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

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.


 

These are the best of times.

So much of my reactions are not truly mine, so many are studied, affected, provoked, and imitations. Templates-like. Gleaned, hoarded, displayed.

Do you ever feel that way? Do you ever wake up and ask yourself, if you are able to _retain_ any information, or if all you do is feed in, feed out? If all you do, is like, share, comment, scan, summarise, and forget. Knowing that the archive exists, do you sleep easy? Do you dream original thought anymore? Do you?

Think about it, when was the last time you had an _original_ thought? Really, think about it.  

***

Everyday, as I struggle to read my newspaper, I find it harder and harder to quell a growing sense of satisfaction (yes, you read that right) with the world. Does it suddenly seem like _so_ much is happening? That people are _doing_ things, taking decisions, making policy, effecting change. Right?

Or is it just me?

Doesn't matter either way, I feel wildly optimistic and excited about the future, as nervous and gleeful as going to watch a Chris Nolan movie (see, intelligent movie references and all). There is so much, SO much changing around the world today.

We are to have seven billion humans on the planet soon, new market standards for uncertainty are being set, the eurozone is stumbling (and boy, what a Jessup compromis they'll have to draft this year !!), Palestine is to address the U.N. as too Netanyahu, and the U.S. will hopefully use the veto (they'll be writing articles about this for years to come now), lending subtle effect to international law theories on its use and misuse, and oh oh oh on hegemony (gotta love the word) . More and more commenters call for an orderly exit for Greece, and the crumble of the free-market capitalist model  (in parts, atleast) has been nothing but exhilarating in a think really really hard kind of way. Its all very cusp-like, very edge of the world, peering across to new horizons like.

It feels like the times-they- are-a-changing. Can't you feel it too?