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?

A year and a day

A year and a day ago, I came to Delhi, utterly sure that I could face everything the city could throw at me. I fancied myself worldly-wise, and a sophisticate, a gentle ball of joy and wisdom that would obliviate all negativity and coat itself with rose petals.

No such luck - Delhi won, I hate the city (as much as I want to love it, I hate hate hate hate hate hate Delhi and most of its disgustoid, honky, honky, honky, overtake-y, dub stepped inhabitants).

Surprisingly, (or maybe not), most people I knew in Delhi didn't share the sentiment; to them, Delhi was either home, or an adopted home with more pluses than minuses, and it suited their purposes just fine. I despaired of finding someone who would understand how soul-crushing and spirit-defeating Delhi could be - did no one hate it as much as I did? Did no one dream that they'd find satisfying careers elsewhere? Were people really comfortable making long-term plans about staying in Delhi - WHY?

I wondered if there was something wrong with me - did Delhi leave me out of its charm-spell? Why couldn't I enjoy the gol guppas and the lehengas and the meter-using autowallahs and be happy?

I don't know, and I wish I loved Delhi - I really do, because then life would be much simpler - but seven years (bloggy's birthday is sometime now) at idreamthedream should have warned you that I never get to do simple. Its always complex, and sometimes its even batshit insane, and I guess that's what gets a blog running. Who wants to read about a simple life anyway? (looks around warily)

What else - oh, professionally, I am a mess, but not really, I think. I don't know. Clarity is lacking sorely on this front, but I trudge ahead, brave warrior, spiky ball, less gentle than I used to be - wondering why I have to look out for myself as much - what a bloody waste of time it is.

I feel like so much has happened in the last year, but I can't articulate my ineffectual grasp of it all. I lived in Delhi, I tried being in academic / public policy, I slept more than I should have, I am rested now, and I'm ready to take on the world - but I worry that I am losing my gentle, flower-child, sense of self, and am instead morphing into a (even more) manipulative thick-skinned bitch. Will I cry if children die? That's rhetorical, calm down.

I can't say I'm impressed with the last year - it was a more a lesson in what-not-to-do, rather than the opposite. But learning happens in curious ways, and knowing the things that one shouldn't do isn't any less useful than knowing the things one should do - right? I feel so anyway - and that's my silver lining for Aug 2012 - Aug 2013.

That's all my news for you - save one. Over seven years, across themes and fonts and templates, and laundry struggles, and chemo rants, and heartbreaking sadness, and loves, and crushes, and work and play and food, at places, with varying conceptions of privacy, and sense of self, this blog has been a constant in my life, and I love it dearly, and I love you dearly, gentle reader, but you probably know that there is another very special constant in my life - DF, with whom I have an arduous, complex and mostly bewildering relationship,

I've hated him, and loved him, and wanted him, and then not, but its taken nine years and then some to figure out that he isn't going anywhere. And that's fine by me. :) We're going to make this work - and as commitment phobic as I am, that's a huge step to take, isn't it? Well, unless you count the fact that we're getting married as a step - which we are, in the form of a somewhat large madras wedding hoopla, and I'm going to write about it here, but anonymously, because DF is somewhat private.


Goodbye, and Happy Independence Day, gentle reader. I leave to board a flight to Madras, to home, where I shall continue to mend a once-broken, but slowly salvaged relationship with my father. We are both survivors of such tragedies, great and small, real and perceived, some suffered jointly, some separated by 40 years of lives lived apart and before, but there is such peace in my heart these days, and I wish for him to have it too and for us to have it together.

And I wish for you to have it too - so hugs. Don't forget to watch the parade, ok?

A week in my own

Everyone says to me: "But you're _from_ here! How can there be a culture shock? You're _from_ _here_!"

And then I sigh wearily (verily, I sigh) and try to change the issue. To a select few (two) I moan in deep detail about how I miss pavements (sidewalks) and queues. I miss buying cheap alcohol. I miss daily cupcake routines. I miss the folks, oh, I miss them so much. +44 calls make me _so_ happy. I miss the email chains that begin on a bored Monday morning - about Sanskrit poems, about Rumi, about burritos for lunch from the van, or Ram Guha's speech at LSE, or the chammak challo trainee's very short skirt. 

I said in my leaving email that I was sad to be leaving, but it was not nearly the truth. What I should have said, is that 2010 to 2012 made me a whole happy person. A very nice cheery mildly crazy happy person.  I really liked who I had become (whom?) and for the first time in a long time, I was so comfortable and happy that I didn't want to leave, as such.

Coming to Delhi is a forceful acknowledgment of Ubuntu-ness. It is a lot less about the I and a lot more about the we. In the sense that India can be a we. It has now been eight days and while I am not struggling, uncomfortable, or unhappy, I am thoughtful more than I was. Crazy less than I was.

I guess I used up all of the craziness in deciding to make the move.
I asked for an adventure, an intellectual powerhouse of an office, and a stable relationship time, and GODAMMIT I think I have it all.