Singing in the Rain

Fist falls

2010-02-03T22:15:00.001-08:00

Fist falls and raindrops. Far, far away the engine toots along. The coming is inevitable. There are a lot of feelings which scare me, but none as much as a yes. I’ve said this to myself over and over again. In the shower, in the muffled sobs in a cold bathroom cubicle, in that mad crying part of my head while I’m smiling at them. But she just doesn’t get it. And it just doesn’t stop. I thought the pain would make the difference, but she doesn’t seem to care anymore. I said forget it, so she filled her head and those filler moments with him and another him and yet another him. It was almost funny how they played out this circus and when the audience danced with the clowns, the masks melted away. Security is a curious thing.

Last night was cooler than what I was used to. And I went walking under the stars. It felt like a different place; one with so many possibilities and palate of hope. I could’ve been anyone and no one would’ve been the wiser. On nights like these I wonder whether I would miss it all, had it turned out any other way. My trusty Cosmo insight says that whenever a woman desperately feels the need for change or just to get out of the rut which she is slowing sinking into, she does one of two things – goes in for a haircut or buys a whole new wardrobe. Funny huh, how the theatre and well, arguably art as a whole seeps into the very fiber of your being and you never even know when it is happening? The masque, the feisty pantomime backdrop for so many staged altercations – it isn’t that far away from what we pride as real. Throw the TV remote aside, scrounge through leftover pizza and fall asleep over a bucket of chocolate ice-cream. TV feels safe, movies in dark cinema halls feel safer and I wrap myself in music when youtube has been exhausted. ‘Willing suspension of disbelief’ penned Coleridge, way ahead of his time. It’s a bit like pop-up books or do-it-yourself mystery stories where you’re carefully threading a puzzled conclusion. The story just jumps out at you, almost challenging and even impertinent. And before you know it, you’re a part of it.

Sunshine

2010-01-30T09:48:00.000-08:00

Ghosts were everywhere. It was silly. I knew it was so damn silly, but I couldn’t keep my fingers from running across the red brick. It hadn’t been decades and this isn’t a movie. But I’m searching for belonging and this was my pilgrimage. It’s strange how places are people. Things are people. And people? They’re the ones who end up being the places and the things which they gingerly finger. Laughter, whispers, Jan Test moans, dirty socks and the signature Sarojini jholas, darker kajal and unkempt hair. Chai tasted the same and I can still fit curled up in the chairs and pick and the little wicker strands. Gravelly and saltless, the cheeky Mince challenges me. For a moment, I’m impossibly young again. It is darker inside and the paintings on the walls are atrocious. But you can sink back into the crevices and watch from a long long time ago. They remember my name here. It makes me want to cry a little. Possessiveness surges. This was mine. This is mine. I want to tear down the curtains and break open the main door and stand there and look up at my room with the pretty white curtains. There’s a funny smell inside here. Like something which shouldn’t quite belong has been left behind. I guess that is me and well, all of us.

Change. I can hear that annoying voice repeating – the necessary evil. Call me regressive, but I like status quo. You work so damn hard to get it right and then just when you’re starting to get comfortable, it gets whisked away from right beneath your very nose!

I smile back. And it doesn’t feel like it was so long ago. I’m confused. Someone has smiled this very smile at me, probably last week. But who? And the same smile? I found my own way of coping with the disturbing melting pot of time. If you carry a little bit of the past into your present and dream it into the future, then just for that little while, you can cheat. So I look for it in the way he drums his fingers on a table or the way her eyes soften when she is tired and in that way it feels to have an arm around my shoulder again. Déjà vu. And then it all tumbles down.

Late night phone calls were always muffled whispers and we would sneak them well into the early hours of the morning. You know what I’m talking about. It is that first rush of discovering these seemingly magical bonds over shared secrets and dreams. And it isn’t tiresome to explain yourself and be mapped out by an entirely new person. The getting-to-know-each-other is an excited heady rush, not tired and impatient. On one of these nights (there were so many that sometimes they are confused memories blending into one seamless never-ending chain of talking and discovery) a boy I once adored and haven’t met in years said something to me that I’ve never forgotten. And it came back to me as I walked the sun-kissed stone paths that afternoon. Just imagine. Right now, even as we speak, the person whom we will spend the rest of our lives with is living his/ her life somewhere and we just don’t know it yet. Or maybe in some strange way we do. This thought, clubbed with a familiar threat from Ma from those times when we children were caught in yet another squealing squabble – just imagine, the four of us could have been living in different parts of the universe, never having know each other – is the scariest of all things that I have ever heard. The thought of some invisible hands drawing names and existences at random out of a bottomless sack makes me sick.

Yet, there I was, walking the corridor of my dreams, smiling at the same window sill where I had spent so many afternoons watching the lazy sun in the sky and thumbing through yet book. All those questions that I had back then. I knew the answers now. To all of them. I could almost see the younger me balk at the crystal ball. All I could manage was a tremble. I wanted to fit in.

I did everything I could again. Ate at the same brightly lit cubby holes, walked on the wet grass and smiled down at my messy feet, smiled down at cute college boys from the balcony and cringed at the bell, but it wasn’t me. It was just not real. I never did any of things that I had set out to. I became a whole different person in what is an increasingly alien world, divorced of all things comfortable and familiar. I’m still neck above water though, except for this guilt which weighs me down.

They wouldn’t have noticed all of this with the way I was lining them up for photographs. It was the least that I could do. Had someone told me earlier how this would feel, I would’ve spent that extra couple of seconds wrapped in the hugs which we would pose for with such abandon. I don’t want to mope all day long. She smiles back at me and there is so much that is unspoken. We had to move on. Because this was not the place where the hurt could have happened. That was somewhere else. This was my happy place. That secret little coop which I dig into on nights of chocolate fudge, dry maggi and muffled sobs.

I pulled out old photographs that night and poured over them. But try as I did, I couldn’t fit back into them. Because I knew too much about what was to come. My own words, penned pensively on a late January afternoon came back to haunt me. I will never be twenty-one again and dreaming my impossible dreams on Andrews Court.

You

2010-01-27T08:46:00.000-08:00

I’d almost forgotten that every story needs a protagonist. You can’t walk in and out of memories and weave the lost endings together. Cinderella gets eaten by the bad wolf and Rumplestilskin stamps his way down into the pretty glass coffin of a Sleeping Beauty. But I’m still blushing at the last message he sent me. And it is like I’m sixteen all over again. It has been so long. And I’m so damn tempted to reach out. I feel like I’m walking in and out of different lives. When I was little, I would spend hours ensuring that everything I had was colour coded. From Barbie to crayons, everything had a definite place. Because when you have a definite place, you belong somewhere. And when you belong somewhere, someone there will love you. And you will be happy. It is almost embarrassing how the equations pile up and I’m so aware of what I’m doing. Nothing much has really changed. Everything still has a place. But they are different places. So my heart lives nestled in memories of a yesterday which has been wrung so dry of realism that it feels like a part of an impossible dream. And I don’t quite know if I really was there. If his skin really felt that warm and if the grass was that moist.

She looked at me quizzingly through those damp brown eyes which I know so well. Why is it always the wrong guy? Because Prince Charming doesn’t come in a one size fits all range! Because he is scattered across so many damn guys that stringing them together is exhausting. Ever scraped sand out from under your fingernails and then dusted your shoes, hair, clothes and done the wet dog body shake, only to find more just when you crawl under the immaculate sheets in a far away hotel room? He is my sand, quite simply put. You think you’ve done all the right things, wiped everything clean and walk around with a safe smug smile, but then one nondescript flick of the head turns everything upside down. I can see it all so clearly even now. Like he was just here. In bits and pieces, which don’t add up. The dark eyes, dancing with mischief. The smile which makes me blush like a schoolgirl in pigtails. And I want to hear him say it all over again. Art imitates Life imitates Art. I’ve been over this so many times in my head. We’ve walked through moonlit groves on SMS and eaten bowl after bowl of ice cream to keep the night from ending. I think I’m starting to get confused now. I wake up and the room is dark and I’m not quite sure when he left. Or if he is still here. I find the bed too large and he feels stifled. As a six year old, I would prance around the house with the snowy white trail of imaginary wedding gowns. Impossibly intricate and laced with all the hopes and sighs of the years to come. When I was fourteen, I read about Miss Havisham. White never did look good after a couple of wears. Daag acche hai, is what he says. I want to throw something at him.

I am so many ‘me’s. Something like shape shifting. And they still think that I’m smiling at them. There are a couple of things that I picked up a while ago and the years of drag classroom lectures only perfected them. I could be sitting at my desk in my most perfect of all avatars and yet all I see before me are rolling green fields and an unreal blue sky. I’ve learned how to dance. In my dreams. Not the drunk excuses for the unabashedly Bollywood table-top performances, but the taunt with desire, almost war-like exhibition dances of the seventeenth century. I used eye make-up today. Just like with the contact lenses before, it just happened one day. And I think I’ve fallen hard this time round. I’d almost forgotten how good it feels to hold a damn pen again! I feel like the syllabus at Delhi University! There was the solitary seriousness of the ancients, the promise of the pre-Romantics, the young, wild and soon to be dead desperate talent of the later day Romantics and the stoic Augustan desolation. More often than not, it is down the rabbit hole. And I’m Alice all over again and the Queen of Hearts is shrieking. Off with their heads! I want to grab her annoyingly fast hands and hold them down, but I’m rooted to the ground. One minute I’m Alice and the next I’m her. And then I’m neither and I’m curled up watching the spectacle below. Is it because I have stopped caring? I ask myself this over and over again, with the fierce resolution to be honest. And I can’t find the answer. Is this hide-and-seek just because I’m lost? It started out like that. I couldn’t be happy where I was and with who I was so I looked for alternatives. When I lost him and it broke my heart but the tears just wouldn’t show, I think I drowned a part of me inside. And I looked elsewhere and then never stopped. No. I’m not searching for him anymore. In fact I don’t even allow myself to think about him anymore. But like everything that I hide from so desperately, the annoying tickers show up when you least expect them to. And the familiar heaviness starts forming in the pit of my stomach. The tears well up and I watch someone I will probably never know swing his daughter high up in the air.

Crawl with Me?

2008-11-19T09:18:00.000-08:00

I crawl in and out. The tremendous potential of today scares me. You’d never guess the half of what goes on in my mind. I have to turn away so that you don’t see me smile. It hurts so bad. Not that I was expecting very much else. Routine. Drab. Secure. Sometimes I want someone, anyone to reach out and shake me out of this complacency. Burnt toast and bad coffee. I wish those days were back. I used to spend hours staring up at the ceiling in between exercising. I lost count so long ago. There were all these things I used to share with myself. Silly stuff. The way those little pink flowers used to feel when I rubbed them between my thumb and forefinger. I guess that doesn’t make me an environmentalist’s delight, but I spent hours rubbing them into nothingness. Things were so simple back then. I was walking through a dream and I knew it. Sun-kissed brick walls. Snuggling under the covers on cold nights. Bad movies, good movies. It didn’t matter. I always ended up crying anyway. Reaching up on tip toe to catch a glimple of my tooth-brush wielding self in the mirror. Creature at the door. Hot chocolate and messy fingers. I miss waking up and wanting to dress up. For me. I miss the Main Cor. Half-suffocated in the Metro rush, Charis and I would hold our freshly shampooed hair close and inhale deeply. Showers were smaller, but stronger. Warm water rushing down my face, I didn’t realize when the tears started. Photograph-like moments whizzed past me. It was all there. Almost like the end of a sad movie. I want to press pause when the credits start to unfurl and snigger down at me. It was all then. All of that and so much more. And yet it isn’t enough. I’ll still go to bed in a dark room tonight. Coffee after coffee after coffee. Forced movies and conversations. Just to stay awake that little longer. Just to keep tomorrow a few minutes away. They all know I’m dying deep inside. I’m sorry. I hate the memories which aren’t mine.

The Cradle in Context

2008-11-19T05:50:00.000-08:00

Madonna, in an interview on her story-book for children, The English Roses, was asked what she thought of Enid Blyton. Her response: “Who is Enid Blyton?” sent shock waves through generations the world over. Apart from being ironically amusing to the point of being frightening, this response links itself rather inadvertently to the ongoing debate of whether, Freud aside, there can be something called ‘Children’s Literature’. If so, where exactly do the origins of this genre lie?

Oral Literature as a Chronicle of History:

The original intent of Nursery Rhymes and their origins are significant because they pose a challenge to the creation of generic categories and also because they are intrinsically linked to history. The original versions of these rhymes were the common man’s response to his tyrannical king and his interpretation of the ongoing socio-economic evolutions. Nursery rhymes date back to the oral tradition of folk songs and dances, which originated not in the bedrooms of sleepy children, but far away in bars and taverns. Some of these rhymes which are so commonly known today do in fact, date back to the early 1500’s. Mostly however, they originated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At that stage, the concept of ‘Nursery Rhymes’ did not exist. Ballads, proverbs, prayers and even street chanting laid the foundation for the rhymes. Some were even believed to have been a part of rituals and customs. They formed a part of what was ‘adult’ entertainment, with strong political and social reverberations. The only rhymes which were meant for children were the counting rhymes. The fact of the preservation of these rhymes is telling of the perseverance of popular traditions, reinforced by the conservatism of childhood. The term ‘Nursery Rhymes’ as it is known today was first used in 1824 in a Scottish periodical called the Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine. It was only in 1697, with the publication of the legendary collection of French tales by Charles Perrault, Contes de ma mere l’oye (which translates as The Tales of Mother Goose), that the concept of Nursery Rhymes as we know them today, catapulted to fame. With this, came the ‘domestication’ of the rhymes and the connected figure of Mother Goose. There has been a lot of speculation regarding who she could have been. One theory says that she was actually the biblical Queen of Sheba. Another says that she was Queen Bertha, the mother of the medieval leader Charlemagne, who was nick-named Queen Goose-foot because she was web-footed. People have also christened Elizabeth Vergoose, a woman who lived in colonial times in Boston, ‘Mother Goose’ and above her grave is a monument of the fictional character. British Literary history proposes the idea that the first collection of Nursery Rhymes was A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, published by John Newberry in London in 1744. Not only was this the first publication in Britain to focus on entertainment for children, but it also established Newberry in the genre of Children’s Literature. American Literature attributes the first collection of Nursery Rhymes to John Carnan’s Mother Goose’s Rhymes, which was published in 1780.

Literature is a marker of the culture of a community. It is a product of the memories, or more specifically, it is about how people choose to remember and document facts. In this manner, history and literature share a symbiotic relationship as one dictates how the other progresses. Tracing the history of Nursery Rhymes becomes a sociological study of the manner in which violence and protest can be masked and re-invented by time, so as to divorce it completely from its roots. Ironically, Nursery Rhymes which are so popular today with children were in fact, never intended for them. Instead, on tracing the origins of the rhymes it is disturbing at the very least to discover that they are deeply entrenched in the bloodiest feuds and the most outrageous uprisings in world history. The sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were ages which heralded change and this was a change which was not won on amicable terms. It involved violent uprootings of established societies. Censorship on free speech and expression, a popular means of suppression even in the twentieth century, resulted in people looking for alternative modes of expression. This found voice in ‘coded’ songs of protest which were recast years later as Nursery Rhymes to be taught to unsuspecting children by equally uninitiated parents.

Nursery Rhymes in Their Historical Contexts:

An examination of the specific context of Nursery Rhymes reveals that Ringa Ringa Roses refers to the Black Death of 1347-50 and the Great Plague that swept Europe in the 1600’s. As the rhyme goes, a ‘rosy’ rash and incessant sneezing were the first symptoms of the disease. The ‘ring’ of roses; the circle in which the children dance, is supposed to signify a wreath. The ‘posies’ are the herbs and spices which people carried in their pockets to sweeten the air choked with death. At the end of the rhyme, the children cry out ‘A-tishoo! A-tishoo!’(Which has now been modified to ‘Ashes? Ashes!’ in reference to the burning of the bodies of the victims) before falling to the ground, in an enactment of death. Another claim is that it originates in the religious ban on dancing among the Protestant community on the nineteenth century. This was countered by the emergent trend of ‘play-party’ games, which consisted of songs sung while moving around in a circle (as a substitute to dancing).

Jack and Jill refers to the beheading of King Louis XIV of France and then of course, Marie Antoinette, whom he married in 1770 and proceeded to exercise tremendous control over his decisions, is the Jill who ‘comes tumbling after’. They ‘went up the hill’ in 1774 when they became King and Queen of France. In the mid 1770’s, France was amidst a financial crisis and heavy taxation caused a nationwide renunciation of royal patronage. In order to quell the uprisings, the King ‘fetched a pail of water’ by way of financial and judicial reforms. However, the French bourgeoisie refused to allow the reforms to be implemented and as a result, the Bastille was razed in the July of 1789 and the Royal family imprisoned. ‘Jack fell down’. In 1792, the National Convention declared France a republic. The King was tried for treason and sentenced to death. Louis XIV was guillotined in Paris on 21 January, 1793. ‘And broke his crown’. Marie Antoinette was later sent to the gallows on 16 October, 1793 and ‘Jill came tumbling after’.

Humpty Dumpty was a common ‘nickname’ for people of large proportions in the 1400’s and was specifically used for King Richard III of England. He was killed in the Battle of Bosworth on 22August, 1485 which was fought against Henry Tudor, the head of the house of Lancaster. The imagery of Humpty Dumpty’s ‘great fall’ derives from murder of the King as he sat atop his horse on Ambion Hill. Another popular version suggests that ‘Humpty Dumpty’ was the name of a powerful cannon during the English Civil War (1642-49). It was mounted atop the St. Mary’s Wall Church in Colchester to defend the city against a siege in the summer of 1648 when it was hit by the enemy and the top was blown off. ‘Humpty Dumpty had a great fall’. All efforts to repair the cannon proved to be futile. ‘All the king’s horses and all the kings men/ Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again’. Yet another legend suggests that the rhyme refers to Charles I of England. He was toppled by a Puritan majority in Parliament (the great fall). The Cavaliers, the king’s army could not restore his power and he was executed by the Roundheads. A fourth story suggests that the rhyme can be linked to the fall of Louis of France before Napoleon when the peasants revolted and beheaded the king.

Mary Mary, Quite Contrary has been interpreted as a representation of the Church of the Virgin Mary, where the nuns are the ‘pretty maids all in a row’. Another reading says that this talks of Mary, Queen of Scots, the Catholic monarch whose lifestyle irked the Protestant ministers. The ‘silver bells and cockle shells’ refer to her penchant for lavish excesses. The garden is a metaphor for Scotland, with her ladies-in-waiting as the ‘pretty maids’. A disagreeable tyrant, the rhyme was supposed to be a codified outcry: ‘Mary Mary quite contrary’ (her tyranny) ‘How does your garden grow?’ A reference to the numerous beheadings of Protestant martyrs. ‘With silver bells and cockle shells’ (Instruments of torture like thumbscrews and iron masks) and ‘Pretty maids all in row’ draws from the popular nicknaming of the guillotine as a ‘maid’. The ‘Mary’ in the rhyme would also be the equally ruthless Mary Tudor who was known as ‘Bloody Mary’ after the numerous Protestants whom she had executed in order to appease the Catholic Church.

There Was an Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe: This popular nursery rhyme portrays the British Parliament as the ‘Old Woman’ who looked after her many colonies (‘she had so many children’) in the far flung British Empire. Problems and uprisings in the colonies (‘she didn’t know what to do’) were the reasons for the ‘whipping of the children’ which alludes to the appointment of the much hated James I to the throne. Another theory is that ‘The Old Woman‘ referred to either King George II or George III, one of which began the tradition of wearing white powdered wigs earning the derogatory title of ‘Old Woman’. The shoe refers to the British Isles and the children were members of Parliament whom the king forced to hold session (put them to bed.) ‘Broth’ and ‘Bread’ in the rhyme might refer to a Prime Minister or two.

London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down/ London Bridge is falling down/ My fair lady: The rhyme is a clear reference to the tragedies that occurred on the famous London Bridge, built in 1176 to replace the wooden bridges on the site. The construction took 33 years. The bridge which was constructed had a road 20 feet wide and was 300 yards long. In 1209 it had 20 arches, each 60 feet high and thirty feet high. It had a tower and a gate along with dozens of shops and houses, three to seven stories high. There was even a chapel dedicated to St. Thomas Becket in the middle of the bridge. It was the scene of lavish celebrations and once a tourney was held there. All in all it was a massive and sturdy work of architecture. However, it was struck by tragedy time and again. In 1212 many people died when they were trapped between two fires on the bridge. Often barges would break loose and crash into the structure putting prows through walls of houses. Fire struck again in 1623 and destroyed numerous shops and houses. Yet another fire in 1666 loosened the stonework arches of the bridge weakening its foundations. It was declared a public nuisance and on 4 July, 1823 it was torn down. Thus the tragedy prone structure met its end according to the rhyme… ‘London Bridge is Falling Down’.

Several other historical instances find mention in seemingly innocent nursery rhymes. These include the ever popular Baa baa, Black Sheep which despite its bouncy tone is a lament about the burden of paying taxes. In the Middle Ages a peasant was required to give a third of his income, ‘bags of wool’, to the King, ‘my master’, a third to the nobility, ‘the dame’, leaving only a third for himself, ‘the little boy who lived down the lane’.

The rhyme on Jack Sprat and his wife pokes fun at Charles I of England and his wife Henrietta Maria. When Parliament refused to finance his war with Spain and left him ‘lean’ he in turn dissolved the Parliament and imposed an illegal war tax forcing the common people to house the troops. Thus between him and his wife ‘they licked the platter clean’.

Little Jack Horner refers to the incident where the Bishop of Glastonbury sent his steward, Jack Horner to King Henry VIII with a Christmas gift – a pie in which were hidden the title deeds to twelve manorial estates. On the way Jack opened up the pie and stole the deed to the Manor of Mells, ‘he put in his thumb and took out a plum’. The Horner family resides there to this day.

Therefore

A close reading of the text of Nursery Rhymes alone reveals that they in fact speak of theft, assault, physical danger, anger, hurt and jealousy. Apart from internalizing history in a rather ‘timeless’ fashion, Nursery Rhymes are also larger than life examples of the evolution of the oral literary tradition into print culture, with the passage of time. Deeply rooted in a socio-cultural ethos which spans centuries and countries the world over, Nursery Rhymes are containers of history and evolution, passed down and ingrained in generations via a medium which ensures that they will never be forgotten.

I Want to be Giant

2008-11-16T02:40:00.000-08:00

Pink kissed Blue and melted into breathtaking Silver. I like these dreams where palettes can do just about anything you want them to. Stand on tip-toe, peer over the edge of the window, stare at the sky. Blank. I can’t copy it. I’m such an awful singer and unless I’m pressed up really close against him, I suck as a dancer. But I love playing with colour. I like wrapping myself in rainbow scratched scarves. One hand on my hip, head tilted back in smouldering Cleopatra style. Sigh. I feel embarrassed when I chance upon a sad sunset now. Sometimes it feels impossibly far away. Everything. Grass dripping with dew. Just like the poets of old had said it would. Peek-a-boo sun and the dreams of a twenty-one year old. I dreamed of willowy legs and tried on pair after pair of black stilettos in vain. Cinderella. Frogs and Prince Charming. What was the story of the pumpkin? The rude little blue receiver screams out in indignation. I’d rather watch the rain on the window-sill. The last time I took that walk, it was much colder. No déjà-vu. Just the sadness which comes with knowing that you didn’t have to be here to know that it won’t happen. Hold me closer? I’m not quite sure whether I want to say that anymore. I want to wrap my arms around myself and that is where the problem starts. I love me and I hate me. I want to be another me. The one who said nothing at all. I want to be the jigsaw puzzle of memories in the room I am walking around. I want to be that smell. I want to be in your smile. I want to be little again. I want him back and I want to hold onto his hand and walk my tiny stumbling steps behind him. I want to be swung high up in the air. I want to be Giant.

P.S.

2008-11-16T01:57:00.000-08:00

Hot coffee and blankets. I don't think we have ever really agreed on anything for too long. I am always right (and you really should see that!). I just see you break into that smile right now. If we could ever take time off from being silly, there are all these things I want to tell you about. You make me laugh like no one else does. You make me cry like no one else does. I am having the time of my life. I hate having to change. I want longer walks back in time. I wish you would stop being the strong one. I cry like a baby and sometimes, I think you should too. Remember the first flower you brought me? Time after time, plans dissolve. We laugh and tickle and laugh and laugh. You know when to look up and meet my eyes across an impossibly crowded room. You do. I watch. I try and learn. It isn't easy. I know that there will be all these times when we will both be biting back the tears. But there will also be the shared ice-creams and secrets. Bad movies and too much beer. I have my ways of bringing you back!

Err.. B-School

2008-11-15T09:48:00.000-08:00

“Hold on to the now, the here, through which all future plunges into the past.” Sometimes, it feels like everything that I say to myself has already been said to me by Joyce. If you looked up ‘wide-eyed’ under a picture dictionary that day, you would have seen gaping-mouth-me there. This was Business School. All my Shakespeare-Woolf-Joyce spouting self managed was a small ‘gulp’. This was not my comfort zone, even though it hosted a library. Of the many moments when I had imagined what this would be like, I hadn’t counted on the nervousness. This was like going back to the first day at St. Stephen’s. That had become home. Would this place too? Was I really going to start calling all that I was looking at right now, mine? More importantly, were these shy half-smiles going to translate into nights of hysterical giggles and classes of shared bewilderment? The magic of any ‘space’ lies in its people. Because more intensely than the smell of the grass or the taste of the mess food (not to underestimate either), I feel the people. And I feel books. And I knew that change was inevitable because the touch was to change. My fingers would now leaf through shiny, brightly coloured Management texts and scurry across a black keyboard. Most of the pen and paper would take a back seat and I would (I want to) find new ways of realizing myself.

My room contains the same framed photographs and Bible that I have carried over the years. They bring an interesting old-new flavour to my ‘new’ life.

“What If” – On the things that hide under my pillow

2008-11-15T09:44:00.000-08:00

What if I chose the path less traveled? Would it have made all the difference? The more I think now, the more confused I am. It upsets me every time I fill out one of those ‘One thing that you wish you had done differently’ questions. This was the ‘easier’ choice in many ways – the one that came without complications, the one that wouldn’t require the constant fight to be the best just because I wouldn’t settle for anything less and the one that would not mean focused passion. It would however, be the ‘stable’ one. I wonder if I have made a mistake. I thought that not feeling things intensely would be easier, but now it makes me feel a little false. I miss knowing that I can change everything oh so easily. I miss my alternate world in writing. Everything here is so concrete. And sometimes, everything is so devastatingly ‘right’. The scariest part is that this new place seems to be assessing me rather accurately. Better than I seem to be evaluating it.

Checklist: November, 2008

2008-11-15T09:38:00.000-08:00

Learn to be happy with my lot, without plugging the dreams.

Finally read Ulysses to see how one day could be a lifetime.

Walk for longer; don’t cut down on the chocolate.

It will always be home over the money and that is a good thing.

Call Mama everyday and tell her that I love her.