right; those little ones which frivolously skirt around the longer ones, trying pathetically hard to sound useful. See, I don’t mind a continuous steady vibration. It is reliably annoying. But I don’t take kindly to such startling schizoid shudders thrusting obscenely at my pillow with mounting desperation, WHILE my head is on it.
This is particularly offensive and distressing on Disco Morning.
Disco Morning is the morning you wake up in keen anticipation of Disco Night.
Disco Night is the night you show them what you’ve got.
Thus, rudely awakened by an indecent alarm, I epilated.
I painted my toe nails toxic pink.
I ironed my happy shiny shirt.
I hemmed in my sequined belt.
I polished my black patent ho-pumps with a bit-o-spit.
I shined up my silver domina neck-piece with toothpaste.
I tossed my glitter face cream in my black bag.
I packed in the big glistering globe I had laboured over on Sunday.
There I was, ready to go to office.
I wished my parents a fond farewell aware that things would be different somehow the next time I saw them, knowing, as I do, that the universe can shift in keen though imperceptible ways by the flash of a disco globe.
I’m sitting in office. I have chewed my nails down to my knuckles, I have written out this post. Edited it endlessly. Cyberslacked my brain out of its obsessiveness. My pink toes are burning up; my trotters are convulsing with febrile flashes.
I have passed the day, somehow.
The time has come people. I can barely say bye.
This morning my phone did a relentless little discordant vibratory jig very not in step with the alarm audio. It is certifiably the most pissing-off thing to wake up to such flagrant disregard for rhythm [this, despite my evident lack of any sort of aural perception.]
*Unnameable Cellular Phone Company*, bumshines, at least get the spurty vibrations right; those little ones which frivolously skirt around the longer ones, trying pathetically hard to sound useful. See, I don’t mind a continuous steady vibration. It is reliably annoying. But I don’t take kindly to such startling schizoid shudders thrusting obscenely at my pillow with mounting desperation, WHILE my head is on it.
This is particularly offensive and distressing on Disco Morning.
Disco Morning is the morning you wake up in keen anticipation of Disco Night.
Disco Night is the night you show them what you’ve got.
Thus, rudely awakened by an indecent alarm, I epilated.
I painted my toe nails toxic pink.
I ironed my happy shiny shirt.
I hemmed in my sequined belt.
I polished my black patent ho-pumps with a bit-o-spit.
I shined up my silver domina neck-piece with toothpaste.
I tossed my glitter face cream in my black bag.
I packed in the big glistering globe I had laboured over on Sunday.
There I was, ready to go to office.
I wished my parents a fond farewell aware that things would be different somehow the next time I saw them, knowing, as I do, that the universe can shift in keen though imperceptible ways by the flash of a disco globe.
I’m sitting in office. I have chewed my nails down to my knuckles, I have written out this post. Edited it endlessly. Cyberslacked my brain out of its obsessiveness. My pink toes are burning up; my trotters are convulsing with febrile flashes.
I have passed the day, somehow.
The time has come people. I can barely say bye.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Angst [is the turd prince of shitty titles, which is why it’s] over You
My blog, I’ve realised, is a load of scat and gas.
Mostly it’s depressing to fully comprehend how little I’ve managed to say through such a barrage of verbiage; for the rest it’s gut-drowning embarrassing.
But before you come bustling in with boisterous good cheer and a great clucking cacophony of protest and sympathy [see how formidably foul my mood is?] consider this:
How much do you really know about my much primped and preened and strutted head?
Hanh?
Be honest.
Gotcha potcha. Ha.
Before you scratch yours and wonder aloud, allow me:
All you really know, and after over a 100 reiterations of the same in as many ways as shit can be pasted on toast, is that it houses a brain which is divided in a left lobe and a right lobe, which by some stroke of genius, yours or mine, you’ve been conned into believing is a singularly extraordinary act of deviance.
The gleaming cherry on top, of course, is the Walt Disney cutesy personality each has.
Bravo H, what a fucking fucking idea.
But do you even know what I think about Bin Laden or Godhra?
Do you know what I think about the UN policy on controlling the spread of Avian Flu?
Do you know what I think about Pratibha Patil’s election to the President’s post?
Do you know what I think about the rising price of diesel?
No Ma’am. You just know that I speak in elaborate parables of shit.
Because honestly, I don’t think about these things. I just skip like a donkey, sing like a toad, hop like a rhino as I bumble heedlessly on this highway, feeling great gushes of overreaching achievement at every arse-analogy I can squeeze through my tear ducts.
So it should come as no surprise that suddenly, with a borrowed perspective that I chanced by on the internet the other day, I’ve become acutely aware of how nothing this is. This Shout. This hollow excrement of noise in cyberspace.
I’m aghast at what you must think. You dear reader, who’s lavished your attention, time and thought on our corner here.
Are you for real?
Or are you a kinky connoisseur of such trembling whiffles of flatulence as I’ve been passing for words here?
No. Don’t answer.
Because either way beloved reader, this is to say: I cherish you. Thank you for all the appreciation. This far into our relationship, I accept you for who you are.
Mostly it’s depressing to fully comprehend how little I’ve managed to say through such a barrage of verbiage; for the rest it’s gut-drowning embarrassing.
But before you come bustling in with boisterous good cheer and a great clucking cacophony of protest and sympathy [see how formidably foul my mood is?] consider this:
How much do you really know about my much primped and preened and strutted head?
Hanh?
Be honest.
Gotcha potcha. Ha.
Before you scratch yours and wonder aloud, allow me:
All you really know, and after over a 100 reiterations of the same in as many ways as shit can be pasted on toast, is that it houses a brain which is divided in a left lobe and a right lobe, which by some stroke of genius, yours or mine, you’ve been conned into believing is a singularly extraordinary act of deviance.
The gleaming cherry on top, of course, is the Walt Disney cutesy personality each has.
Bravo H, what a fucking fucking idea.
But do you even know what I think about Bin Laden or Godhra?
Do you know what I think about the UN policy on controlling the spread of Avian Flu?
Do you know what I think about Pratibha Patil’s election to the President’s post?
Do you know what I think about the rising price of diesel?
No Ma’am. You just know that I speak in elaborate parables of shit.
Because honestly, I don’t think about these things. I just skip like a donkey, sing like a toad, hop like a rhino as I bumble heedlessly on this highway, feeling great gushes of overreaching achievement at every arse-analogy I can squeeze through my tear ducts.
So it should come as no surprise that suddenly, with a borrowed perspective that I chanced by on the internet the other day, I’ve become acutely aware of how nothing this is. This Shout. This hollow excrement of noise in cyberspace.
I’m aghast at what you must think. You dear reader, who’s lavished your attention, time and thought on our corner here.
Are you for real?
Or are you a kinky connoisseur of such trembling whiffles of flatulence as I’ve been passing for words here?
No. Don’t answer.
Because either way beloved reader, this is to say: I cherish you. Thank you for all the appreciation. This far into our relationship, I accept you for who you are.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Karma Chameleon
I’ve been written about if you please. Under an alias of course, because it has nothing to do with my achievements [when they be, if and ever]. Well, okay, not in the cold cash-like material sense, or even in the Nobel contribution to humankind sense but more for the unwitting abuse I’ve heaped upon my self. Once upon a time.
So the writer of this piece, she interviewed me, charmed my toes off and got me to say all sorts of droll things until I realised that I was saying them about myself. You see it’s all very well to have my fifteen minutes of fame, but thank you very much, I’ll have them when the Pulitzer committee chances fortuitously by this page.
So after having partaken of a genteel cup of earl grey with me, when she left carrying her cloud of charm quite suddenly out of the room, I retrieved my senses rapidly and sent her a pathetic little text, clinging to as much dignity as the abbreviated lettering of sms allows, saying “pl, change name. thank u v much”
To which she replied “ok” after a gut wrenching, swear-vocabulary exhausting four and a half minutes.
So yesterday when the magazine man came with the latest edition of The Magazine, I raced through it to discover that I’d been quoted, under a not real name that’s shuddersomely close to my real name. It is that obscene mispronunciation of my name that sets my teeth on edge and makes me a very very tight-lipped person [in all its florid interpretations].
But what really caught my eye and stopped me in my track [which, given that even during my most lucid moments I’ve the attention span of a split lizard, isn’t saying much] was this: appended to my thinly masked not real first name, was the name that has become my secret nemesis.
Secret, because we like to pretend we don’t notice these things. Nemesis, because two successive boyfriends-with-the-same-surname down it’s become difficult not to notice; especially since, in one of those incestuous quirks of history or quirks of historical incest [we might never discover which] we’ve discovered that this particular clan of ‘said surname’ are ALL related to one another.
So, this surname that reeks of historical quirks and axed-Xs now has the dodgy distinction of being the ONLY surname our little writer could trawl up from the cacophony of Indian surnames that clutter one’s surname consciousness – that little corner devoted solely to remembering and slotting people by their surnames [something that we excel at so excellently in these parts] – to attach to my not real name.
But.
Then I figured, breathing deeply, exhaling impurity, inhaling goodliness, that there are so many widely, gaily, uniquely different reasons in the world to get pissy. Why blame one’s emotional orientation on a lovely little girl who was only trying to do her job?
See that’s the thing about little girls and little boys who dimple their sunshine smiles at you, setting the room aglow with gay showers of charm and sweetness. It’s difficult to remain pissy, even if they show you up for a deluded loon, armed as they are with damning evidence that “you said so yourself”.
Reminds me of a recent episode in my soon-to-be short-lived career as a filmmaker, when I showered similar meteors of charm in the decadent drawing room of my English teacher from college, conning her into the most atrocious self-lampooning interview I have ever conducted, as I sipped on delicately brewed Darjeeling tea from her stodgy English teacups.
Obviously, there is some great karmic cycle at work here.
So the writer of this piece, she interviewed me, charmed my toes off and got me to say all sorts of droll things until I realised that I was saying them about myself. You see it’s all very well to have my fifteen minutes of fame, but thank you very much, I’ll have them when the Pulitzer committee chances fortuitously by this page.
So after having partaken of a genteel cup of earl grey with me, when she left carrying her cloud of charm quite suddenly out of the room, I retrieved my senses rapidly and sent her a pathetic little text, clinging to as much dignity as the abbreviated lettering of sms allows, saying “pl, change name. thank u v much”
To which she replied “ok” after a gut wrenching, swear-vocabulary exhausting four and a half minutes.
So yesterday when the magazine man came with the latest edition of The Magazine, I raced through it to discover that I’d been quoted, under a not real name that’s shuddersomely close to my real name. It is that obscene mispronunciation of my name that sets my teeth on edge and makes me a very very tight-lipped person [in all its florid interpretations].
But what really caught my eye and stopped me in my track [which, given that even during my most lucid moments I’ve the attention span of a split lizard, isn’t saying much] was this: appended to my thinly masked not real first name, was the name that has become my secret nemesis.
Secret, because we like to pretend we don’t notice these things. Nemesis, because two successive boyfriends-with-the-same-surname down it’s become difficult not to notice; especially since, in one of those incestuous quirks of history or quirks of historical incest [we might never discover which] we’ve discovered that this particular clan of ‘said surname’ are ALL related to one another.
So, this surname that reeks of historical quirks and axed-Xs now has the dodgy distinction of being the ONLY surname our little writer could trawl up from the cacophony of Indian surnames that clutter one’s surname consciousness – that little corner devoted solely to remembering and slotting people by their surnames [something that we excel at so excellently in these parts] – to attach to my not real name.
But.
Then I figured, breathing deeply, exhaling impurity, inhaling goodliness, that there are so many widely, gaily, uniquely different reasons in the world to get pissy. Why blame one’s emotional orientation on a lovely little girl who was only trying to do her job?
See that’s the thing about little girls and little boys who dimple their sunshine smiles at you, setting the room aglow with gay showers of charm and sweetness. It’s difficult to remain pissy, even if they show you up for a deluded loon, armed as they are with damning evidence that “you said so yourself”.
Reminds me of a recent episode in my soon-to-be short-lived career as a filmmaker, when I showered similar meteors of charm in the decadent drawing room of my English teacher from college, conning her into the most atrocious self-lampooning interview I have ever conducted, as I sipped on delicately brewed Darjeeling tea from her stodgy English teacups.
Obviously, there is some great karmic cycle at work here.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Last Call for the Magic Carpet
It is the season for Adventure.
The moon told her so.
She knows what you’re thinking. That her mind works like trashy poetry. So? If it does.
It’s begun, this season of adventure, for her, soaked in the mellow light of a bloody moon, planted with a duck’s kiss.
Like a cloud veil, it’s crept into her dreams, lending them a delicate muslin haze. From a writer’s acid pen it’s seeped into her sleep, and poured into the lips of a duck.
This morning she awoke with the duck’s kiss on her lips. A moment earlier upon a staircase, depressing and under lit, the duck and she paused for a fleeting eternity, weak-kneed from running from the police. Someone robbed. Something lost. Trust misplaced. Suspicion unfounded. And two fugitives, trembling with buried words and bursting lungs, spiralling down this murky plot.
Against the betel-spit spattered walls of a dingy stairwell, finally, duck paused to make a clumsy confession. The words she could not catch, just the shapes he threw from his pleasing duck mouth. She, being older, wiser and the princess of her dreams, just smouldered her eyes and parted her lips to receive a volley of adorable duck shapes.
So, it’s begun. Exiting one world, riding the shifting shadows of nowhereness, swinging by uncertain adventures like a lunging langur, before she finds her footing surely, again, in now.
Till then, duck, she’ll adore you her dreams.
Meanwhile, may the carpet remain aloft and the adventures never cease.
The moon told her so.
She knows what you’re thinking. That her mind works like trashy poetry. So? If it does.
It’s begun, this season of adventure, for her, soaked in the mellow light of a bloody moon, planted with a duck’s kiss.
Like a cloud veil, it’s crept into her dreams, lending them a delicate muslin haze. From a writer’s acid pen it’s seeped into her sleep, and poured into the lips of a duck.
This morning she awoke with the duck’s kiss on her lips. A moment earlier upon a staircase, depressing and under lit, the duck and she paused for a fleeting eternity, weak-kneed from running from the police. Someone robbed. Something lost. Trust misplaced. Suspicion unfounded. And two fugitives, trembling with buried words and bursting lungs, spiralling down this murky plot.
Against the betel-spit spattered walls of a dingy stairwell, finally, duck paused to make a clumsy confession. The words she could not catch, just the shapes he threw from his pleasing duck mouth. She, being older, wiser and the princess of her dreams, just smouldered her eyes and parted her lips to receive a volley of adorable duck shapes.
So, it’s begun. Exiting one world, riding the shifting shadows of nowhereness, swinging by uncertain adventures like a lunging langur, before she finds her footing surely, again, in now.
Till then, duck, she’ll adore you her dreams.
Meanwhile, may the carpet remain aloft and the adventures never cease.
Friday, August 24, 2007
The Booker, a return to H and a Poster: in celebration of the Hundredth!
Ladies and laddies, it gives me goose bumps and suchlike bordering-on-obscene pleasure to announce that our very own [us being his one-post-pimp] Mr. Indra Sinha has been longlisted for the Booker Bleeding Prize! Woo. I could've been his mother right now. Or agent. Or nanny. Honestly, I feel all billowy-nostriled and choky-proud.
Mr. Sinha with Holly - 1999.
Such is my pleasure at this felicitous occasion that I’ve been making proud announcements across the breadth of my vastly limited social sphere.
Yesterday as mum was watching cricket and pa was forwarding bawdy jokes to family and friends to let them know we’re all well and able, among other things, to appreciate putrid internet humour, I burst upon this gentle familial scene with my breathless news.
H: “Indra Sinha’s been long listed for the Booker Prize!”
Ma raised an eyebrow. Should I know more about this Indra boy?
Pa put on his pissy-face. “Who’s this Indra chap?”
A legend to begin with, parents.
Oh sorry. Rephrase: A fifty plus, married man with several children and a dog, living at a reasonably safe distance in the south of France, who happens to be a writer.
H. by U.
Yay! For returning to myself.
Yay! For Indra Sinha and his “scabrously funny” book that I hope will achieve more than what Sunil ever imagined.
Yay! For a spanking fresh start.
Mr. Sinha with Holly - 1999.
Such is my pleasure at this felicitous occasion that I’ve been making proud announcements across the breadth of my vastly limited social sphere.
Yesterday as mum was watching cricket and pa was forwarding bawdy jokes to family and friends to let them know we’re all well and able, among other things, to appreciate putrid internet humour, I burst upon this gentle familial scene with my breathless news.
H: “Indra Sinha’s been long listed for the Booker Prize!”
Ma raised an eyebrow. Should I know more about this Indra boy?
Pa put on his pissy-face. “Who’s this Indra chap?”
A legend to begin with, parents.
Oh sorry. Rephrase: A fifty plus, married man with several children and a dog, living at a reasonably safe distance in the south of France, who happens to be a writer.
Somewhere, deep in my head, I truly believe that my discovery of this star is intimately linked with the Booker Prize longlist in the Larger Scheme of Things.
It is with such idolatrous affection as only a fledgling poseur pimp can feel for a stalwart Madame running for Entertainer of the Year, and much skippety-twirly-go-round delight in my heart, I share with you, beloved readers, a most fortuitous coincidence – our own little cause for celebration at Shout – our 100th post, TA DA!
On this occasion, brimming as I am with goodwill spurred by Mr. Sinha’s success and my prolificity, I’ve also decided to be gracious about a certain tag that the lovely Pinay in Barnsley has clipped to my tail. Arse.
So it goes:
I must give you a glimpse of H. Preferably with a photograph or forty, and the correct spelling of my name, because David Airey says:
”Putting a face to the name of someone you haven’t met helps recognition and adds a more personal feel to your conversations.”
Given that I’m so anal about protecting my anonymity, obviously Mr. Airey and I do not share similar views on blogging and its effect on our social lives, making this tag a serious challenge to my staying-gracious-power. I mean, really, who asked me to go and stick my fingers in my nose and say, “Thank you very much, I’ll do it”?
But then again, I do like Madonna [of Barnsley.]
So.
I thought hard. I wandered up all sorts of dusty galis, seeking to scavenge off bits of myself, wondering what to put here in a little self-pimping carnival – should I write you bits from my diaries as I grew… But my head leapt up at me before I could complete the thought. Shuddersomeshite noh! I’d rather be slow roasted on a skewer. Next I wondered if I should I treat to you a little biopic of how H transformed from a villainous looking child to a blimpy teenager and leave it there, for you to imagine the now-in-full-bloom scat-creature? Boooooooooring. After which my head threw up another sparkler – Should I write you a little fable?
Thankfully, I didn’t have time to respond to this last one.
For as I was contemplating all of this, I happened not to feel the ground shift, I happened not to see the sky curl up and I happened not to hear the beasts panic. What I did feel perhaps, and I can’t ever be sure, is the little oval heat of a soft kiss on my brow.
You can imagine the shock I received when I looked up to see that everything had turned around. My world. My head. My toes.
The pixel of my dreams had changed. Irrevocably.
So that’s why, in celebration, my dollies, here’s a magnificent poster that might tell you a bit about H, if you’re sharp. It’s been created by U, who is the photographer and designer of this piece of trash-art. He thought I was potty to suggest this Campbell soup, H-imprinted, self-adoring artwork. But you’d know why, right?
H. by U.Yay! For returning to myself.
Yay! For Indra Sinha and his “scabrously funny” book that I hope will achieve more than what Sunil ever imagined.
Yay! For a spanking fresh start.
Monday, August 06, 2007
My ongoing affair with clichés – an update
These are a few of the very vomity-clichéd things I’ve done in the last few days which almost qualify Shout as a racy chick-blog, and its author as the tantalising heroine of a chick-lit bestseller – How H Got Soaked, Put On a Few Kgs And Got a Life. Almost:
– Got Mughal-garden-waterworks drenched in the rain, which is a very delightful thing I’ve re-realised for the millionth time. I was walking, it was dark, I was alone and I was thinking about the rain and something else. Something else didn’t happen. But it rained. Violently. Suddenly. Joyously. I felt suitably psychic and all.
– Got Mughal-garden-waterworks drenched in the rain, which is a very delightful thing I’ve re-realised for the millionth time. I was walking, it was dark, I was alone and I was thinking about the rain and something else. Something else didn’t happen. But it rained. Violently. Suddenly. Joyously. I felt suitably psychic and all.
– Missed seeing the moon fill out, very sorely. Sometimes rain clouds aren’t a good thing.
– Bought myself a large box of dark immoral chocolates. I’d gone to M’s place. M lives next to The Chocolatier, at the heart of mini Bengal where fish and football are Religion – which has nothing to do with chocolate, save perhaps for a very large big clichéd advertising notion [mine] of being. So it goes.
– Sat up all night and watched cheesy movies with M and talked and talked and talked – about all the usual things. Direction. Purpose. Where we’ve reached with both. And how the bastard at Chungwa cheated us of the shrimp in the shrimp talumein by putting chicken, which I’ve stopped eating. Bastard. That’s just how some relationships are. Comfortable.
Now I want my favourite cheap Sula white to complement the dark bitter-sweet and this big cocoa-fat cliché. And, while I’m asking, a throw-in miracle would be nice.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
[Vanquishing] Low Self Esteem
Keep your [under]pant[ie]s on, girls and boys; today’s lesson is about low self-esteem.
Low Self Esteem is a slithering, slimy, whiney bitch/ bastard. [Being of no specific gender, it reproduces more virulently than rabbits, rats or rashes.]
It can strike any time, without warning.
It usually attacks in one contiguous glutinous mass.
Lesson over, you may undress now.
***
I’ve been pottering about in my head, devising elaborate strategies on how to combat this Low Self Esteem thingummybobitch. But since it’s infiltrated my brain, severally, I figure there’s no point. I might as well acknowledge it with a conciliatory cup of earl grey and get on with the farkin’ business of plodding.
That’s just what I was doing actually, when one little girl who’s a writer where I work; a frolicsome sparkling beam of sunshine, said to me:
“H, this piece has been written beautifully. Your use of language is really beautiful.”
Now I could be bragging. I could. And beautiful is NOT a word I’d associate with myself or anything that I produce, biologically or otherwise; but let’s just put this most unbecoming cynicism aside for one moment, and consider this: I was feeling like Yama’s [pronounced ‘Yum’] toe jam all morning. Jaded. Defeated. Countless-ly trod upon by fate’s smelly feet; incompetent and ugly and fat and puffy eyed too, if you’re asking.
But after hearing this, I noticed in the bathroom mirror how flat my stomach is, how shiny my hair is, how evenly brown my nose is and how I can string a sentence or two without faltering. [This last I almost didn’t notice in the mirror, but being as I was engaged in my usual activity of impressing myself with a lengthy, well delivered speech upon the pot, I did.]
Low Self Esteem is obviously such a shallow bastard. Ha ha. Ha. And I’m feeling very sharp and dazzling again.
Okay, maybe not sharp. Or dazzling. But confident. Somewhat.
Low Self Esteem is a slithering, slimy, whiney bitch/ bastard. [Being of no specific gender, it reproduces more virulently than rabbits, rats or rashes.]
It can strike any time, without warning.
It usually attacks in one contiguous glutinous mass.
Lesson over, you may undress now.
***
I’ve been pottering about in my head, devising elaborate strategies on how to combat this Low Self Esteem thingummybobitch. But since it’s infiltrated my brain, severally, I figure there’s no point. I might as well acknowledge it with a conciliatory cup of earl grey and get on with the farkin’ business of plodding.
That’s just what I was doing actually, when one little girl who’s a writer where I work; a frolicsome sparkling beam of sunshine, said to me:
“H, this piece has been written beautifully. Your use of language is really beautiful.”
Now I could be bragging. I could. And beautiful is NOT a word I’d associate with myself or anything that I produce, biologically or otherwise; but let’s just put this most unbecoming cynicism aside for one moment, and consider this: I was feeling like Yama’s [pronounced ‘Yum’] toe jam all morning. Jaded. Defeated. Countless-ly trod upon by fate’s smelly feet; incompetent and ugly and fat and puffy eyed too, if you’re asking.
But after hearing this, I noticed in the bathroom mirror how flat my stomach is, how shiny my hair is, how evenly brown my nose is and how I can string a sentence or two without faltering. [This last I almost didn’t notice in the mirror, but being as I was engaged in my usual activity of impressing myself with a lengthy, well delivered speech upon the pot, I did.]
Low Self Esteem is obviously such a shallow bastard. Ha ha. Ha. And I’m feeling very sharp and dazzling again.
Okay, maybe not sharp. Or dazzling. But confident. Somewhat.
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