The Unbearable Conundrums of Birthday Week

As I write this on the cusp of my 32nd birthday, my thoughts go naturally to the year past and the year ahead.

But before that.

***

A thing happened to me today that made me feel sad. But then the fact I felt sad made me feel even more sad. It was an odd experience - this nested sadness, but along with it came, (with a sudden flash of bright light and a clear pure note played on a piano, if you will), that this swing - between wanting to be sad but also wanting to be high-quality sad, and grading all the sad - that this swing would just continue to exist unscathed by the piles of human emotional improvement I let pile all around me, and well that it should.

What good is fighting years of conditioning - might as well let the pre-frontal cortex take over.

Grading sadness is a useful tool however - and its one against which my future (present?) has no hope of winning against my past. Basically, no matter what (and I'm not tempting you, universe), having control, and being my own person is always better than being small and bullied.

***

Baby K turns one and it makes me want to weep. I cant explain why.

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I miss being thin.

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I am excited for the new year ahead. So many possibilities. But first, insurance.

***

Maybe this appeals to someone not in heels

It is 2: 18 am I am thinking about truth.

To be more precise, I am thinking about how I am unable to often say so much of what I think or feel. There is this sense of deliberate, playful dishonesty that I contain within myself - sometimes staring at someone intently during a meeting, or ordering a cup of coffee, all the while giggling because I am saying to them silently what I would never at that point say out loud.

You are cute.
You are annoying me.
Please stop speaking.
I think you are over-reacting.
Actually, you are the one who's wrong.
You are lazy.
Work harder!
This is awful.
I dreamt of you. This makes me feel weird and I don't want it to repeat.
Please, stop speaking.
Yes I am awesome.
I am hungry. Again.
I feel so fat and ugly.
I am tired.
I am tired * 100.
I wish you would email me. And I would like to stop thinking about this.

A lot of this is partly because at work I have to do big things and I wish everyone would stop talking to me so I can do them - the big things. A few minutes ago, I was lying in bed, trying to sleep, and thinking about this one work problem I have to solve. And feeling simultaneously excited and crushingly anxious. I don't doubt myself (much) but for once I am in the cosy little intersection venn spot between a circle of IMPORTANT FOR HUMANITY problems and WORK PAYS ME TO SOLVE THIS problems.

All my life has been spent in coming to this point where I have a juicy problem to solve and it is a hard one. You know what Judy says: I asked for an adventure and by god i am having it. Good ol Judy. Is there ever anyone else who I love more fictionally than her? I think not.

***

Speaking of DLL - what a fine thing is Project Gutenberg. And generally what a fine thing is the internet. I love you all strangers.

***
My new favourite poet is Akhil Katyal - see for example, this:

Our beginnings were rocky, we held hands, infrequently, and uneasily, like Def Col and Kotla,

but then, in some years, often and more breezily,like Jangpura & JangpuraExtension.

***

I am sad that the chronicles of 4, Birbal Road did not grace bloggy much - but maybe that is because not much happened? I truly think I was unhappiest in life in that most beautiful of houses. A gilded cage. With daily travel to Gurgaon and back. Life was cruel, in an ironic sort of way.

***

God so many updates on the paternal front but I can't. No energy. Another sign of old age alongside untruthiness. The ability to scoop up unwanted thoughts and vanish them because I am full as a person otherwise of thoughts and emotions and sorry but there is no space so please go away. I am waiting for someone to write me an email and for someone else to stop talking. Yes.

***
I read God of Small things. Eh.

***

Baby Boo has 4 teeth and makes vowel sounds. What a miracle. He smells adorable and his feet are so smol. He is a smol. It is all manners of enchanting.  He just woke up so I went to make some formula for him. DF is a splendid father (not just because he'll rock boo to sleep). I am almost envious. In a non creepy way. Promise.

***

Amelie Poulain is still my favourite melancholy-bittersweet-wistful-happy soundtrack. Some things never change. I listen to La La Land a lot as well. It is also melancholy.

***
Japan was lovely, btw. I bought back many flavours of Kit Kat.  And a Hello Kitty Comb and lip balm! I had a drink at the Lost in Translation Bar. I havent seen the movie. I only feel like a tiny fraud. OMG I also saw the Great Wave. IRL. It was wonderful - I was truly moved after a long time by a museum.

***
Are you there? Anyone?

I love me just how I want to be loved

yay?

Mono no aware

There is sometimes an urgent need for melancholy in my life, not with the unthinking yet ceaseless necessity of the daily milk or the three newspapers, but with a more gentle kind of longing, that builds up slowly, bit by bit, only to deflate gently and evenly at a somewhat unexpected time: like today morning, when I became very overwhelmed, cried because I read a beautiful essay, had some tea, a quick shower, and am now cheery enough to write a blogpost.

Hi!

***

The Perfect Pound Cake and Chocolate Cake (or more recently, chocolate cookies and oatmeal cookies) are the most recent thing I have mastered. I am now more confident of being a mom. I can solve any problem my baby will pose by throwing sugary baked goods his way. Now I'm just waiting for his teeth to arrive.

YAY. #futureproof

(I doff my hat to Smitten Kitchen here and here and Rose Levy Berenbaum for all the cakey goodness.)

***

The cappucino maker made a gurgling sound and I nearly jumped out of my seat because I thought it sounded like a baby crying. EVERYTHING sounds to me like a baby crying. Given that I live at home with a (my) baby and my next door neighbour has a baby that's a few weeks older, phantom crying is probably real crying. That or I'm going a little crazy. Both are possible.

***

I'm becoming moved by art and music more and more of late, I take this to be a good sign that I am not dead inside. Indeed I feel gradually more alive and inquisitive, birdlike even, chirpy and sharp, as the end of my maternity leave approaches.

What kind of art, you say?

Like the final notes of this piece, say, or the exquisite wistfulness at the end of this piece , or this album which is perfect for sitting on my couch and watching the chromecast wallpapers scroll:

HD earth and HD sky
glorious resolution
lets pretend its real

Haiku nice?


***

Since the pregnancy, everything, every moment is now more exquisite. I observe and have become mindful of my own mortality and fragility, I see it when I holdmy child - a visceral gurgling reminder of how fleeting and fine, this life is. I couldn't articulate it of course, nearly as well as the Japanese can. Mono no aware.

***

Excuse the Japan references, I am researching for my trip there and it is everywhere in the nooks and crannies of my mind.

Mian

Last post for today I swear (this is now like a torrent and is a happy less public outpouring compared to what I'd have done on twitter).

a poem I've been thinking about a lot - here:

Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee

NO URDU IN DILLI, MIAN

For Akhlaq Ahmad and Swen Simon

You can’t write Urdu

On Dilli’s walls, Mian1

There’s a saffron lock

On your zuban2, Mian

Horsemen of all faith

Plundered Dilli’s rūḥ3,

They only blame it on

Your ancestors, Mian

From Bīdel to Ghalib

Run rosaries in Urdu,

They embalm history

With rare attar4, Mian

You outlaw a tongue

By policing the wall?

The gardens, the air,

Breathe Urdu, Mian

In the heart of Dilli

Graves speak Urdu,

Even parrots, dusk,

And my jigar5, Mian

Notes:

1 Respectful address of a Muslim

2 Tongue

3 Soul

4 Fragrance made of rose petals

5 Liver, Shakespeare’s “seat of passion”

Shoes in the header image

are from a previous life when my biggest worry was the Dune sale and whether I would find zebra prints in my size.

I wear crap shoes now, I'm on a no-buy CAN YOU BELIEVE IT BLOGGY, I havent had a cupcake in months, and basically 25 year old me would be shocked and disgusted and extremely wounded at the sight of my nails and cellulite and how non tabahi I have become and she would be all like "what happened did some hadsa occur how to fix you".

Anyway, given all this: I wanted to change the shallow-cute header image but I can't pick one thats currently appropriate.

I went on an awesome road trip from SF to Chicago and I thought I'd pick a picture of a nodding donkey from there because...matlab, its honest also and cute also. But fit with the orange theme which is almost vintage now, is not happening.

How long do you think before I stop talking like the Butterfly.
(though maybe calling DF a zinda laash is a power move like no other that I must totes adopt).

Give suggestions for header image, reader.

***

Four days and nights I have been consumed by (chi no not passion) but dread at the thought of the April 31 Mithila Dystopic Story deadline for which I have not ONE not ONE idea. Am I to be a failed author after all. I was up at 2 am yesterday and instead of pinging people on whatsapp, I stared into the void and the void duly stared back and I was still no closer to anything. I am truly distraught.

***

My eyebrows are looking weird.

***

I realized it had been a while since I posted (at all) any art that had recently captivated me and for a weekend project I've been keeping aside this picasso to do as a sketch. Only replace with book with a phone and that is pregnant me.


I CANT FIND IT. everything sucks.
oh man this day started so well.

update: found it.

https://theartstack.com/artist/pablo-picasso/femme-couchee-lisant-19

Bloggy and me are like Scurvy haha

Ohmygosh.

Is bloggy my oldest and dearest friend? I suppose so, though like all of my other old and dear friends bloggy too has moved countries, and maybe gotten an iphone and an accent and a british passport and friends who it brunches with, snorkels with and posh new jobs at posh life changing institutions and generally built a life of urbane suaveness and winter coats.

Me? Hi. I'm still ...me. Angsty, curious, unable to fit into my sexy shorts, always on the lookout for great haircuts and sure there are days in which I wonder what the what the what the am i doing with my life but otherwise the same, only the Cranberries have been replaced by Mumford and Sons (Caro Emerald for when I'm feeling particularly saucy) and lullabies.

Ya. Also I had a baby. Also I moved. Also new house. Also somewhat new friends. Also more social media and less reading. In the last few months I have:


1) Read the Annihilation series and some other trashy scifi and fantasy and eh

2) Read Sacred Games and wow

3) Had my insides tickled in order by DF, a gynac, multiple speculum, ultrasound wands, scrape-y instruments, what felt like (and was I think) an entire arm of an entire human doctor, a moving baby boy (whose head, a few days before he was born, I compared to a musk melon sitting on the counter) and some needles.
(I say tickled but you and I dear reader know, that I do NOT mean tickled. This is classic, what do they call it? Understatement. Yes this old dog knows new trix haha.)

4) Watched Mad Men and Marvellous Mrs Maisel and some other soppy TV shows day and night  while nursing (this is the polite word for breastfeeding or as they should accurately call it breast plucking pulling nipple roughening milk clogs glass sandpaper bruising feeling cow like sweating).

***
The thing is, there's been more angst on this blog about an unfairly graded history paper (21/50 - come on!) than ...life since 2017 Delhi. Which, in all of its glory has been ANGSTONIUS ANGTAMAXIMUS. You should have been there, or rather, bloggy should have been there.

I'll say this, I'm only sad I didn't chronicle it all because so much spectacular lazing around was done and fun was had and assholery was dealt with. DF is still around. I think I saw Amelie lying around somewhere. And 202 has not one mummy now but two. Smoke that.

***

I said yesterday to one old friend that I had dropped the ball and he said so did he and I wanted to say YES YOU DID YOU DROPPED IT YOU WERENT SUPPOSED TO but instead I shrugged and sent him baby photos. It is truth but then what else does one do at a point in life when truths are self evident but the conclusions they take you on are anything but?

Love me pick me choose me? But time zones. And time sheets.

***
I confessed I was in a maudlin mood to a somewhat new friend but then I realised it was because I missed bloggy and being able to loudly shoutily complain here. So I'm back.

***
So apparently a deficiency of Vitamin C causes the collagen that repaired old wounds to dissolve, leading to bleeding and aches, which was thought of as a new disease called scurvy but was mainly just the old wounds coming up knock knock and saying hi hello ji whether vitamin C? Odd but nice. Just how I like em ailments and boys.

***
I must go, baby will beckon shortly. But I cant stop thinking of the Butterfly, Christina Tosi, and the gentleness of Sroyon's blog. Duly we are of course grateful to Double A.

***
Hai koi hamein yeh hatecopy ke chai plates toh dilwaein?