Limerence

She's in love with a glottal stop.

Dance baby

Ever get the feeling you want jump out of your skin, leap up on a pyre of dead wishes, smash your head into a billion unthinking bits, liberate your pieces in a lusty bellow of terror and wrath, throw your limbs about and dance. And dance. And dance your brain fucking blue?

?

Okay. Maybe not.

Jess asking.

Five songs

I was tagged once, long ago, to make a list of songs I’d like played at my funeral. There was no logic involved in how I chose them. A couple were evergreen favourites and the rest just popped in my head [no they didn’t – music never pops in my head. Cold springs don’t pop in Kutch. They trickle petulantly, after five and forty virginal cows birth five and forty full-grown healthy bulls under five and forty consecutive full moons.]

So when Ben asked me to make a list of my favourite five, I panicked. There’re only so many times virginal cows birth full-grown healthy bulls under full moons. You don’t challenge Providence with such injudicious frequency.

So I did the next best thing. I EB-ed* U into making a list. Not just any list. But a list of songs [since you’re so aurally aware and musically evolved, I said, massaging this inflatable nub of self-appreciation in his head] that characterise me.

Characterise you? He said, looking worried. As in the songs you like? I could swear he almost added – but there’s nothing to pick from, but he didn’t. Marriage has clearly worked wonders on his tongue. Mostly.

Nonono. I said with the golden ease of a greasy ileesh slipping through a Bengali fishnet. Why would I make you do something so nothing-ish, baba? I want you to do this because you have something special that I don’t have.

He beamed.

A unique perspective on me, I said, beaming back.

It’s like when I taste the raw pungency of mustard oil, I think of you [to him it is a compliment] there must be something you associate with me, na?

Ok he said. Nostrils flaring from the pressure of an over-massaged distended nub of self-admiration.

Thaaaaaaaaakeeeeeeeeeyoooooooooo. I gushed, overcome with genuine gratitude and love for my brother, and more importantly a deep excitement at the prospect of having a unique musical perspective on myself from someone who had had unequalled opportunity to observe and admire me since he was a baby and had compiled 101 gb of music along the way.

Big mistake, it turned out. For this is what he came up with:

***

Ani DiFranko – buildings and bridges



Or anything by Alanis Morisette. He added.
Why?
Why? He panicked. But that wasn’t part of the deal.
Of course it was. Do you think I care for the songs? I want the reason, I said, thumping my chest – the feeling of H-ness to it.
Okaaay. They both have a similar sort of errr… thought and errr… intensity to their music. Not just in what they’re saying but even the way they sing.
So you mean I’m angsty, hanh?
No ya. C’maawwwn. [he’s picked up this irritating way of refuting something in a way that he’s not really refuting it, but expects you not to confront him with it. Because. And that’s why it must be said with a jarring faux American accent. Because.]

It’s just… [and while he left this ellipsis hanging in the air, a wicked thought formed in his head] Well, he started afresh – firmly this time, it’s you. Just something about it reminds me of you. Here, he said, thumping his chest.

Madonna – La Isla Bonita



This is for the cheesy dated 80s side of you.
… But NOT in a bad way, he said, looking at my face.

Boy George – Karma Chameleon



For your general androgynous nature.

Stony silence.

No not in the way you look he added, close to tears now. But for your general appreciation of the general construct of androgyny.

My brother uses two words with alarming abandon when he’s nervous – general and pedagogy. When pedagogy enters the conversation you know there’s trouble. Thankfully this conversation was still creeping around general. We had two more songs to go, see.

And then, he added with what seemed like genuine fondness, getting uncomfortably close to something – and of course for its 80s charm.

Okay. I said. OKAY. You’re trying to say something to me, aren’t you?

Listen to the next one now, he said.

Outkast – Hey Ya

Outcast - Hey Ya link

Because they’ve got a nice quirkiness about them. It’s a nice mix of errr…

U, I said, THIS SOUNDS LIKE IT’S FROM THE 60IES. WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY?

He has this way of saying 60IES?!?!?!? Like you’ve gone farking off the edge. Like you’re hallucinating about pork chops in your tea. This so effing contemporary! Trust me. I wouldn’t associate anything from the 60ies with you. 80ies maybe.

Two seconds later he added: Weeeeeeeeeell, I guess what’s quirky about them is they mix retro elements with contemporary rhythm structures with a very ummm kind of… errr kind of a semi kitch space. You know, he added, warming up to his own voice, it’s like a vibrant poster using rich patterns and motifs.

It’s FUN, you mean, I suggested, to which he shrugged.

… and NOW moving on. He said. Moving on.

Bryan Adams – When you love a woman



Apparently I demand this in my idea of being adored.

It’s the Ooo pamper me side of you. Your girlie side, he said.

I don’t know… somehow, from my brother, it sounds like an effing accusation. Na?

And finally, his bonus song…

Carl Douglas - Everybody was kung fu fighting



For the inherent violent streak in you, he said affectionately. Shouting from behind closed doors and rolled up windows and all that fake bravado. He knew I’d take this one as a compliment.

My brother does know me.

***
But. Such sibling-ly love and the-advantage-of-a-lifetime’s-opportunity-to-observe-and-admire-you considered, never ask your brother which songs remind him of you. Despite a 100-and-1 gb collection of music from around the world, he’s going to pick the cheesiest pop off the top of his head, so he can quickly dispense with your stupid requests and race home to his lovely-like-jazz wife and a costlier-than-a-solid-gold-pair-o-bollix custom made analogue audio system.

***

* ElBowed, Emotionally-Blackmailed, and Elder-sibling-Bullied.

Heart of despair

A new moon has begun to wax today. 0% of Full.

Spattered already with the spray that rose up in surprise at CST, Cama Hospital, Nariman House, The Taj, The Trident [Which NDTV took a moment amid mayhem to explain was once Oberoi, but now Trident] interrupted by stray bullets tearing through skin and life. Painted in the helpless horror of shrapnel and anger smashing through the heart of a scarred city.

And I might as well write for a tabloid. Soak in the horror of death and pain and terror [which, even as I write this, I thank God a million times, hasn’t affected me – this mix of love for people and places and thoughts and moments, once defined by Bombay] and squeeze it here, in the hope that some of my sentimental dribble – this saved up trickle of indignation and unease and helpless rage will somehow infect you. Desert my gut and inhabit this stealthy corner, so that your incidental acknowledgement of it might absolve me of any residual guilt I feel for being unaffected. Because this time, it threatens not to dissipate by the next tea-break.

Slowly softly sweetly

A name is uttered. Light as a whisper.

A single syllable sung silently with the swish of a graceful hand. It means all sorts of things. It is for the girl that Zeus seduced who bore him three sons and flew up to become a doting moon around his crown. It is for the prime element of singleness that every moment implodes with the ferocity of a thousand suns. Okay maybe not a thousand. May even not quite be one. It is for the first tremor of a dragonfly’s wings that hum and hover in harmony. It is for all the horrid miles in between. Your lips. My ears. And yet, it’s here now. Home, finally.

Thank you for this heart warming, sweet collage my dear, beloved friend.

Butt you MUST

Today a two year old child poked me in my bottom and I didn’t find it cute.

No.

Today, I was standing at the OPD counter at a hospital, sounding all businesslike and haughty [my hairdo makes me think I can get things done faster], when I felt a half poke half pat on my bottom that made me whirl around in a temper only to see this startled little child at the bottom, still holding up its palm wondering what it had set in motion. It clearly had no idea this big bouncy blue bum belonged to someone. More specifically a pissy looking auntie who was mouthing very scary spank shaped words at him.

I cannot blame the child.

I need to effing exercise.

And now, since I’ve got your attention, in support across the seven seas, you must, MUST vote for Obama.

Blues, at 55 Bar

A smoky Saturday night at 55 Bar, a sun-baked girl slipped up to the mike. Eyes cut through thick swirls of musky scents, tall crinkly hairdos – alive and swaying to a deep blue rhythm swung in to listen closer. Glasses stopped clinking. An Asian couple crouching on the street outside peeped into this downstairs speakeasy womb and soon after, slunk into its dank warmth. A large lisping sad eyed ticket seller with a failed sales pitch settled on a nearby barstool.

A sweet, smiling, knowing sibling sipped slowly on baileys relaxed and unwound on a bed of ice. My girl, she thought, has found… something.

The bartender winked across his messy bunker, he knew how nervous she was. Three dirty martinis. That’s what it took for her to read, in ragged whispers, a love letter in blues.

This is for you, America.

***

You knew, didn’t you, that day when into the flat blue of the Houston sky, I sang along with a special lilt, this sweet sweet song on the radio. That’s when it occurred to you.

That with you I smiled, as I explored the gridness of NY, giddy with your softness seeped into me, the glad tint of all that I saw, through your eyes, through my eyes, the crisp newness of New York. The unfamiliar sharp cut of its skyline, the romance of its parks and the glow of its gilded statues, the abandon of its spirit and the intensity of its thrust in the heaving curtains of a heady underground rush that hung over sidewalk grates. Of its screaming sirens and steaming potholes, you listened and you watched, holding my breath in yours, as we gazed together upon eccentric brush strokes of unknowable dreams, veiled like this secret love burning in my gut.

In Chicago we caressed tips touching, the smooth surface of the Bean. Pressing down index fingers – yours on mine on the clicky button of a new D60, devouring new sights, cruising down Lakeshore Drive in a skylit mercedes. We plunged limbs entwined into the wide sweet emerald blue green open of the Lake, brushing wet toes, brown on white, grinding our feet into singing sand on a moonlit beach, exploring crowded corners of happy clichés, making them ours with unabashed pleasure.

And I too was with you, streaming soft fingers through your tresses on a balmy weekend highway, slipping through hot cracks between your head and helmet. No, it wasn’t the wind my darling, think again. And yes, that was me perched on the hefty swell of that sunny tank. Me imprinted on it. Me. Yours right then, for eternity.

You cheered, that evening, when for the first time I sang tortured karaoke notes. You laughed along, delighted as I was, at how much fun it is to be up on stage, a singing star. You knew then for all my life, how I’ve wanted to sing. And you cheered, knowing, as everyone who’s ever heard me, that they wouldn’t sign me EVER even if I was the last man standing. But I was a rock star, your star, for that one long jagged note.

It was you who circled my waist at Marquee the other night. So cheeky and self-assured, weren’t you, creeping up on me like that, without apology, roaring into my ear, flirting outrageously, touching me without permission! You thought your black tux and slick hair would seduce me, hanh? I thought about it later… what if it really had been you? Would I still have said no so vehemently?

It was you I turned to, at the last concluding frames of Wristcutters. You were the eyes at the end of the tunnel beyond light and life. You were in the curve of Rogen’s shapely rump [I’m sorry for the crassness of it, but it’s true] in his goofy smile and his crumpled shirt. We laughed together at his weeded up, bong hugging, doobie craving, ball grazing, posh-white-girl loving badass humour. And later, you loved the ‘u’ I put in humour.

Don’t tell me you didn’t see it coming. I don’t believe for a moment you didn’t know that feeling in the soft of your belly, the zero spot of your head. Examine it, my darling, and there, at the heart of your disbelief, you will find me.

We missed the absinthe party together, you and I. That, I shall always regret.

Someday, perhaps when you’re weary from digging into a distant past, and I am, well… I can’t give it all away can I? We’ll share that absinthe together at a crazy halfway rendezvous spot, somewhere above a mer-people’s den, engaging our wings above the Atlantic.

***

The brown girl, she slipped away into anonymity again. Big hair resumed its deep blue sway and the bartender; he went back to tossing glasses. A pair of like-headed siblings [one less tidy than the other, thanks to Turbo] cabbed a yellow ride home, and somewhere, across a fragrant, sleepy cornfield, a spider spun silver against a moon-bathed window sill.

Uncertain

I can’t remember now, from this morning, how I wanted to start this post.

There’s always THE phrase that begins it, na?

I had it, the moment I shook off the shattered glass from the shoot out. At the Ashram flyover. They were chasing Manmohan Singh’s envoy off the road, while guerrilla snipers [they might’ve been Mayawati’s commandos] from distant peripheries shot sleek bullets through tense air.

And where was I going, during curfew hour amid political turmoil? I think either to attend a sanity defying 11-part film at the festival, or a swim. [Don’t we have such an acute sense of juxtaposition, irony and drama? The Greeks really knew their shit.]

Somewhere, an official, high in the ranks plotted with cold precision. They had amputated his conscience gland decades ago. Apparently, it is a compulsory drill when you enrol. Those who don’t survive the operation are, naturally, considered martyred to patriotic duty. And I recollect thinking: so this is why… Why didn’t they tell us before?

Daylight, I’ve decided, creates confusion.

So Manmohan was whizzed away; his quiet, turbaned dignity bundled off in a dark screened, red-light-flashing blur.

A circus set up camp, just off the flyover. They had sharp shooting snipers and fire juggling politicians, bicycle balancing actors and lion taming heroines. A million sycophants thronged the gay canopied gates, and a raging stampede was born. Barkha captured the frenzy with valiant persistence while Renuka Chaudhury juggled offal-shaped slippery words with an experienced glove. Pranoy wielded a joystick in a remote OB van on Lodhi road. And then I saw, the road was crawling with an epidemic of cockroach winged OB vans.

Meanwhile, a sad eyed, blue turbaned fugitive snuck into the laundry room of a crumbling government bungalow in Moti Bagh. Nimbu pani was served and no one spoke. Least of all a shell shocked girl rudely stopped short of a sanity defying 11-part cinematic experience. [Or was it a swim?]

I awoke with the guilt of his downfall on my conscience. The Bhopalis had their best chance with him. Na?

Fated

And how.

Just heard from someone I’d crushed on, after 8 years. Someone whose 500cc Enfield coloured the sound of Enfields for me, forever after.

Just heard that 8 years ago he had fallen in love, over an incident I’d forgotten involving Band-Aid and “the pleasure of your healing touch”.

Just heard he got married this January.

Just heard he had to, because “I couldn’t find myself a girl, so my aunt did that and got me married”.

Just heard he sold his studly bike.

Just heard he wished he had taken me on a longer ride way back then, and was kicking himself that he hadn’t.

Just realised, that three and a half years ago, his interview in a magazine on the woman of his dreams, which I’d read with envy and wistfulness, was probably about...

Just wondered, yet again, how fate works.

Just realised, I’m grateful. Else I wouldn’t be here.

***

Such a much better place to be in, blogging about the non-incidence of it, na?

Famous last words OR Another one bites the dust, though not without a few words akin to clawing at the walls on a hellish descent

I thought I was inured to the insidious lure of facebook. I thought I could hold off against burgeoning peer pressure. I thought I was the stuff restraint was made of [and titanium]. I thought a lot, basically.

But as with all things I’ve thought through to a pulp, to emerge on the righteous side of opinion with something solidly unshakeable akin to a titanium fortified belief system, mostly not flattering and always well published from giddy heights; things which have somehow subsequently unfailingly managed to arrange themselves in the Larger Scheme of Things such that I’ve been forced into hugely embarrassing, no, rephrase: prodigiously humiliating instances of volte-face-ing which is an aggressively [often maliciously] active verb in these parts, so that I’m left nekkid and cold and defenceless amid the finely crumbled debris of my belief-stroke-dignity-stroke-senseofself [which is too perverse to be even mildly sensual] kissing the arse of fate in a karmic turd-fest: facebook has proven yet again, how treacherous [and overrated] it is – this business of thinking. And opining. In these parts.

Do I learn?

No. But thanks for asking.

In my lifetime, which has notched up quite a few years comprising phases and counter phases, I’ve made many resolute statements. Publicly. Not least about how I’d rather die than EVER like boys. About how I’d rather die than be all girlie and wear lipstick and care about my figure. About how I’d rather die than go to an all-girls’ college. About how I’d rather die than work on a mainstream Bollywood film. About how I’d rather die than go out with a Punjabi boy [or three]. About how I’d rather die than have anything to do with advertising or people in advertising. About how I’d rather die than reconsider my absolute and utterly illogical disgust toward a certain RJ. About how I’d rather die than patronise Malls. About how I’d rather die than apply for a visa to America*. About how I’d rather die than be on facebook. Etc.

What must be said for my head [which I clearly share a strained relationship with, involving occasional third-person grammar] is that it truly did die a bit each time. I did.

But back to facebook.

I have been known to state my position on it. Severally:

I said: In response to a friend who sent me an invite…

“My sister told me yesterday that she's just signed up on facebook. Somehow the world seems to be conspiring to get me to sign up. Yet there's this very strong throbbing pulse in the anus of my moral steed that's telling me to resist. Why? I don't know. Don't blame me if I sound fishguts. There's this voice in my head – the same direct line from the high horse's arse. But, give me a good reason, and I might.”

[Evidently I was so smug (and deeply in sync with that throbbing pulse) that only an elaborately constructed logic driven canon of reason could’ve penetrated the fortress. Imagine having this misapprehension about your head over and over again. I should join Indian politics. They could use my head. Variously.]

I also said: In the course of an interview with a much admired writer, who asked…

IS: Are you on the facebook thing? A friend told me to start an account and now I am in touch with people from the distant past and have friends I've never heard of.

H: No. I've this strange sort of snobbery about being on facebook. But now that it's out [this is the first time I've admitted to it] I'm sure I'm going to end up on it. Someday.

IS: I would leave it except my two sons are there.

[Note how he acknowledged the undeniable advantage of her position. And note how she slipped in a clever disclaimer about an inevitable someday. Move over, Manmohan.]

I have also been known to forward this link, demanding the public and moral denouncement of facebook and its vile covert capitalist agenda, mass ether-mailed to countless friends and colleagues.

I have been known for a lot that should teach me by now to keep my gob under surveillance and my head in a dungeon before I step out.

So what changed then? What caused the universe to shift and the fortress to crumble? Hanh?

Something very basic.

Something that has shaken the very foundation of my existence in a Descartes-esque way.

Earlier, as you will no doubt appreciate, I barely made it past the “I think therefore I am” criterion: however confusing and unreliable, the proof was undeniable.

But now, not being facebook-able, ie traceable on facebook [as in google-able], it is slowly dawning on me that my existence has been challenged in ways that I am utterly unable to question or combat.

There is this whole other universe of interaction from which I am excluded – a gargantuan time-space vortex that is oblivious to my existence; a universe populated by friends and family who increasingly, even when they meet in the here and now, conduct their conversations in mysterious allusions to their facebook lives. “So ‘ryou going for the Teddy Boy Kill gig tonight?” Who? What? When? “Sorry! Forgot, you’re not on facebook, it’s on my events listing. Remind me to email you”.

Remind me to throw you a hieroglyphics-imprinted rock, freakshow from the nineties.

I used to be really proud of my memory: I’m the sort of calendar whore who has birthdays and anniversaries rolling involuntarily off the tips of her extremities. I used to be respected, envied even, for it. Once. But now, thanks to f***book, I’m like the lady-with-the-mile-long-moustache at the local mela – mildly amusing with an utterly redundant talent. Who needs a memory when f***book tinkles in your arse every time it’s a friend’s birthday?

I also truly believed that email and text had explored the final intrusion of virtual messaging in our daily lives, stretching the limit of impersonal interaction in the absence of voice and handwriting. I truly believed that social utility networks were glorified dating-sites infested with the sort of flotsam jetsam that scavenge along the periphery of normal social interaction, teeming with nefarious activity. Surely nobody respects them?

But I was wrong. There is facebook now. And it’s here to stay and threaten the fact of my existence.

As a copywriting friend recently wrote, in response to my facebook volte-face, as a befitting open-armed welcome of sorts:

“I will add that if you join Facebook, the sooner the better, you will know the tidbits that Ali and Sue are exchanging, how Sid doesn't fit into Chinese MRI machines, what I'm trying to cook and at least one event that Phish will be attending in the coming week. Also you'll see pictures of Mangu put up by various people, be alerted when someone changes their status from "in a relationship" to "it's complicated" and meet a bunch of people who you didn't know you gave a flying hoot about until you joined.”

And so…

I feel this great urge to announce it – this ceremonial deflowering of my social utility website virginity. [I'm lying, I have my profile up on another, no two other such site, but under the innocuous title of Etch, and I don't ever check these, because I am so ashamed of them. So then why did I register, you ask? Because there was a time in my life I was even more net un-savvy than I am now. There was a time I clicked on links sent by friends and discovered too late that I had found myself a spanking new spot under the virtual sun. There was a time I could legitimately blame it on ignorance.].

There I said it.

I’m signing up. Wittingly.

I’m selling my soul.

I’m getting me a life. An identity. An existence.

I’m on facebook. Officially.

***

So.

Those of you who know me in the here and now, beyond the single letterness of my blog-existence, please, rush over and say hello. On facebook. Disregard snide comments, allusions to inverted snobbery, and any loose talk about abstinence… Please. Don’t ignore me. God knows that if I don’t have enough frendz on facebook, I’m going to be so devastated.

***

Something also tells me I might start saying ‘anyways’… soon.

***

*Ben was decent enough to email me about it. He was thoughtful enough not to flame me on comments, demanding an explanation for my distasteful display of such xenophobia. He just said, and most sweetly: "Not really offended, but why would you have rather died than apply for a visa to America?"

And so, because I love him so much, and because I had no business being such a judgmental arse without an explanation, here's my reason for saying this: I should've realised that it had offence potential... But with the kind of humiliating checking procedures that friends and acquaintances [particularly those who are Muslim and male] have been put through at airports etc., the kind of blind suspicion post 9/11, coupled with the senseless visa denials that some of my friends have faced, it just seems like there's no point in applying for permission to be allowed into a country that wants to tell you, repeatedly, how unwelcome you are.