A little to the right

I am very pleased with this title, because it too, like my hassled sense of self right now, is one thing that actually is many things.

(I spent a whole minute here gentle reader, trying to figure out what this type of phrase could be. A pun? Too simple. A wordy clever misnomer. Not disguise-y enough. A metaphor? Perhaps a smidge. A midsummer gin induced hallucination by our friendly neighbourhood LLM? Alas. I concede. )

It is a merely the one thing that is many things. IT IS THE SWISS ARMY KNIFE of titles yes it has come to me now.

Firstly: 

(excuse me I am being told by my watch to stand so I shall take a stroll and be right back). 

 

Right, I am back 8 days later. Firstly:

1. Delays such as this happen when my time is not my own to waste anymore. Others now freely and happily make demands on me, requiring that I put aside the decisions and plans made of my own will, to instead say, check if all teeth have been brushed, and to immediately answer what word is queyey (queue) and why is it queyey.

2. I have had a few months of extemely stressful events. I am now on a work break. It is a beautiful time, if only to look back and see how close to death DH was, and to look forward and try to think of making the world beautiful.

3. Before my work break, that exact week before, in fact, life was wonderful, idyllic, and everything I ever wanted. If you hadn't guessed, it was on a beach with family and good food and sun and spray and water and sprinklers.

***

What I have been reading:

1. Life's lessons in the form of "Frank was a Monster Who Loved to Dance", and Frank, let me warn you, surreptitiously says "What the heck" on page 13, when he thinks we are not paying attention to him, but rather to his brains which have spilled on the floor, and I am sorry to say, we paid the mostest of attention, and we are most scandalized.

2. A few pages of Panthers in Parliament. The introduction alone makes for such fascinating reading,  and there is no much thinky material crammed into these first 3 pages alone, I despair of finishing this book. Reading, requires, some stillness? Some, stretches of breathing space? I do not know, or have. I persevere still. I am the main character of a sea shanty.

3. Ali Hazelwood's Bride. Ridiculously exciting smutty love story between a vampire and a werewolf. 

4.  Heather Fawcett's -  Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries and the sequel. Cute.

Every book I now read, after the initial euphoria of being part of a story well told, then leaves me with unhappiness and fear. Why, when, how will I find the time to write? Universe, help.

***

Bruno has constant itchy scratchy fits in his ear. Bigsmol has some weird insect bites on his forearm. Smolsmol (still the same amount of teef) has an itchy forehead from the summer sweat in his hair. Me? Itchy feet.

Send relief and soothing lotion and cold compresses and lay us all up in bed alongside a healing river. Barring which, send rains. Bangalore is hot and parched and dusty, and we are forever on the lookout for storms. Mainly climate kind.

Oh, lest I forget.

1. To the right - > I have a new hair parting, and after about 3 decades of wearing my hair in ONLY side parts, I am now moving closer to centre. Not so politically, but I have long since made my peace with my weakness on political matters. My portfolio holdings in large crony polluters are in the double digits. So it swings. I forgot what all else it was supposed to signify but 8 days will do that.

Galloping is the time is Brownian

 How is it September? (inevitable passage of time etc, yes yes). 

I read somewhere that if you do the same boring things, time will pass faster. Fine. FINE.

I've slowly started to feel (since I've made a little addition to my financial goals), that my life is lacking purpose. This always happens when I meet friends who have (some) purpose. I hate it.

There is an essay lurking around somewhere on the tribulations of authenticity - those who make it, those who bear it, those who look for it, and this essay splutters into life in couplets, haikus and late night switch pauses when I look around at my living room.

Who lives here? A person with kids, a person who reads, a person who likes interesting geometric art and moody perspective-shift pictures. A person who likes clean lines, and the odd burst of colour. But mainly, the person who lives here is a mom to kids and a very hairy very sheddy Labrador? (and a dad, don't forget DH). And mainly, the people who really use the space are the kids? Is there a me that is not subsumed by the mom-piece?

In watercolour painting, there is this concept of a wash, and how you add water to an area and gently let the colour seep around and watch Brownian motion. A darker wash next to a lighter area means you're in for some osmosis. Is this me? Is the mom piece the darker wash? Which piece in my life is lighter? Or is it like salt solution, a pinch means the glass is forever slightly salty? Or sugar, or lime juice, but you get my drift? (Why did I put salt first there's a story).

I've been wondering why I haven't been wondering. Why I haven't been getting itchy feet. Why I'm just being. I put it down to being physically numb, exhausted, a bone-crushing weariness that is the foreverness of child-rearing. There isn't space for clarity (or any really) of thought, but when that does come. What will those winds bring? Will it be more being, or more movement?

I've been reading:
1. Dragons love Tacos (and boy what a hoot it is!) + sequel
2. All of Sharon King-Chai's books - they're so delicious, the first thing I said to bigsmol was I want to eat each page
3. Every single Tom Norman book on FEELINGS of which we are seeing a lot
4. A bunch more of touch and feel books.
5. Babel by RF Kuange moved me in a real and rough way more than anything I've read recently and I liked it - I liked how intense it made me feel. I enjoyed it, much like slight bondage. Its rasping and uncomfortable but only slightly and in that space you find new things to look at (also exactly like Pilates?)

I met someone recently who has unsettled my life slightly, like a miniscule BLUE paintbrush splittersplatter spot in a wash of gentle azure sky. Its there, you can see it, you're trying to ignore it, and you can, but its there. I don't like it. 

I've been listening to a lot of Rafi - I sang it to smolsmol who was so unwell, he's better now, but I am forever bent and slightly broken in the way one is, when you leave your heart with someone and then they throw themselves off a bridge and ok now they're all fine and dandy but you never forget that one moment of heartstopping vomit inducing panic when they leapt. Don't jump you try to say, but you can't because first its I want to walk no matter I'll fall back and hit my head on the floor and you'll have to see it over and over and drink tea the 30th time it happens, and then its, I'll jump two stairs when you're not looking and before you know it, you're making peace with all the peace you've relinquished and all the control you've carefully divvied up.

  God, please can I have no more drama? Just love and forehead kisses. And more tea.

today i am sad

 quietly sad.

sadness that is useless - no real outlet, no real trigger (who am i kidding, look at the date), a low level fuzzy thin blanket sadness. 

im going to wear socks and drink tea. is this life. be sad. be adult, wear warm socks. drink tea. do laundry. 

 

i could cry.

Ta fete 2023

That song from a decade ago in Singapore is on my mind as I sit now in KL. 

 

Its time for some music, a little cruising on the yellow couch (not orange but then, that particularly dated colour fetish has passed), and daze-looking at the Petronas Towers. 

 

A view to die for. 

 

A song thats just universal enough - it could be English, it could be Portuguese, it could be Bahasa, or Nigerian, or Punjabi. Is there anything better? Peace, quiet, bigsmol and DH out on an errand, me, my fantasy book (Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House) and my germs sit and rest. Listen.

And watch the clouds go by and feel happy. 

Happy, right?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am the largest size I have ever been and if this holiday is not an exercise in practiced self love and affirmation, I don't know what is. Fat and fabulous? Nope. Just fabulous.

Loop de loop

And so it seems that years have passed. Well over a decade. Welp. Here we are, thinking better, happier, but in some ways, so much the same.

Every year or so, or every five years or so, I mean who's keeping track really, I claim to have found the answer except now, five years past the first smol and the little teeth onto the new smol and the old smol-big and the big-dogsmol, I think I know the question?

This affectation, recently acquired is only charming when flirting. Elsewise it is thoroughly annoying. Be sure or be done with it etc. One never had much patience, and now one has parceled out the reserves for the smol and the smol-big and the big-dogsmol and the household staff (YES ONE HAS A STAFF!) and dear old DH who through it all has somehow remained constant (Truly, did we think we would be here?), and one has miniscule portions left to give and often not even that.

To be a real adult is really a terrifying and demanding experience. 

Onto the headlines then: 

I am happy
I know the questions
I went to therapy and why didn't I go sooner?
Dad has died.

So much has happened and we have much to talk about, though, really you might have gone away for a decade and come back and large parts are still the same. I took a walk in the rain, I wished I had a brighter umbrella but settled for an IKEA black. I drank tea and I felt very good about my place in the world.

Time to buy some shoes? This place has good bones, and I guess its time to roll up sleeves and begin to type.


Speaking of, in my inexhaustible drive to buy ALL THE BOOKS, I am contemplating buying a whole book just because I loved in it, one essay. Mary Oliver's Power and Time in her book Upstream has made such a profound impact. Doubly so because, gentle reader would you believe it, a real live Daddy Long Legs made its way upto my mountain retreat and sat gently on a wall next to me. How lucky am I!

Harrison

The secret to winning in life has been staring me in the face all along. And it is discipline.

If only they'd said so straight out in school, instead of making it seem like discipline was some rubbish rule that convent school nuns wanted to instill in you because it would make God love you more or some nonsense.

Anyway, I have decided, I will be the most disciplined.

***
As I write this, I look out a window, onto some other apartments, but the sunshine that falls on my table is pure california.

San Francisco is unlike any city I've been to.  Its squat. And there isn't atleast on the 18 streets I've been on so far, any visible manic energy. This Friday I am going to seek it out - try and find the Soho of SF, as it were.

I live close to a very popular gay bar called the Stud, and I want to explore it.

I want to buy a book at City Lights bookstore.

And I want to eat an ice-cream as I walk down the pier.

I want to scrunch a penny in the machine for Kabir. And I want him to know when Amma went to raise a ton of money - this is where she made a wish for good fortune and tossed a dollar into the sea.

***

high apple pie in the sky hopes

How much has happened, reader, since the last time I was here. As a marker of the passage of time, just imagine how many new gmail ids I have created since - leading to my entry into bloggy here via a maze of incognito windows, forgotten passwords and a gentle scolding from Google.
You entered your current password in the forgot password window doofus.

Khair, anyway, I am here now, and that is what counts?

***
It is a beautiful night in Bangalore - rains, quiet signs of some late night travels from the street, the rush of the wind. Bangalore is a city for falling in love. Only question is, with whom?

***
List of some books i read:
Andaleeb Wajid - my brothers wedding
Goblin Emperor
multiple readings of Crazy Rich Asians
a book on negotiation, as well as a book on raising toddlers (content almost same ! :))

***
Work is challenging, I am happy.

***
I so badly want to meet someone like myself.

***
I am getting much much MUCH better at life. This is good. I can almost always tell when I've done well, ok, or ugh. I can also trust my feelings more - and I'm beginning to learn how to become more centred - I can't explain it well, but its like a kind of noticing my innerpointstomach and drawing in my feelings and forcing them to stay there till I feel like I can be effective again.

***
I am slowly losing weight - I am happy about this.

***
I'm trying something to get back in the friendship books of someone I'm very fond of. I'm trying to message them almost everyday. I miss them - and I wonder - do they - miss me? Really truly?

***
I feel like a fake CEO and there is not one person I can say this aloud to - so gentle reader if you are here and reading this, feel special. You now know.

***
I can't see a way I might fail. So I am going to assume stupendous success. Just you wait.

snippets from 10 years of emails

aka 2-4 GB because I'm not going to pay for storage because memories are like wasabi, they're nice in small quantities.

Attempt one at reading thru about 890 emails from 2009 in 6 minutes and picking only the most important ones and the ones that dont make me cry:

Happy New Year! I'm guessing most people haven't finished/started studying. These are notes that I had made for myself for Clinic. I would suggest people read the cases from the Reading Material, but if you're in a mad rush to finish everything in one night, these may help. Please cross check though. No guarantee of good notes here. There could be mistakes.

Also three cases are missing: 1. Madras Refineries (which I didnt understand and so is incomplete and could be completely wrong); 2. Hemlata v. Collector and vice versa (which was too long and so I gave up).

Hope this helps. All the best!

***

Nave saal di tuhaanu vadhai hove
Heppy Ji

***

MCC@NALSAR: 

Please see your research passwords for LexisNexis, Westlaw, and HeinOnline
below.

***
I just heard that you won the Jessups round! CONGRATULATIONS! I just found out and was extremely happy to hear it. This is awesome news! Hope you guys go on to win the International rounds as well.

***

Book tickets for Ghajini Now, The years biggest release!

***

I'm ol.I'm invisible 

***

i wanted to tell you that you didn't call on my birthday and I
really thought you would.

***

Bommai stuff: here. of course you can plagiarise.

***

where are you? im beginning to freak out. whats your number? i am back in civilization and near std phones.

***
You never call me and I miss you. 

---fin----

Some sentiments expressed in these emails are by no means outdated. I wonder what that says about life and me, and my life. 

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.

***
I miss being thin.

***
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?

The quality of mercy

is overrated.
Who cares for mercy
as though it can help you when you need change
and you're standing in the cold and
it feels like all of your life's bad decisions are
laughing at you.
and you have never felt less loved and more hated.
Yes.
that.

Thinking aloud a while ago

Its that time of the year when I need to book tickets to go home and as always, I'm faced with some difficult questions.Lon-Del-Mas-Lon or simply Lon-Mas return?

There is a fabulous shoe store in Delhi that I simply must visit, and of course I must eat at Andhra Bhavan one last time before I return, but are these two reasons worth the extra ten hours either way in travel?

Edited to add in 2017.
No. They're not and you made pretty poor choices. Stupid 2012 Sow.

Look who's back

I have no where else to take my poetry. Spaax is back. 





The quality of mercy is not strained.

It is filled with bits of tealeaf bitterly regretting

letting go like the gentle rain that

droppeth on umbrellas

Ouch. Ah well, good that it is twice blessed

Triple filtered, osmosically

and did you know it blesses the receiver and giver

like good sex

Regardless, though justice be thy plea consider this

who among us has not while no one was looking

eaten all the peanut butter lindor

Purpose

I have it.

I feel like I've floundered for so long now, just thinking and being and doing and failing. Well, *I* call it failing, and quiet-time-ing, though really, its just being as 'on' as I'm used to being.

I feel like I found something I could do for longer than a year. For the rest of my life even. I'm happy.

It would be perfect if it rained today. But I'll take what Delhi throws at me (cloudy, breezy, almost monsoony)

I love choice

Sometimes we make choices that seem like they're holding us back, but actually, they liberate us in ways we cannot even imagine.

I am making one such choice today - and while its a bit grandiose to claim that I'm going to be liberated because of this choice in ways I cannot even imagine, I *am* going many steps forward with this little step.

Goodbye tyranny, hello you bittersweet independence.