digital drama

ordinary love stories

2010-09-15T20:42:00.000+05:30

in a day or so, i will leave bombay for a longlongtime. i wrote ordinary love stories in tribute to andre jordan, one for every friend who came to bid me fare-thee-well. and they wrote some back for me.

stories i wrote...

for Nash
I have fallen head over heels in love with a curly-haired designer named Nash. He smells of Adobe suites and cat hair.

For three weeks now I have sat in his apartment, watching him doodle naked women on his Mac, hoping he will laugh at one of my jokes. But Nash only stares at his Mac and softly bobs his curly hair to an old song on the radio.

Then yesterday as I was playing with his cat as a cheap substitute for his love [even though I am allergic], I began to sneeze uncontrollably. I sneezed thirteen times in five minutes. At last Nash looked up at me from his Mac and laughed and laughed and laughed, while I plastered a heartbroken smile across my face.

for Diti
I have fallen head over heels in love with a tattooed photographer named Diti. She smells of Nikon lenses and crochet thread.

For a week now, she has been teaching me photography on the new camera I bought just to earn her approval. Last night as I struggled over my aperture and shutter speed ratio, it became disastrously obvious to me she had no idea what our photography classes meant to me.

I take picture after picture of Diti, telling her I want to learn how to take portraits. But Diti only takes pictures of cats and chai cups and human pyramids. When will you take my picture Diti, I often sob into my pillow. But Diti’s camera never turns my way.

for Veena
I have fallen head over heels in love with a dramatic editor named Veena. She smells of fixed comma splices and Bollywood item numbers.

In my dreams, I write the most perfect prose to prove my love to her. I write poems about music and romance and impeccable grammar to show her how I care. When I wake, though, I have to look up each word in the dictionary to make sure I spell it right. I’m not even sure of the difference between “who” and “whom”.

Veena deserves to be with someone who knows the difference between “who” and “whom”. And so I sleep alone at night with nothing by my bedside but a cold-hearted dictionary that knows all the spellings. That bastard.

for Parag
I had fallen head over heels in love with a Gujarati businessman named Parag. He smelled of broken grammar and unaccounted money.

Every time we talked, I would try to understand his garbled words, but find myself weeping with frustration. His love notes gave me headaches and we stopped talking on the phone a long time ago. I wanted to believe he loved me like I loved him, but he was so unclear, I could never be sure.

Two years later, walking past a familiar street, I saw Parag with another girl. Together, they were painting a mural on a wall that left no need for words at all. Oh how I cursed all my fancy words and wished I could quietly paint instead.

for Milann
I have fallen head over heels in love with an eccentric filmmaker named Milann. She smells of Final Cut Pro and authentic pasta.

Every week I write silly little scripts to impress Milann, but she is never impressed. “Too linear,” she will always say, “and your characters have no depth.” I turn away disappointed and try again.

Then the other day, for the first time, Milann came to me with a script. “The character is based on you,” she explained, when I looked at her, confused. The character had no depth at all, and then I knew why she would never love me.

for Isaaco
I have fallen head over heels in love with an unusually tall Italian named Isaaco. He smells of coffee beans and Milan Kundera novels.

It is silly and futile this love of mine. You see, Isaaco has a stiff neck so he cannot look down. And he is so tall, he has never even seen me. He spends his days watching the sky and meeting only other tall girls while I skulk around his ankles. I have tried everything—wearing heels, stretching my legs, hanging upside down. But I am never tall enough for Isaaco to notice me.

Then one day I bought a ladder and stood on it all day until he came around. He entered the room screaming in delight. “My stiff neck is cured! All I want to do is look at the earth and talk to short people!”

Oh, I sighed. I was quite enjoying my new ladder.

for Ravi
I have fallen head over heels in love with an interiors designer named Ravi. He smells of hair product and magazine paper.

Every time Ravi comes around, I frantically clean up my house, laying out my most beautiful things, hoping he will approve and fall maddeningly in love with me and my refined taste. But my house is never beautiful enough, and I know Ravi will never love me in it.

One day I asked him to take me shopping to help me buy new things for my house. As we walked past shelf after shelf of expensive, lovely things, I saw Ravi’s eyes light up. He looked at the lamps with such love in his eyes, and had an impassioned conversation with the handsome salesman about curtain rods. I cannot compete with these salesman who know so much about curtain rods, I thought, and so I hung my head in shame and walked back alone to my ugly house.

for Dheeraj
I have fallen head over heels in love with a complicated copywriter named Dheeraj. He smells of Marlboros and unwashed jeans.

Every year for the last twelve years, I have made one sincere effort after another to get Dheeraj to fall in love with me. One year I took him on an all expenses paid trip to the beach, another I bought him new clothes, and another I showed up at his doorstep with my heart in a brown paper bag. But every year I was out-performed by someone else vying for his attention.

This year at last there was no other girl to compete against. I showed up at his doorstep, clutching at my eager, trembling heart. When he opened the door, we looked at each other for a moment and burst out laughing at the very idea. The last twelve years suddenly made perfect sense.

for Yogesh
I have fallen head over heels in love with a financial wiz named Yogesh. He smells of stocks, bonds, and other things I don’t understand.

I often ask Yogesh to explain these things to me, but he dismisses me with a wave of his hand. I feel stupid and hang my head in shame and walk away. I am not smart enough for Yogesh, I think.

As I walk out, gloomy and embarrassed, behind my back Yogesh hangs his head low as well. How should he tell me he barely understands these things himself. How can he tell me his true loves are cooking and photography and laughing very loudly at silly things. How will I ever know the real Yogesh? How will we ever figure it out?

for Vikram
I have fallen head over heels in love with a highbrow editor named Vikram [it’s a real name]. He smells of superiority and newspaper ink.

I read every newspaper before going to meet Vikram the day I had decided to tell him how I feel. First, I’d dazzle him with my knowledge of world affairs, then amuse him with witty jokes about politicians, and end with a serious discussion about the Israel-Palestine conflict. That should do it, I thought.

When I walked in the door, Vikram was eating peanuts, playing a silly video game while listening to loud Bollywood music. I was so not prepared for this.

for Arunima
I have fallen hesd over heels in love with a banker named Arunima. She smells of check books and expensive perfume.

I can’t go through this again, I decide, and set her up with Yogesh. They will live happily ever after while I slowly age beyond my years.

stories they wrote...

by nash
I have fallen head over heels in love with a very negative girl called Tanushri. Tanu for short. She smells of typewriter ink and panic.

I often think of ringing her bell and professing my love in a some kind of silent slutty song but I always get confused about which train to take. People tell me different things and all this confusion has led me nowhere near Nerul (or Neral?).

The other night however I found a mean_ass bass player. I know how she adores him. and he me. He decides to float me across the Thane creek on his double bass and then lay the foundation for my love. My (other) the weather man friend selects a day for optimum winds and minimum tide.

We drown but reach. Wet and irritable, I feel love and empathy. I am greeted by three dogs at the door, they lick and bark and piss lovingly.
Meanwhile, Tanu is on her way, her flight irritatingly on time...

by ravi
I have fallen head over heels in love with this girl called tanushri. She smells like pages of old books do & wriggles her nose to the taste of red wine. Her pretty long fingers fascinate me, they’re the kind of fingers you’d want to be strangled with, if you’d like to be strangled that is.

She sits amidst her mount of books, immersed in poetry and verse; legs crossed, hands playing with her toe rings. I try very hard to sneak into her world, buying books, pretending to understand poetry so she’d like me. But she sees through me. Always does. I think she doesn’t like my hair. Why god why? Why me?

Then one day I put a photo of mine between pages, hoping she’d find it and start thinking about me, notice my waxed hair I styled to impress her, only her. Maybe she’d dream of me, and wake up wanting to like me.

Years pass with me fighting for her attention.

Then one day, I go wear her favorite pair of socks. She stared in horror at my feet, shrieking how her tiny feet would never ever again fit into those socks again. Crying she vowed never to speak to me again & she never did. Sigh, I wish she’d had strangled me with those pretty fingers instead.

by dheeraj
I have fallen head over heels in love for the 12th time with a girl named Tanu. She smells of Buddha and Apple products. And of all that was good about yesterday.
The first time i came to her with a broken heart and told her i loved her, she introduced me to Rushdie, Rand, Marquez and Kundera. I packed my bags with the words and left. Leaving her weeping on the floor.
The second time i knocked on her door, she made music with her bangles. In the morning, i left. And never heard them again.
The third time i confessed, she showed me pictures of her feet and the ones in her head. I took the albums and i left.
Ashamed, the fourth time, i whispered it into her book, and left it in her bag. She left the book halfway and never heard it. So i left.
The fifth time, i sent another boy to tell her that i love her. He took my words and left.
The sixth time I came to her door, the boy told me she doesn't love me anymore.
The seventh time I fell in love, she didn't believe me.
The eight time i fell in love, her true love sat beside her, and an estranged friend beside me.
The ninth time i fell in love, she was lying curled up in her bed. With a half-empty bucket of salt water and a weeping mother beside her.
The tenth time i fell in love, she screamed at me like she always did. In a fit of rage, i turned and left.
The eleventh time i fell in love, she showed me her doodles. She showed me a hot-air balloon as free as the sky that desperately wished to find its way back to land. I decided to only love her between the white, empty walls of my room and left.
The twelve-th time i feel in love with the girl named Tanu, she showed me her Buddha flags and designer dreams and love-stories she'd written to ten ordinary people. She put a pipe right through my heart and squeezed twelve years of emotions into my frail, struggling heart. Until it burst.
She picked up her overflowing bags, took twelve years worth of love, and left.

twitter stories

2010-07-06T13:46:00.000+05:30

so it's pretty well known i deeply love and revel in the twitter format. one of the things i love most about it is how a tweet is a perfect little jewel, small and perfect by itself. but sometimes, once in a while, there is a story behind the story that's worth telling. so sometimes, with some tweets, i'll do that here. with no capital letters of course.

last night at 2 am, citibank and ICICI sharing a chai in IDBI. in bombay at night, the ATM security guards take over the economy.less than a minute ago via TweetDeckTanushri Shukla
dramaqueen82

milann, divya, and i took a late night drive around bandra, listening to the fantastic new verve album that just begs to be listened to in a car at night with a light rain and the windows down. preferably on carter road around 3 am when it's heavenly-ly empty of show-offy bikers and cops. the next morning, i was to find out whether my education loan had been sanctioned or not and, if so, how much. some new RBI policy had been recently instituted that had made things a tad uncertain, and the economy was on my mind. to top it all, my bank had been annoying me by briefly "losing" a bunch of my money in an old account that was supposed to be closed, and blaming "the bandra branch". as if the other branch is another bank altogether. argh. why can't they all just get along, i was wondering, clenched.

the lit up ATM pods at the end of carter road are like floating islands of light in the otherwise dark, empty city. and inside these pools of light sit night security guards, slumped over asleep in uncomfortable chairs or sipping chai, staring mad-eyed out at the city streets. it's a cold, lonely job and i often wonder what they think about, alone, night after night, like birds perched in glass cages, full of fluttering currency notes they are separated from by the flimsiest of plastic walls.

that night, perhaps it was the rain and the new chill in the air, because the guards wanted company, and all the banks were sitting together, two or three green-brown clothed men with chais and smiles, sharing an ATM vestibule. who cared what ICICI thought of Citibank or what IDBI's interest rate was. it was raining, they had light, and a chai. i smiled. the economy was in good hands tonight.

the next morning, i was told my loan had been approved. and i'm off to oxford in sepetember. thank you security guard chai-drinking men for the good energies i know you've been unconsciously spreading.

psst: this active twitter screenshot has been taken using robin sloan's awesome blackbird pie.

new site

2010-05-20T12:53:00.002+05:30

jasmine tea
moonpeak cafe
mcleod ganj
red moleskine
now on www.tanushrishukla.com

dinky-do

2010-04-18T21:03:00.002+05:30

new camera, new pictures, new stories, new template!
dinkypictures.blogspot.com is growing up.

my blue box

2010-04-08T11:30:00.003+05:30

my cupboard was turning into a cubist nightmare... i needed more space!

one day, walking down the road, i saw this stack of boxes just as a ray of sun slanted down upon them

inside the shop were many little gems

so i paid 1400 rupees to buy mr. tarzan star

with a secret unicorn inside for extra luck

some turquoise paint, which for some strange reason looks blue in all these pictures. turquoise can be a shy color.

i got paint on the railway budget

and on rohit bal's heart attack (hope he's doing well)

and then i was done!

here's a random picture of the buddha on my (now entirely different shade of) blue box

more photo-stories over at dinkypictures.blogspot.com!

rearrange

2010-04-01T02:56:00.001+05:30

i've been writing more around/about/for my dinky pictures than anything else these days
have always enjoyed the interplay of words and visuals
and for some reason always found words flow easier with a visual starting point.
so instead of fighting it or analyzing it or trying ambitious doomed experiments, i started a silly blog a while ago to record the silly pictures i take with my cell phone cam like all of the rest of us
but maybe the words aren't all gone
scrolling through the image titles it struck me
there might be a poem hidden in this seemingly random presence of words

lines and dots

2010-03-14T11:44:00.003+05:30

i always thought of indian tattoos as random (but so pretty) designs
made with aesthetic considerations, not emotional ones
certainly not as over-thought-through as western tattooing has become
today people would look at you funny if you said you wanted a tattoo just because it "looks pretty"
but tribal tattoo art is often made with just that one basic purpose, and what's wrong with that?

but yesterday yashoda, our vegetable seller, showed me a different aspect of tribal tattooing

this is yashoda's fore arm with one of her many, many tattoos. the top most pattern with the lines and dots is my favorite and i intended to get it someday
and yesterday i loved it more when she told me it was in fact not lines and dots
but stick figures of girls holding hands
representing her childhood spent playing with her girlfriends

indian tattoos, i realized, tell a story too
there on yashoda's body are symbols of her childhood, flowers representing her village--her home, and later her husband's name and a bindi showing her married life. the two stick figures below in this picture i believe are her two children.

i hope to get these tattoos someday, in this indian style with the greenish ink and thick, rough needles so looked down upon by western tattooing. yashoda apparently got these from a woman sitting outside a railway station once for three rupees each! of course, the likelihood of me allowing a three rupee needle in my arm is zero. hopefully someday one of our "professional" tattoo artists will take up the cause of reviving and mainstreaming indian tattoo art. i don't know why it hasn't happened already.

p.s. for some really beautiful pictures of tribal tattoos from kutch, do visit one of my favorite new flickr streams, "the meanest indian", and this set of tribal tattoos. the clothes, the tattoos, the silver... gorgeous!

"the world with tibet"

2010-03-12T10:21:00.004+05:30

yesterday i attended a film screening organised by the friends of tibet and presented by tenzin tsundue who i last saw at the jaipur lit fest. i've been finding myself more and more interested in buddhism and wanted to know how a buddhist nation fights for freedom. turns out, it doesn't. it just quietly marches along and keeps repeating its request over and over as loudly as it can. the film, "the sun behind the clouds", was a good primer on the tibetan freedom struggle. first there was tenzin tsundue smiling, with that signature hair. then he was on the screen with a military buzz cut, getting ready to be arrested.

so on one hand is the dalai lama who travels the world, lives in a lovely home in dharamsala, speaks of love and freedom and non violence. and then there are the tibetans who live as oppressed minorities in tibet or as refugees outside it, cry for him to return to tibet and lead the movement and lie prostrate every time they see him on the tv. why is there always such a distance between us and those we worship. isn't it easy to be god when you don't have to live in human reality?

when we went to ladakh, i often saw world maps and globes in cyber cafes and restaurants with tibet drawn onto them with a felt tip pen. yesterday, they gave us these maps with tibet represented as a large white area. it says, "the world with tibet." the map's gone up on this random grid of things on my wall. there, now my world has tibet.

one of two things

2010-03-12T09:38:00.004+05:30

Flavors.me from Jack Zerby on Vimeo.

flavors.me's new demo video. it really is awesome how simple + pretty it is. seems it took a helluva long time for someone to make a website creation service that's this braindead simple and delivers a really good looking result. but at last.

another website that's awesome on the simple-but-pretty front is aviary, which is a web-based photo/video/audio editing service with tools exactly like photoshop etc. i have no idea why it's free to use, it's that good. the learning curve there is a lot more than with something like flavors, but its usp isn't simplicity but giving people access to the tools of otherwise expensive softwares.

i think everyone should just do one of two things with their lives--make stuff or make it easy for others to make stuff.

flay-vur

2010-03-01T23:26:00.004+05:30

http://flavors.me/tanushri

my new website
(whose background image changes with my mood)
is a compilation of everything i do online
hosted on flavors.me, a really sweet, simple service
that recently started allowing registrations
the url is a little dinky at the moment
but i'm working on it

speaking of walls

2010-02-23T09:47:00.006+05:30

the prettiest wall in leh
behind which the young donkeys grazed
while their minders sat in gossipy circles
knees a-folded, skirts hitched to the calves
in crass womanly poses
flashes of turquoise and silver
skin curling under the barking mad ladakhi sun
that doesn't forgive anyone
why did you have to travel so far,
it seems to say,
to find this place

"

2010-02-22T00:44:00.002+05:30

i'm not sure why one day i decided to paint this column in my room orange
but i'm giving it purpose now

it's going to be my quote wall!
with all my favorite quotes in one continuous inspiring stream

camels

2010-02-08T12:56:00.000+05:30

in delhi on 26th jan
seemed awful to be missing the parade
but flagging a rickshaw outside the TOI building
the universe sent a little excerpt my way
yay

p.s. someone teach me how to make animated gifs please.

jaipur literature festival highlights part 3: mad dogs and englishmen

2010-02-07T00:15:00.001+05:30

many little-little more gems from the festival, many of which i can hardly remember.

there were kites in the trees

and women with the most gorgeously appropriate bags

and geoff dyer whose reading from jeff in venice, death in varanasi had people running out like mad dogs to buy his book (me too and made me realize reading a book is a vastly different experience from listening to it being read by the author and can often seem totally disconnected, unrelated literary experiences)
and s. anand of navayna press whose talk i attended quite randomly (and also adored) and later happened to travel to delhi with
and chugge khan who is a mad man on the khartal
and tony wheeler! and tony wheeler at mrigya!
and, oh, the bauls! william dalrymple performing nine lives with the bauls whose videos i will certainly not put up, it would be a sin really.
and the pretty diggi palace rooms
and snakey lunch lines and people "insinuating" themselves into queues (a sweet word thing i have officially imbibed from geoff dyer)
and silver shopping (maharani market rocks!) and whining authors (amit chaudhury, you know who i'm talking about) and witty new discoveries (omair ahmad with the gorgeously pronounced name) and flamboyant displays (coughcoughsunilsethicoughcough) and many lunches with ndtv royalty later... jaipur lit fest was over, and delhi started saying pack those skirts away and hurry up and get here already.

jaipur literature festival highlights part 2: the one with all the poetry

2010-02-07T00:07:00.001+05:30

one of the nicest hours i spent at JLF was in the durbar hall listening to javed akhtar read his standard old poems (from perfect memory). i'm not sure if it was the yellow walls or the chill in the air or how my long flowery skirt felt twirling around my legs all day... but it felt very close to perfect, that evening. pooja and i stepped out from different corners of the durbar into an evening getting steadily colder and quickly needed a glass of wine inside us.

p.s. who knew prasoon joshi can sing! and how.

jaipur lit fest highlights part 1: chiffon strands and silhouettes

2010-02-07T00:05:00.001+05:30

waking at 3 am to get the 5 am flight suddenly got a lot more worth it when the sun started to rise on the horizon

discovered the "merrill lynch" tent with the worst acoustics but bestest ambience. yellow! and tree silhouettes that keep moving, responding. apparently ten days before the festival the organizers discovered they were 30 lakh short and merrill lynch just sent them the cash just like that. so.

devdutt pattnaik said, who came first? even the gods came later.
roberto calasso said stories are 'not a less powerful' means of accessing the gods than ancient rituals
the moderater ananya whateverhernamewas stuttered and stammered and ruined everything

my favorite speaker of all the five days spoke in the pretty tent. tenzin tsundue (with also wonderful isabel hilton and ever wonderful william dalrymple).

he autographed my copy of his book of poems! but someone else got it for me because i was shy :P

was a bit conscious/hesitant about being alone so much of the time
but JLF is wonderful alone and many people are
just reading, smoking, listening, shopping, writing

the best place for which is by the pond in the middle of the courtyard with the durbar hall in front, merrill lynch on the left, and loungey baithak on the right. behind was flow, a fancypants cafe mostly occupied by the celebrity writers who kept wanting to "get away from the crowds and autograph hunters". that overheard often. so why'd they come?

p.s. by the last day, the water was full of coffee cups and cigarette butts. sigh.

else, i hung out with my feisty room mate, pooja, from whose interesting/intelligent phone conversations you'd never know she was speaking to her 7 year old kiddo.

the durbar hall was the most important venue, with all the big author talks held there. also yellow! gorgeous, painted, flowery, mirror-y. the tweed jacket and old newspaper and green socks in these picture i loved.

unfortunately it would get so full that was the only view i had of it for four days, standing way at the back, behind the last row of chairs, kicking off my jootis and sinking down to the floor when exhausted along with all the others who were as bad as i was at being elbowy and pushy with getting a seat. literary people are not less rude than women in a second class ladies compartment. they just dress better. but on the last day, just before i left, when JLF was gorgeous and empty of celebrities (and therefore crowds), i got to sit in the front row all excited! only to discover the talk was entirely in rajasthani. o well. small price to see that giant gilt mirror up close. i bet you see reflections of nautch girls and twirly-mustache rajaas in it at night.

shabana azmi (the red speck) and urvashi butalia (the green and black speck) spoke there. the hindi parts were nice, the english translation (which they were launching) not so much. shabana azmi would randomly arrive in spaces and just stand and allow people to hover around her with cameras. she always looked pissed off except when on stage.

but some were very nice. that's navtej sarna in the blue pagdi taking notes at om puri's talk with a perfect fountain pen. his handwriting looked just like him.

my favorite venue was the baithak tent where all the readings happened and authors sat with their feet up. like everything else it was super crowded the first few days but got wonderfully comfortable with cushions and chaarpais by the end.

and the front lawn was the other big venue where you could hear acoustic guitars over lunch in a patch of sunlight and grand operatic world music at night with wine and a full moon.

after dark, there was nowhere to go but the front lawns with all the food and wine and music. all the pretty people would mill around air kissing and getting high. every other conversation started with the words "my book..." not really my scene and i mostly hung out with the girls from teamworks (the event management company) who gossiped about the writers (fun!) but most of the performances were crazy brilliant.

a bedraggled haiku

2010-02-06T23:08:00.003+05:30

baths are not much fun
haiku knows after today
but why stop posing?

poem about me without using the pronoun "i"

2010-01-27T15:33:00.001+05:30

one hour left for my interview
in an empty house that is not my own
up since 8 AM to wait for 4.30 PM
feeling like one of those movie characters
played by actors like bill murray
clink of a single spoon against a single plate
one bottle of water, one waiting book
one cigarette for the nerves
one lit lamp
one pair of shoes by the door
a wait, a sweater
and the cold.
soundtrack and all.

just back from jaipur lit fest, channelling "indian author" voices, writing in style of "reading of excerpt from her novel on futility" or somesuch

2010-01-27T12:51:00.005+05:30

today i am in delhi, in vikram’s house, enjoying sitting next to—because i can’t sit in—the only patch of real sunlight i’ve seen since i arrived here day before yesterday. i am expecting a telephone call from my university; they are going to interview me for the course and this talk will decide the course of the rest of my life. no pressure. “informal chat” they say, of course. it is 12.30. the interview is at 4.30. I am experiencing a very contained kind of hyper-nervousness where i am nervous but unable to truly allow myself to internalize and therefore deeply feel it but also unable to not feel it and relax and watch a movie or something. what a shit in between way to be. i’ve experienced it often in such make/break situations and i know it’ll go as soon as the situation begins, within seconds literally of the interview starting, and then i’ll be fine. unless i royally goof up and make a giant ass of myself. which has also been known to happen.

i am arranging and rearranging my space, folding the clothes and blankets, shifting my chair first to one then the other side of the table, creating the perfect sitting in which to continue to sit. and wait. i even felt the need to dress well. i think it will make a difference to how i sound on the phone.

luckily, the maid has come over to make lunch and the house is filling with household smells and household sounds, which is making me feel not quite so lonely. if she only knew what a difference she is making in my life. helping me get into university! yet this poor toothless old woman in a thin cotton sari and short-sleeved white blouse-sweater underneath, who first arrived at 8 am in a heavy fog and biting cold, will only trudge to the next house to make the next stranger’s lunch, and every day until the day her limbs don’t move.

now i’ve depressed myself. which is not good but a far more tolerable (and handle-able) emotion than nervousness.

dinky pictures

2010-01-13T19:23:00.004+05:30

i take lots of bad, random pictures with my dinky 2.0 mp cell phone camera.
today i gave them their own blog.
just!

in keeping with the adjective + noun = blog url format, i bring you, http://dinkypictures.blogspot.com.

hee.

'postcard'

2010-01-03T20:54:00.003+05:30

it was after six in the evening, the sky was that yellow it gets sometimes that can make you feel sickly and pale and remind you of books you read as a child that scared you. walking past the kala ghoda steps where some people lay taking naps and a few kids smoked cigarettes, i met a boy who really likes postcards. i didn't see him first, i saw his postcards first. many of them, hand made, tacked to small cardboard sheets suspended around the pavement. i had never seen so many postcards in one place before. many pictures with small stories in pink and green ink, dancing around the empty pavement, all lit up yellow. he was behind me and when he looked up to see who was looking at his postcards, i looked up to see who was looking at me. i wiped my toes on the back of my skirt. he said he really liked postcards. i said i could tell. why? i asked. he said, because they force you to be honest. i wasn't sure what he meant. he said he liked pavements too. but it surprised him how such few people notice when you put pictures around a pavement. he said most people walk with their eyes staring at the ground, no one has seen my postcards yet i think. i said, why don't you put them on the ground. all the yellow of the sky lit up inside his face. that's brilliant, he said. i laughed and curled my toes and said, no it's silly. he said, here, take my postcards. but you must pay for them, i made them to receive a payment for them. i paid him sixteen rupees and took four postcards. he smiled, thank you, i'll think of you every time someone remembers to look up he said with a ripped pocket. then that is not so often, i thought.

structured serendipity

2010-01-02T10:49:00.007+05:30

i recently discovered siteinspire.net, which is a (somewhat limited) database of interesting websites. nothing new about that, except that the sites are categorized really nicely. instead of the typical categories of 'personal', 'business', 'retail', etc., they have infinitely more useful categories like 'unusual navigation,' 'feminine,' 'big background images'. it just seemed like a much more useful way of finding websites, especially for people who make websites for a living. i think we need a way to extend such useful categorization to other media as well. every time i'm going on a trip, for instance, i spend a seriously unholy amount of time trying to find just the right book to carry with me--i have to find something that is not too heavy, because i can't really focus on airplanes, so it has to be fiction, an absorbing, simple tale; then it has to be not too heavy weight-wise so i can carry it easily down train stations and airports, so it should be paper back and also preferably under 300 pages; and then maybe it should be relevant to where i'm going, either set in the place or somehow related to it. sometimes, only sometimes, i've managed to make just the right match, like when i matched into the wild with ladakh or, too obviously, the beach with goa. but mostly i've failed at this quite miserably (i carried stieg larsson's third to bhopal; it was the totally wrong weight and size to hold lying flat on a hard train seat and only at the last minute i discovered character-fatigue had set in after the first two parts). this is of course just one kind of situation in which you need to pick a book based on useful criteria. and likewise for music. i happened to hear a really awesome song sung in pashto a while ago and want to listen to more pashto music but sadly i can only browse for music by 'artist' and 'album' and 'year'. or like maybe i'm going on a road trip and i want to create a playlist of good road songs. and then there are movies and and it can all get infinitely more specialized. sort of like a greeting card model for media. or a directory with logical-emotional categorization.

i wouldn't want this to be mixed up with social networking. sure i can go ask questions on forums and get people's opinions and all, but i don't want people to have to go through that mess and spend all that time. the experience should be one of flipping through a directory. simple. the results could be improved by having users vote on them but that's about it. and for people to be able to create their own categories, like amazon lists but more searchable, useful. moderated. curated. serendipitous.

amazing grace

2009-12-28T23:38:00.002+05:30

i remember singing this with jaya in her house one night

Amazing grace; How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
'Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promised good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

The world shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun refuse to shine;
But God, who called me here below,
Shall be forever mine.

When we've been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we'd first begun.

i <3...

2009-12-25T21:05:00.023+05:30

in 2009, i visited many cities...

ahmedabad, where i became a movie star

igatpuri, where i thought and thought but then forgot

(photo by scratchpost)

kolad, where i wasn't afraid of water

atlanta, where my favorite socks tore

cincinnati, where i was quite quiet

new jersey, where i wasn't

new york, which i really, truly do heart

delhi, where i ate six cuisines in two days

ambala, which went by in a blur

amritser, where i'm convinced my mom willed me to go.

chandigarh, where i was too sleepy and hungry to take pictures.

mandi, where i lived someone else's life for a night

manali, like goa but with mountains

(photo by scratchpost)

jispa, which was cold cold cold awesome cold

leh, o leh.

bhopal, where Y got hitched at last!

some of these cities became my friends (wazzzaaaa manali), some remained a distant acquaintance (ciao amritser). some were simply like coming home (here's looking at you new york). but of all these, it was only in leh, up in the mountains, the farthest, highest i’ve ever been, where i slept a deep, sound, calm sleep. and i think how well i sleep in a place is always an accurate measure of its love for me. so thank you leh for the love, for keeping me warm and putting me to sleep with the flowers at your window and the mountains at your doorstep.

before the year is over, though, i am returning to visit an old friend i haven't seen in too long.

goa

i think i ran all around the world just so i could come back to you at the end of the year. it’s just you and me again, goa, and i have a feeling my sleep is going to be just fine.

wearing a conversation

2009-12-25T00:32:00.003+05:30

i am in deep love with the feeling of wearing skirts
the long voluminous kind that go down to your shins, swirl around
and announce your arrival with soft swishy sounds
like shy church bells or old trees
and when you have to sit, you are involved in this sitting
and it is a grand sitting
with lengths of fabric to arrange, display
just so.
then they busy themselves, my skirts
chatting with the small bones in my ankles
dancing around my tattoos
playing with my silver anklets
these skirts of mine that are always Up To Something
sometimes get so chatty and bold
brushing up against strangers' legs when all
i am trying to do is walk away quietly.
but sometimes they fall into strange, limp silences
folds immersed one in another
many random wrinkles
going darker, falling into themselves
turning into the mere weight
of cloth
yes i do love that wearing my skirts
is like wearing a conversation
that begins, "dear world,
this is how you made me feel today..."

o i know how hard you try

2009-12-24T00:41:00.002+05:30

on the bus, i met a boy who tries so very hard. things get tough but he wears jeans with determined creases and a black shirt. when he sat down next to me, i said almost out loud, i understand. i know how hard things get, and i know how hard you try. but his phone rang just then and the moment belonged to he who had selected it first. his mother, i explained. she calls every two hours and he patiently tells her exactly where he is.

i adjusted the AC duct. he opened and closed a book. we were two people traveling into the city together and i held his hand. he didn't turn. he held my hand back. warm, small. behind us, cable TV wires and crows rolled past like many pictures.

his stop came a few minutes before mine. i didn't know his voice but i knew his hand. and when he turned around, my face was a silhouette framed in the sky.

(experiments with flash fiction)

pune

2009-12-21T16:15:00.002+05:30

i've been accepted to attend the open space writing masterclass next month in pune.
looking for a cheap place to stay/couchsurf there for a few days every week for 3 weeks.
also looking for nice places to sit, eat, people watch, write!
any info, let me know!

Ps, i love you

2009-12-20T22:41:00.000+05:30

diti's teaching me photoshop!
my first assignment was to take this picture she shot and do "something" with it.
i used all my available skills to do this :) (you need to click for bigger version to read)
not entirely happy with it, but hopefully i'm getting there!

how to turn a human into a personal plaything

2009-12-20T17:57:00.001+05:30

my zorro is a weird wonderful little doggie-boy
who spends pretty much his entire day either sleeping
eating
or trying to con people into letting him come up to my room
when someone does bring him up here
all he does is sit in a corner by the door as if he's been punished
and makes us feel all guilty
then we rush to open the door and he goes charging back downstairs
and repeats the whole exercise a few minutes later
i'm not sure what it all means
maybe he has goldfish memory
or maybe it's his way of keeping us on our toes
by keeping us in a constant state of self doubt
he's either completely brainless or an evil genius
three years and i haven't figured it out
o he's evil genius alright...

ladies and gentlemen, the face of evil...

collab

2009-12-18T00:35:00.000+05:30

i've always been fascinated by collaborative projects of any kind. fascinated and trepidated, to use a big word incorrectly. they always get me happyexcited, but i must admit on some days and with certain kinds of tasks i'm not too good at working in teams. maybe that's the side of me that emerges when i edit. i kind of like the loneliness of the work. i like being able to sit in a corner and bury myself in something for days. and then i like being able to emerge from it, as if breaking water, dying to talk, share, meet people. and then go back into it when my batteries run out. that's probably also the introvert in me talking. (reminds me of this piece i found via rands on twitter. mostly true but for the "exuding calm" part. if anything introverts exude awkward restlessness, i feel).

so i felt a bit understandably shaken when i came across bite-size edits (all hyphenated and all!), a collaborative editing project. well, proofreading is the better word. but that's meant to be a solitary job, i damn near wailed when i saw this. and in the next instant thought, but that's how people used to think about writing once upon a time too. right? and about a whole lot of things that are being done in a collaborative way today.

i know this discussion is very old school web, circa 2005, but having been in such situations before, i can't help thinking editing is something best done by a single person, or at least a select group of people carefully coordinating with each other. and proofreading even more so. should the compound adjectives be hyphenated? is it british or american grammar? is there an oxford comma? these are the kind of answers style guides offer, the kinds of decisions arrived at after some amount of discussion. and some might argue readers don't care about this stuff being inconsistent, only editors do, but truth is a reader will notice inconsistent punctuation and poor formatting. no not consciously. very few will say, "o this semicolon is incorrect and look no indent before this one paragraph!" but these inconsistencies make an overall impression on the reader's mind that he can't quite specify but simply feels.

reminds me of when i first started working in digital and would often find myself saying things to designers like, "i'm not sure, there's something about this page, it just doesn't work," and only later learned to say, "well the form fields are all different sizes and the text isn't aligned and the footer's position changes from page to page by a few pixels." i couldn't quantify it, but i knew something wasn't quite right.

so my worry with collaborative projects is with these not-quite-rights.

but there are two things here. one, the collaborative model lends itself to to some projects very well. crowd sourcing is sufficient proof of this and i don't need to editorialize. and two, no collaboration is 100% collaborative. the line's usually always drawn somewhere. there is often clarity between the input of different participants. and someone usually cracks the whip. and that's all i'm asking.

rant complete.

mnml

2009-12-10T23:26:00.000+05:30

i've become addicted to these three new tools literally within minutes of discovering them. loving the new minimalistic wave of software and tools appearing everywhere (all slightly apple-y in nature, and that is in no way a complaint). they're usable, pretty, and also free, which always helps. sorry, i'm poor.

the first is a software i've been aggressively selling on twitter for a few weeks now. ommwriter is currently a mac-only (but soon coming to pc) writing software. i know, such an abused term that is. but this seriously works. you don't even have to use it to know it works, just watch this video. so simple and pretty i almost cried.

Ommwriter from Herraiz Soto on Vimeo.

favorite feature: ambient key clicks that give all the pleasure of a typewriter with all the beauty of a mac. i love number 5 the most.

next is a browser-based app (yay for cloud) with a very clever name. teuxdeux is everything i was looking for. everything in the to-do tool category that is. again, just watching the demo is enough to know i'm right. i'm right.

TeuxDeux Demo from TeuxDeux on Vimeo.

favorite feature: the "someday" bucket :)

lastest (and i'm afraid to say leastest but definitely worth a mention) is scribbles. i heard of this through sam brown, mister exploding dog, who apparently uses it to make some of those scaryamazing characters. this one has fewer features than ms paint, but the ones it has are the ones it needs.

psst. teuxdeux was designed by swissmiss who's threatening to turn it paid soon. at which point i'll go back to covering my desk in post its.

and when ommwriter becomes unaffordable i think i'll just have to switch careers.

broke my phone :(

2009-12-03T11:37:00.001+05:30

but look how pretty it looks!

found

2009-11-30T15:55:00.000+05:30

my tweetcloud + line breaks + punctuation = found poem!

writing = awesome
trying/using print
delhi time, wondering...
wrong times?
ipod love
love publishing,
movie song,
pretty writer,
digital word.
hahaha: news, music
write cool
reading day's tweet
editing, thanks
live tweeting
life = read
home = books
india, "facebook idea? amazing!"
makes bombay; haha
kindle + apple = girl, happy
people, stop
public, what's itunes?
hope? woah.
online book
google story.

sunday poetry: shaadi season

2009-11-30T00:00:00.000+05:30

because it's full-on shaadi season and the shopping never ends...

Loud brayed an ass. Quoth Kate, ‘My dear,
(To spouse, with scornful carriage,)
One of your relatives I hear.’
‘Yes, love,’ said he, ‘by marriage.’

– I.J. Reeve, The Wild Garland; or, Curiosities of Poetry, 1866

(via the awesome futilitycloset.com)

140

2009-11-29T22:34:00.000+05:30

it struck me today most things i want to say don't need more than 140 characters. if blogger had a smaller window, my posts would be shorter. and that's why i guess i took to twitter.
so it has a silly name, but it isn't silly. it's this simple (not simplistic) way of telling your stories as they happen. of building the narrative of your life.
i've always been a fan of 'short' literature
haiku, flash fiction, six-word stories
never read lydia davis but interviews tell me i'll like her
and twitter is just this na. a whole mood/story communicated all concise, concentrated and combined with that other wonderful thing--immediacy.
@MelvinBurgess, @robinsloan, @AVARY, @rands do this so nicely.

tweetcloud is wordle for twitter. it said...

my top 3 words tweeted this year: book, love, story

so funny, those are also my three favorite words ever.

and this kind of aggregation makes sense on twitter because it's such few words. if you aggregate a blog or a book, the little words you get don't really add up to the whole, do they? longer pieces of writing need manymany words that on their own don't necessarily represent the whole piece. but short literature isn't the piece, it's only the representation. how awesome! so maybe a writer/artist/etc's twitter feed (or suchlike) tells you more about him/what goes through his head than his books. maybe it's a magical thing that lets us build our stories, narrate our legacies, track who we are at any given time. and if moments are like words, maybe who we are is best expressed as a sum total of the smaller fragments rather than a single, emphatic, defining point in time. maybe twitter is this fun mirror that exaggerates only the important parts (good and bad). and maybe, maybe we should learn to see each other like that as well.

so the point, within 140 characters, is this. stories matter. and anything that lets you tell yours is important. no matter how silly its name.

sunday poetry: "aggressively inarticulate"

2009-11-23T03:29:00.000+05:30

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

old photographs

2009-11-23T03:05:00.000+05:30

of palm leaves,
like stars,
reflected in
our eyes.

of palm leaves
reflected
in our eyes
like stars.

coincidence_boy

2009-11-20T02:45:00.000+05:30

this is me and my lotus at pangong-tso, rocking back and forth, just like this song...

coincidence_boy visits me sometimes when i can't sleep at strange hours between night and morning when it looks like twilight. he worms his way inside my ear and speaks of big flat lakes and dust and towers of stones that will topple over tomorrow with no witnesses. i like him, this boy. he keeps me amused mostly, and sometimes gives hope. if there's a hole anywhere in the ground filled with blue stars, he'll find it you know, and take you there by the hand. let him talk to you sometimes, he's sweet. makes nice pictures and sticks them to his wall in pairs. and if you touch his pictures, a song starts to play whose name you can't remember. he's very earnest, that's one. reallytrulybelieves, you know? two, he never dances. don't ask him to ok. he won't say no and he won't say yes and then you'll just feel all bad because you'll think he's forgotten all the nice things you said about him, but he hasn't, don't worry. blink. he's trying to remember where your lost purple sock with the cows on it is, that's all. let coincidence_boy find your sock, your laserbeam... you sleep. he'll whisper it into your palm when your eyes are closed. close your fist now.

(pictures by j and v)

the day's singalong folks

2009-11-18T21:00:00.000+05:30

i like singalong songs better than all other kinds of songs. singalong songs are the most special, fun kind of songs. i usually have one song everyday that i sing along to all day. this was today's.

budge

2009-11-15T18:20:00.000+05:30

been buried in manuscript for weeks; just keeps going.
so demanding manuscript is. wants commitment commitment.
1% i don't put in screams me thin.
everyday all the time, yelling for attention.

i just want to say, "manuscript, shhh. calm down. listen to this. let's play solitaire."

manuscript has arms crossed, lips pursed.
manuscript won't budge.

sunday poetry: tao lin

2009-11-14T23:43:00.000+05:30

tao lin is this strange little creature who is a self-promotion god and eats insanely healthy food and writes books and he bought a genre and spawned hundreds of copy cats and i have this theory that anyone who reads his blog for more than three minutes at a stretch will automatically start writing like tao lin and thinking all their thoughts in their heads in a steady monotone akin to his public readings with background slideshows of doodles of hamster-like creatures. this is just a random post of his from his blog heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com and it's not even one of those that like really "captures his essence" or whatever. he writes a lot so you'll eventually find something that does.

if i keep 'acting retarded' on the internet will i die

i know i will die at some point, that isn't the question i'm asking in this blog post, i think

i think i feel already not sure what this blog post is 'about'

i think i'm interested in whether or not i will 'wither' and then die, in my chair, in the library, if i type certain sentences

will my heart shrivel, inside my body, causing me to 'die,' as i type certain words in certain combinations onto this blog

seems like i can do anything on the internet, which seems weird

i've censored myself 'so much' in my life, even on this blog, i think, not sure actually

not sure what is happening right now, as i sit here, typing onto this blog

does each sentence i type onto this blog cause 95% of prizes/grants/reviewers to 'move away from me' (i have images of them, like, rolling away awkwardly, due to their shapes; for the reviewers i have images of them putting their forefinger/thumb on their forehead/cheek and then sort of 'swiveling' their head away from me), does that seem funny to me or not

i have images of people staring at their computer screens feeling confused

tens of thousands of people in a giant stadium staring at computer screens feeling confused

'hm'

if i have any friends, can you (if you want to) bid on my myspace account to increase the price to like $80000, so that it 'becomes news,' i think this requires at least 2 friends (just experienced a moment of uncertainty re '2 friends,' seemed good)

this was suggested in the comments section of the post below this post

i have a tumblr

brandon is having a short story contest

i'm probably going to enter under several fake names

i'm excited

i'm also afraid

will brandon choose me

or will he choose someone else

will i cry if i lose

or will i just eat carbohydrates

i think galleys of 'shoplifting from american apparel' will exist somewhere within 3-4 weeks

the distributor will have a number of copies of the galleys, i believe

i feel neutral

i feel like the thing in middle school that tests whether a solution in chemistry class has been neutralized or not; i feel like the moment when the thing is seen to be neutralized, using a tab or something, with numbers on it

i feel like the moment when an 8th grader looks at the tab, feeling no interest in whatever 'lab experiment' it is for, and sees that it has been neutralized, and thinks 'neutralized' or something

not sure what i'm trying to describe, might be less an emotion than a 'tableau' or something

sort of can't believe i blogged again, 'so soon' after the previous blog post, with no real new news

should perhaps have consolidated these three 'myspace-ebay posts' into one post, to maximize comments and other reasons, yet i keep typing

is this what mike tyson felt like when he bit evander holyfield the second time

i feel highly aware that what i am doing right now isn't the ideal blogging technique to achieve my goals, 'though, what are my goals, hehe'

i keep having images of doors closing

just had an image of a window closing, seemed 'slightly abberant'

sunday poetry: hoax!

2009-11-08T19:17:00.000+05:30

Petit Testament - Ern Malley

In the twenty-fifth year of my age
I find myself to be a dromedary
That has run short of water between
One oasis and the next mirage
And having despaired of ever
Making my obsessions intelligible
I am content at last to be
The sole clerk of my metamorphoses.
Begin here:

In the year 1943
I resigned to the living all collateral images
Reserving to myself a man’s
Inalienable right to be sad
At his own funeral.
(Here the peacock blinks the eyes
of his multipennate tail.)
In the same year
I said to my love (who is living)
Dear we shall never be that verb
Perched on the sole Arabian Tree
Not having learnt in our green age to forget
The sins that flow between the hands and feet
(Here the Tree weep gum tears
Which are also real: I tell you
These things are real)
So I forced a parting
Scrubbing my few dingy words to brightness.

Where I have lived
The bed-bug sleeps in the seam, the cockroach
Inhabits the crack and the careful spider
Spins his aphorisms in the comer.
I have heard them shout in the streets
The chiliasms of the Socialist Reich
And in the magazines I have read
The Popular Front-to-Back.
But where I have lived
Spain weeps in the gutters of Footscray
Guernica is the ticking of the clock
The nightmare has become real, not as belief
But in the scrub-typhus of Mubo.

It is something to be at last speaking
Though in this No-Man’s-language appropriate
Only to No-Man’s-Land.
Set this down too:
I have pursued rhyme, image, and metre,
Known all the clefts in which the foot may stick,
Stumbled often, stammered,
But in time the fading voice grows wise
And seizing the co-ordinates of all existence
Traces the inevitable graph
And in conclusion:
There is a moment when the pelvis
Explodes like a grenade. I
Who have lived in the shadow that each act
Casts on the next act now emerge
As loyal as the thistle that in session
Puffs its full seed upon the indicative air.
I have split the infinite. Beyond is anything.

this is a fun sunday poetry.

the poem you've just read is one part of what is considered to be the twentieth century's greatest literary hoax. the poems were written by a couple of soldiers, writers themselves, who hated the modern poetry being published in australia at the time (the 1940s). so these two sat down one afternoon and made up a poet. they called him ern malley (because "mal" in french means "bad"), gave him a sufficiently tragic back story, found old photos and said they were his. then within a few hours they wrote 16 pages of incoherent poetry with vague hints at meaning and quotes from all over and sent them in to a publication they really hated. the editor loved the writing and published it all. and everyone else loved it too. and even today ern malley is supposed to be one of the faces of modern poetry. ha. ha. ha. art really has nothing to do with its creator, does it.

this is a good story to remember especially these days.

read the whole story here (it's very entertaining) and all of ern malley's mal poems here!

alma maaaaaater

2009-11-07T17:46:00.000+05:30

jaya posted her school song on her blog and i loved reading it like that, out of context, without a conception of a tune, but just being able to imagine what it must have sounded like when a few hundred kids sang it together.

i was in st. anne's. and they made us call ourselves "annites". i learned the term "alma mater" from my school song. here it is :)

come annites gather now
with faith unshaken
let deep integrity
our heaaaaarts awaken
life's journey starts from you
we lift our hearts anew
all striving to be true
our alma maaaaaater

knowledge and love trust
daily engendered
and pace of mind from duty
noooobly rendered
the lives we lead will be
symbols of harmony
and truth we learn from thee
our alma maaaaaater

lead us o light from heaven
brighten our pathway
strength from within give us
to choooose the right way
where in the world we go
let hope and courage show
that we will always know
our alma maaaaaaater

lini_ment

2009-11-02T20:22:00.000+05:30

you know you've been around pain killers too long when you start appreciating the art work on the labels, but i've got to say this bottle of sloan's liniment has a gorgeous old world charm. it's a bad picture so you can't tell but in person (in bottle) it looks awesome with its rough matt paper label and mr earl sloan's o-so-manly portrait (and the word "liniment"!). it's been around since the seventeenth century and it really looks like it. plus the simple, straightforward "kills pain" is great messaging. no?

ok i know this is sort of sick. i'm going to go now.

but ps: nash, it contains capsicum extract!

sunday poetry: rives - kite

2009-11-01T14:25:00.000+05:30

rives is one of the best slam poets out there. this is a clip of his from an hbo show called def poetry jam that should really really air in india. this poem's called "kite".

another one of his i love is dirty talk.

he's even got four ted talks! the emoticons one is my favorite.

ps: i just discovered he also makes crazy complex pop-up books. wah!

nerf

2009-10-30T14:47:00.000+05:30

just picked up my book and found someone had slipped this fern inside it!
what a pretty surprise.

silver + print + coffee + typewriter

2009-10-28T12:56:00.000+05:30

sludge:

dramaqueen:

my manic and i...

van gogh in a taxi to mahim

2009-10-27T18:45:00.000+05:30

we had to transport a framed print of van gogh's self portrait to mahim by taxi. milann took pictures.

Paul Gauguin: All I see when I look at your paintings is just that you paint too fast.
Vincent Van Gogh: You look too fast!

train song - feist + ben gibbard

2009-10-26T10:57:00.000+05:30

i'm crazily loving the vibe of this song right now.

(it's teeny tiny because it's audio only)

ephelant

2009-10-25T13:30:00.000+05:30

milann puts together things i say and do in strange ways sometimes and i just stare like an intoxicated elephant.

ps: there's a secret link to some mad-ass music. why? don't ask me why.

sunday ke sunday

2009-10-25T13:13:00.000+05:30

i get so caught up with work, weeks can go by and i won't have read a single poem. so i'm setting a reminder for myself to at least read (and post) one poem every sunday. at least. last sunday's was here, and this is today's.

The Palestinians Have Given Up Parties by Naomi Shihab Nye

Once singing would rise
in sweet sirens over the hills
and even if you were working
with your trees or books
or cooking something simple
for your own family,
you washed your hands,
combed water through your hair.

Mountains of rice, shiny shoes,
a hurricane of dancing.
Children wearing little suitcoats
and velvet dresses fell asleep in circles
after eating 47 Jordan almonds.

Who's getting married? Who's come home
from the far place over the seas?

Sometimes you didn't even know.
You ate all of that food without knowing.
Kissed both cheeks of anyone who passed,
slapping the drum, reddening your palm.
Later you were full, rich,
with a party in your skin.

Where does fighting
come into this story?

Fighting got lost from somewhere else.
It is not what we like: to eat, to drink, to fight.

Now when the students gather quietly
inside their own classroom
to celebrate the last day of school,
the door to the building
gets blasted off.
Empty chairs where laughter used to sit.
Laughter lived here
jiggling its pocket of thin coins
and now it is hiding.

It will not come to the door dressed as a soapseller,
a peddler of matches, the old Italian
from the factory in Nablus
with his magic sack of sticks.

They have told us we are not here
when we were always here.
The eraser does not work.

See the hand-tinted photos of young men:
too perfect, too still.
The bombs break everyone's
sentences in half.
Who made them? Do you know anyone
who makes them? The ancient taxi driver
shakes his head back and forth
from Jerusalem to Jericho.
They will not see, he says slowly,
the story behind the story,
they are always looking for the story after the story
which means they will never understand the story.

Which means it will go on and on.

How can we stand it if it goes on and on?
It is too long already.
No one even gets a small bent postcard
from the far place over the seas anymore.

No one hears the soldiers come at night
to pluck the olive tree from its cool sleep.

Ripping up roots. This is not a headline
in your country or mine.
No one hears the tiny sobbing
of the velvet in the drawer.

(thank you i eat poetry.)

i had this idea but i don't know if it'll work, what do you think?

2009-10-23T18:52:00.000+05:30

i used to have this driver, and we discovered that he dropped out of the 8th grade in nepal, where he comes from, started working, got married, and is now working as a driver to support his wife's dream to complete her graduation. when we checked it out, it turned out he has fantastic vocabulary, spelling, and handwriting. the only thing he's weak at is grammar. i told him the best way to improve that is to read a lot. when i asked him if he likes reading, he said he really really does, but he only reads hindi books, never english, because english books are too expensive and he's too intimidated to enter bookstores.

i realized there must be hundreds of people who are literate, could possibly enjoy reading, and want to gain access to books, but just don't know how. they work as maids, drivers, watchmen, and they have neither the money nor access to books.

so what can be done about it?

my idea is to start a free public library that exists in the form of a carton or plastic drum full of books kept at easily accessible public locations. in my opinion, the best location would be next to the watchmen in buildings around bombay because that's where everyone usually congregates. i get people to donate books they don't want (like if they're moving home, or just getting rid of them) and fill up these cartons. anyone can pick a book from this carton for free, read it, and then they must drop it back in any carton around the city. in fact it's better not to drop it back in the same carton where you got it from so that the books keep getting circulated. you get to be a member of this library purely by virtue of living in the city.

there are some problems to this idea.

1. people may feel having a drum or carton in which anyone can drop/pick up anything is a security threat
2. most buildings have societies full of stodgy old men who may not approve the idea
3. we could find other locations to keep the cartons (offices, schools, houses), but it shouldn't become a nuisance for whoever lives there + the whole point is to be very local, public, easily accessible, and self regulated

so does anyone think it could work? if yes, can you think of a good location to place my first carton? would you like to donate some books?

time traveler's dramaqueen

2009-10-19T20:10:00.000+05:30

went back in time on this blog a bit.

and found the amazing colors over at this post. what inexplicable hair i had. which book was i reading? who was i? what a time that was. a perfect slice of life as i thought it'd be forever.

and to think just a little before that, i got these words in my mail. it really has been mountain after valley after molehill hasn't it.

think it would all work out ok if i'd just remember this!

in the meantime, this just continues to be true.

just.

2009-10-19T14:03:00.000+05:30

i read a poem today after nearly a month and it was this one and i liked it

2009-10-18T13:05:00.000+05:30

A History of Origami
by Bob Hicok
Source: the new yorker

two women in three days
cried on the green bench in the park
where i found a dollar
folded into a boat.

i thought it was the crying bench and cried
on the crying bench
when it became available.

i cried
by thinking of all the people
who’ve never broken a shop window, not the baker’s
window, the bead-seller’s,
who sells beads for purposes
i find hard to list: necklaces,
the hanging of strings of beads
in doorways, the owning of beads
just in case.

breaking a shop window with a piece of shale
the size of my heart, a piece of shale
on which i’ve drawn my heart, not my actual heart
but my feelings of my heart,
since i’ve never seen my heart,
would set something free.

i don’t know what that something is
but it would be free.

and my heart would have survived its travels
through glass, its jagged voyage
through my reflection.

you see now why i cried: none of this is real.

until i can answer yes to the cop who asks, is this your heart
among the ruins of your reflection?
i won’t be a man, despite what my anatomy
insists.

it insists
that i overcome a sense of resistance when i move,
that i move
as long as i am able to move, and when i am unable
to move, that i stop.

it would be free and look like a bird, an actual bird
or a dollar folded into a bird, a dollar bird
in a dollar boat.

which is to say
i believe origami arrives
when we need it most.

i can’t prove this but i can’t prove
you’re a good person though i suspect
you’re a good person.

you who opened the door.

you who tipped your hat.

you who ran into the fire and carried
the fire safely out.

to ladakh, an apology

2009-10-11T21:32:00.000+05:30

one of the things that i took the longest to get used to in ladakh, and what was also the most amazing thing about it, was that after a while, you had to get used to the idea of leaving your house every morning not simply expecting to have fights and combat with the people you were to meet that day. it was a gentle living that only after several days there i realized i've been missing and how its absence in bombay has been affecting me badly, deeply, for so many years now. mostly because of how used to it i'd become. in bombay i put on my fight face before leaving home every morning, adopt fighter stance, get that expressionless expression that says don't fucking mess with me, stick my elbows out to avoid getting jostled or groped, and practically march through the day to the sound of a really loud, awful drum beat in my head. i hate that about bombay.

in ladakh, nothing is easy, and simple things can take a while and be incredibly exhausting. just the kind of things that'd totally drive me nuts in bombay, but not in ladakh. i just couldn't lose my temper in ladakh. not at people getting in my face, not at the lack of amenities, not at unfairness, not at intolerance, not at pettiness, not at small mindedness. it all exists in ladakh of course, because ladakh in season time is ultimately full of city folk who carry their cities and their cultures with them in their backpacks. but ladakh also has these mountains. and these mountains give off this energy. and absorb all the poison that comes tumbling out of expensive city backpacks. and it has these people with their hands and their eyes and their clothes. and they speak words and sing songs that have this thing about them. and everything just feels ok.

i tried my best to carry ladakh back with me, and i managed i think, but it's been a while since i got back and it's slipped away from me. realized that only just now.

and i think we may have left behind some of our citiness in ladakh. soon after we got back, the news was full of stories of chinese incursions. and a couple of days ago a newspaper reported that the government is delighted to have commissioned a bunch of surveillance motor boats, about 40, to protect pangong-tso. i remember pangong so clean and quiet and blue and shiny and so gentle. and i don't want to imagine it with the shattering noise of 40 motor boats full of men holding guns that can kill people.

ladakh, i'm sorry you have to learn to put on your fight face now. i'm sorry this is what we gave you in return.

urgent

2009-10-06T00:19:00.000+05:30

does anyone have a friend/relative who is an orthopedic surgeon who will be ready to discuss my dad's condition with me on phone? he cannot move, he cannot visit a doctor himself, need someone who will LISTEN and talk ON PHONE and give honest opinion. thanks.

these are the things i lose

2009-10-05T11:02:00.000+05:30

i've noticed, the first thing i do when i'm upset or low is stop listening to music. second thing is stop reading poetry. third is stop eating. music, poetry, food. bah. life isn't worth it without em. well, except food.

this week

2009-10-05T00:28:00.000+05:30

really tense about my dad's health.
if you pray, please pray.
if you don't, please hope.

but.

2009-10-01T20:49:00.000+05:30

one thing that made me decidedly UNhappy today. blech.

happy things

2009-10-01T17:21:00.000+05:30

the last week's been pretty bad with my dad very sick and a total of seven doctors not being able to diagnose what's wrong. with a lot of bullshit going on, i'm trying to focus on things that make me happy!

bangkok collage

2009-09-27T20:46:00.000+05:30

ravi apparently got inspired by me (imagine that) and made a collage of his first solo trip to bangkok. so sweet it is, no? he's threatened to replace the girl's face with his own so i quickly put it up here before that happens.

never love a wild thing

2009-09-17T17:30:00.000+05:30

there is this house
i own this house
but it is not mine
it has been claimed by the wild horses
who wander in and out of it
through the day
as i rest or read
or clean my body
these strange beasts
they come and go
from this house i own
at a will only they comprehend
bringing with them many things
the moors, wind, eyelashes
and i often awake
to find broken glass
glittering in a new sunshine
and the smell of wild flowers
where a mirror once was
their wildness brings them
to my house
their running-free-ness brings them
running to this house
the thing in them that makes them wild horses
which is not the fact that they are horses
who were born in the wild
some wild horses are more wild horse than others
it is them
the ones with the wild horse spirit inside them
that would have made them wild horses
even if they weren’t
even if they were blind owls
that is what brings them to my house
in their blindness, even, seeking it out
and slamming their heads against the windows
over and over and over
until they are broken
and can never be closed again

"Never love a wild thing... you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up... If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."

— Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's

four by six

2009-09-16T17:55:00.000+05:30

i bought this digital photo frame
and it's a funny thing
now i have photo-frame ADD
i keep the photos on slide show
because i can't even decide which memory to value the most
sometimes i hate convenience

nako and me

2009-09-04T15:22:00.000+05:30

i used to dislike all cats until i met nako.
we have a strange relationship.

she hides behind tables and watches me suspiciously.

uses my bag as her throne.

and today she decided to jump on my laptop and help me edit my manuscript.

she's a strange cat, naks, but i think she has a future in publishing.

Lit (or: to the scientist I am not speaking to any more) - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

2009-09-02T20:24:00.000+05:30

Don’t say you didn’t see this coming, Jason.

Don’t say you didn’t realize this would be my reaction
and that you never intended for me to get all worked up,
because if that were true, then you are dumber
than Lenny from Mice and Men, blinder than Oedipus
and Tierus put together and can feel less
than a Dalton Trumbo character.

You put the Dick in Dickens and the Boo in kowski
and are more Coward-ly then Noël.

But you don’t understand any of these references,
Do you, Jason? Because you ‘don’t read’.
You are a geology major and you once told me
That, ‘Scientists don’t read popular literature,
Cristin, we have more important things to do’.

Well, fuck you.

Be glad you don’t read, Jason,
because maybe you won’t understand this
as I scream it to you on your front lawn,
on Christmas Day, brandishing three hypodermic needles,
a ginsu knife and a letter of permission
from Bret Easton Ellis.

Jason, you are more absurd than Ionesco.
You are more abstract than Joyce,
more inconsistent than Agatha Christie
and more Satanic than Rushdie’s verses.

I can’t believe I used to want to Sappho you, Jason.
I used to want to Pablo Neruda you,
to Anais Nin And Henry Miller you. I used to want
to be O for you, to blow for you in ways
that even Odysseus’ sails couldn’t handle.
But self-imposed illiteracy isn’t a turn-on.

You used to make fun of me being a writer,
saying ‘Scientists cure diseases,
what do writers do?’

But of course, you wouldn’t understand, Jason.
I mean, have you ever gotten an inner thirsting
for Zora Neale Hurston?
Or heard angels herald for you
to read F Scott Fitzgerald?
Have you ever had a beat attack for Jack Kerouac?
The only Morrison you know is Jim, and you think
you’re the noble one?

Go Plath yourself.

Your heart is so dark, that even Joseph Conrad
couldn’t see it, and it is so buried under bullshit
that even Poe’s cops couldn’t hear it.

Your mind is as empty as the libraries in Fahrenheit 451.
Your mind is as empty as Silas Marner’s coffers.
Your mind is as empty as Huckleberry Finn’s wallet.

And some people might say that this poem
is just a pretentious exercise
in seeing how many literary references
I can come up with.

And some people might complain that this poem is,
at its core, shallow, expressing the same emotion again,
and again, and again. (I mean, there are only so many times
you can articulate your contempt for Jason,
before people get bored.)

But you know what, Jason? Those people would be wrong.

Because this is not the poem I am writing to express
my hatred for you.

This poem is the poem I am writing because we aren’t speaking,
and it is making my heart hurt so bad, it is all I
can do just to get up off the floor sometimes.

And this is the poem I am writing instead of writing
the ‘I miss having breakfast with you’ poem, instead of
writing the ‘Let’s walk dogs in our old schoolyard
again’ poem.

Instead of the ‘How are you doing?’ poem, the ‘I miss you’ poem,
the ‘I wish I was making fun of how much you like Garth
Brooks while sitting in front of your parents’ house
in your jeep’ poem, instead of the ‘Holidays are coming around
and you know what that means: SUICIDE!’ poem.

I am writing this so that I can stop wanting to write
the ‘I could fall in love with you again so quickly
if only you would say one more word to me’ poem.

But I am tired of loving you, Jason
cause you don’t love me right.

And if some pretentious-ass poem can stop me
From thinking about the way your laugh sounds,
about the way your skin feels in the rain,
about how I would rather be miserable with you,
then happy with anyone else in the world.

If some pretentious-ass poem can do all that?
Then I am gone with the wind, I am on the road,
I have flown over the fucking cuckoo’s nest,
I am gone, I am gone, I am gone.

I am.

one is the idol, the other the hymn

2009-09-02T19:02:00.000+05:30

in ladakh, no matter where you want to go, even if it's at a low altitude, you always have to climb to a really great height and then come all the way down. the mountains make you climb them. and not just climb them but go all the way into them, get lost in them, wander in what seems like circles, see the roads you just crossed look like nothing but thin wrist slashes. and the mountains change color, and shape, and form. they go from brown to green to purple, flat to rounded to steep, sandy to rocky to landslide-any-second-now-y. and no matter how long you climb, there's always that one mountain peak way in the distance, standing tall with snow on it so white it's as if no one's ever touched it, and it seems to say, you'll be climbing all your life, you will. and you want to climb all your life. and one day, early at five am in the mountains, on the way to a lake that looks like someone polished the sky and laid it on the ground, with the moon on one side and the sun on another, someone turned on radiohead. and not just radiohead, but ok computer, radiohead. so i prepped myself for all the jaded non-reactionism i have with ok computer. i couldn't even remember the last time i had listened to or been affected by ok computer. those days of affection were gone.

but i obviously underestimated the mountains. because something happened in the mountains that morning. the song started. everyone fell silent (which really means something with us). three of us started singing along. the mountains stood on the sides and watched. and pressed the song like a silver fern into our mind. and deeper and deeper. gently. and we remembered all the words. we sang like we were listening to the song for the first time. the goosebumps came out under our fleece jackets. and we whispered the words. and the mountains listened and echoed them back to us. gently. i knew then i'll love them forever. the mountains and radiohead. together, they could start a fucking religion.

lazer eyes can dance all night

2009-09-01T18:55:00.000+05:30

i really do love the idea of words + illustration combined. and i really do love dog hates me and exploding dog (different sites, same author). they're like the little prince of the blog world. they're the digital version of that book that you can open to any page and you read any line and it makes you go, "o i was just thinking about that!" they're every lesson i've ever learnt in life condensed into a single or three-frame illustration. they're every person i've ever met depicted as a robotic creature or barnyard animal. it's how i wish i drew and wrote and combined colors and thought about life. o i really do love sam brown.

general status update

2009-09-01T00:28:00.000+05:30

i installed google analytics
because of latent peer pressure
from all the blogs i visited
that took longer to load
because their google analytics was loading.
my statistics are droopy
and no figure on it
no matter what its category
exceeds ten.
but someone visited me from germany
and brazil
brazil! i said, when i saw it
and jumped for joy!
not really
i just sort of shifted in my seat
and gave the kind of smile
that doesn't travel from your
mind to your mouth
i'd like to visit brazil someday
but it would be one of
the last places on my list
someone also visited me from amritser
in amritser, you want to have a bath
the minute you step out from your bath
the rooms smell like carcass
and golden temple prasad is yum
all i know about brazil is the wax job
which may be about as brazilian
as french fries are french
i read an article about sushma reddy
going to a french restaurant
and asking for vegetarian food
and they gave her french fries
ha! i laughed in my head
when i read it
she didn't seem to get the joke,
though.
would my site stats look better
if i put up pictures of sushma reddy?
would i be compromising my integrity?
i think i would be compromising my integrity
i think i should uninstall google analytics
before it makes me compromise my integrity
i was quite happy being droopy
before it came along
but i like seeing the map
like a coloring book
you are filling by being here
ooh look
germany is pale green!
*jump*

3

2009-08-30T00:06:00.000+05:30

i want to buy ev. ry. thing. sold at this site (so whimsical!)

and this site (so clever!)

speaking of donkettes, i fell in love with this one in leh. we had a nice heart to heart. then he went back to the herd and i couldn't recognize him later. story of my life.

when i flunk fiction at university, i'll show them this poem

2009-08-26T17:32:00.000+05:30

A Poet Recalls Fiction - Norm Sacuta

I have trouble with friends who want to know what happened.
And no, I'm not missing the forest for the trees -
the genus, size and shape,
even when the author cares enough,
will escape me later, become a forgotten shadow
at the edge of the moors.

I am the worst witness of another witness,
read pages and pages without memory
of a character's features.
My rhythmic eyes remember little,
move away from that tape by the door
where I should measure the criminal's height.
What difference does that make?
He robbed me, I might tell the officer.
Isn't that enough?

What's a character? It's every fear of every name
ever introduced to at parties,
crammed into The Tenant of Windfell Hall.
Thank god for Anna Karenina and Jane Eyre.
The title and name the same.

Let me tell you about Jane Eyre:

there's lightning that cleaves a tree directly in two
on the night she decides to marry. That man. The dark one
who talks roughly and has dark eyes so dark his first born
reflects back out of them. That's Jane Eyre.
That's all.

Don't ask me for more. I don't know
once the book is down. But open it again:
I know that point in the forest -
breadcrumbs lead home in all directions. There is no place
lost quite like it. I read pages and pages, enthralled,
then forget my way as the moon sets.

And isn't it glorious to know every word will rush at me,
like that mad woman from the attic,
when I read again tomorrow night.

on reading too much "i eat poetry"

2009-08-24T01:56:00.000+05:30

let me explain to you
what this has been
the night i had to use the toilet seven times
before i could fall asleep
or the dreams i’ve had
of picking food out of your teeth with my fingernails
these are my dreams.
nothing has been orange since
though plenty has been yellow
do you see how this has been?
horses, pails, grass just cut
dropping like axes in right angles
it has been
watching my ipod die with my life’s worth of music
and “the feeling” coming over
once every six minutes
or so
or imagine, if you can, typing
very, very fast
gibberish
line upon line, hour upon hour
hair madly falling, a mad diligence
strange colored tears swimming out of the boundaries of your face
and in the background, bagpipes
unrehearsed, a band performs
along with it, nonsense poetry readers
road rollers
and heat rising in wet, swishy waves.
pick a point on your forehead
a single spot
and drill a hole with someone else’s eyes
into the one secret you’re hoping to keep
do you see now
how this has been?
fellow dancer, you do not know
we are still dancing with each other
today, tomorrow, unnecessarily
i gave myself a hearty stomach ache
i have eaten a big breakfast
and now i eat poetry

(eat poetry at http://community.livejournal.com/greatpoets/)

the water tastes different here, doesn't quite quench my thirst

2009-08-24T01:29:00.000+05:30

there is a particular kind of weary
reserved for the traveler
who has not felt a familiar bed under his body
nor arm around it
for too long;
who has adapted to the water that tastes
more foreign with each mile
and the many colored dusts that line his throat
are his mementos
the things that change his voice
when he speaks of his extremes:
home
and motion;
there is a particular kind of weary
that is not weary at all
but a celebration, a dash, a victory
that is the traveler's wealth
that is the traveler's death

find your 90 degrees N. if just for a few seconds.

2009-08-22T20:23:00.000+05:30

echoes i heard in ladakh

2009-08-22T18:38:00.000+05:30

the morning after i was left in ladakh to my own defences
i finally decided to buy a copy of the little prince
it's in every book store in leh, the official book of the leh trip, i joked,
but when i read it for the first time as an adult (last read at age 9 when i thought it was just another amusing fairy tale), i understood why it is the perfect book for ladakh
especially when i came across...

"...the little prince climbed a high mountain. the only mountains he had ever known were the three volcanoes, which came up to his knees. and he used the extinct volcano as a foot-stool. 'from a mountain as high as this one,' he said to himself, 'i shall be able to see the whole planet at one glance, and all the people...'

but he saw nothing save peaks of rocks that were sharpened like needles.

'good morning,' he said courteously.

'good morning--good morning-- good morning,' answered the echo.

'who are you?' said the little prince.

'who are you--who are you--who are you,' answered the echo.

'be my friends, i am all alone,' he said.

'i am all alone--all alone--all alone,' answered the echo."

the tibetan culture believes in shunya as the sum of all totals. if the little prince had known this, he'd know that the question 'who are you?' should never be asked in the mountains. and 'i am all alone' will only echo back at you from a hundred surfaces, each a different color and shape. welcome to ladakh, prince. where what is past gets left behind on its very own because you cannot carry much extra weight here. and what is to come is always hiding behind the endless peaks. the mountains will say to you what you say to them, so take care what you say to them.

excuse me while it all tumbles out in random order. it was just that kind of trip.

back from ladakh

2009-08-22T14:00:00.000+05:30

so many places
so many faces

i was devout in amritser

chilling in manali

freezing between jispa and sarchu

sick at pang

enchanted in leh

and sad to come back

(thanks scratchpost for the pho-tos.)

for milann

2009-07-31T13:07:00.000+05:30

who took these pictures that made me stop panicking and start packing my bags :)

Scheherazade - Richard Siken

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
and dress them in warm clothes again.
How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forget that they are horses.
It’s not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it’s more like a song on a policeman’s radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that means we’re inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it.

divya says

2009-07-30T13:17:00.000+05:30

"When did we first start to feel it, this great longing for another place?
Or to make this place another?"

i'm blogging about this because it's too long for twitter

2009-07-21T12:51:00.000+05:30

the day will come
when we will meet friends for drinks
and discover at the end of the night
we have all been speaking in status updates only
each consisting precisely of 140 characters
i feel i must stop using twitter
before that day comes
so that i can write blog posts about it
using phrases like “internet lemmings”
and feel like a superior person.
it will probably be the only time in my life
i will feel superior
so leaving twitter is important
for my esteem issues
yet i do not think i'll leave it
and foresee myself sitting at a therapist’s
crying in my coffee about feeling inferior
like an internet lemming or something.

would that be irony?
i think that would be irony.

i must admit you kind of bore me

2009-07-20T19:34:00.000+05:30

finding poems

2009-07-20T13:07:00.000+05:30

when milann and i started talking about found poetry seriously, she got me to make a primer on the concept. so i sat down and made a goddamn ppt :) and found some lovelyhilarious found poems on the net...

the unknown
- donald rumsfeld in a press briefing, 12 feb 2002

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

talk
- from http://finallyseeing.tumblr.com/post/140799737

no force
- from 'an elementary treatise on mechanics' by william whewell

Hence no force, however great,
can stretch a cord, however fine,
into a horizontal line
which is accurately straight.

also loving the concept behind broadsided that sweetly provides poetry pamphlets (or broadsides) for people to stick up in public places. would be so much cooler if their poetry would actually interact with their environment. like that google guy did very simply by putting speech bubbles on ads and posters, or how katie sokoler records people's accidental interactions with her street art. loving these street-art-poet-ninjas.

two sad incidents from my life that will make you cry

2009-07-19T11:59:00.000+05:30

i've been locked out of my flickr account
i am some higher form of idiot
who has forgotten her password and username too
i tried very hard to log in somehow
using many different combinations of words
and numbers
and now flickr thinks i am trying to hack into my own account.
i feel insulted by this automated error message
that is insinuating i am hacking into another's account

two days ago i saw a girl who looked just like me
she was wearing pants and chappals that i have been
looking for in my size but unsuccessfully.
by being a slightly different size and shape
it seems she is in fact a better version of me
what a simple solution for world domination
this is why, i console myself, i have put on weight
now those pants will fit me
and i will be a better version of my better version
but what will i do about the chappals?

i toured the light, so many foreign roads

2009-07-17T14:35:00.000+05:30

So apropos
Saw death on a sunny snow
For every life
Forgo the parable
Seek the light
My knees are cold

Running home, running home
Running home, running home

Go find another lover
To bring a… to string along
With all your lies
You’re still very lovable
I toured the light
So many foreign roads

For Emma
Forever ago

- for emma, bon iver

corny but truish

2009-07-17T03:07:00.000+05:30

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it.”

- eat, pray, love, elizabeth gilbert

reporting from the front

2009-07-17T01:56:00.000+05:30

today i thought i saw you at candie's
i started feeling really hot
and about 8 inches tall
and fat
i think i imagined myself a beetle
about to be squashed
it wasn't you
obviously
but he looked just like you
that rambo way of standing
pointy collar bones
fingers at that angle
finger nails
feet
olive green tshirt
pants
shoulder blades
his girlfriend gave me evil looks
around this point in the list
he didn't notice me
that too was like you
one hour passed
before my heart started up again

delhi 3-6 july

2009-07-10T20:18:00.000+05:30

delhi is all yellow and green and blue

with some grey

(this is vikram's building)

full of awesome, interesting people

sendy, the slowest rickshaw driver in the world.

non-stop book-reading expat uncle

pretty but chain smoking boys and girls

bihari madhubani painters who didn't believe vikram was from bihar

parking lot attendant who knew how to break into the car and get our keys out. (but please don't steal the new music system. again.)

technicolors!

mrs. kaur

sitter-around

and vikram has many faces here

goofy

suspicious

angry

lazy

concentrating

sad (no free table)

amused

bored-but-hiding-it

but my favorite thing of all are the spellings!

menu at gulati on pandara road... chaach, not chaas; zeera, not jeera! that's when i really felt like i was in north india :)

nooootro!

2009-07-08T13:36:00.000+05:30

flying cursor's latest acquisition

sleeps like a baby

pees ALL the time

loves biting chins

ok, i will

2009-07-02T12:56:00.000+05:30

pull... your socks up

push... your luck

cafe coffee day humor

edit - regina spektor

2009-07-02T11:36:00.000+05:30

i'm not sure what this song means and what the beatles references are doing in there, but it sort of kind of maybe somewhat makes "edit" sound like a nice word again. i think. so i'm happy :)

You don't have no doctor Robert
You don't have no uncle Albert
You don't even have good credit
You can write but you can't edit

http://www.last.fm/music/Regina+Spektor/_/Edit

re-thinking life plans at 2.30 am

2009-07-02T02:25:00.000+05:30

why why why am i doing this

going through 5 years of editing manuscripts

to go through 1 year of shit at uni doing hyper expensive course basically involving several complete strangers telling me how shit my writing is

to go through some months of shit at unpaid internship where getting to edit shit manuscripts would be like dream come true

to go through undisclosed amount of time of shit looking for job editing shit manuscripts

to do... god knows what post that, but most likely editing more shit manuscripts

why doesn’t my previously awesome life plan sound smart brave sparkling anymore

seems more like shit story written by shit writer with predilection for depressive existentialist indie shit

ah europe, i'm waiting for you

2009-07-01T13:49:00.000+05:30

must remember!

2009-06-30T01:59:00.000+05:30

anne enright on the importance of failing as a writer:

Now when I hear of people taking a year off to write, I worry that a year might not be enough. You must fail as a writer for much longer than that, I think, before you know what failure is and what use you might make of it. I didn't realise, when that first book fell apart, that every book falls apart. That this is the gig. You sit there and watch your word-count drop, and you hold your nerve. I have survived this process now many times. But the first time was the worst, and I was lucky to be among friends.

from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/nov/22/anne-enright-writing-author

the suicides - janet frame

2009-06-29T23:45:00.000+05:30

It is hard for us to enter
the kind of despair they must have known
and because it is hard we must get in by breaking
the lock if necessary for we have not the key,
though for them there was no lock and the surrounding walls
were supple, receiving as waves, and they drowned
though not lovingly; it is we only
who must enter in this way.

Temptations will beset us, once we are in.
We may want to catalogue what they have stolen.
We may feel suspicion; we may even criticise the décor
of their suicidal despair, may perhaps feel
it was incongruously comfortable.

Knowing the temptations then
let us go in
deep to their despair and their skin and know
they died because words they had spoken
returned always homeless to them.

message in a bottle

2009-06-28T13:11:00.000+05:30

been staring at gaurang's photographs much too much
bas, no more external stimulus
now i want to see ladakh as i see it
take my own pictures
make my own memories
locate thoughts in my head on my own
no not some forced attempt at "originality"
just an attempt at thinking on my own again
before it all slides back down
and these thoughts i want to write, whenever possible
and those written thoughts i want to
hopefully
translate visually into pictures, doodles, photographs
film, collages, maybe even other words (others' words)
don't know anyone who wants to collaborate just yet
but you don't find unless you look
come let's be unselfish partners in crime
for two weeks and no more
there are many ways to talk to me
if you think about it

not all those who wander are lost

2009-06-28T12:37:00.000+05:30

there is a very-far-away feeling building
distance is the theme song of this year
my heroes are dying
my myths are fading
it's not fun being lost anymore
so much that i
need tattoos to remember my mottoes

correct!

2009-06-24T15:07:00.000+05:30

When students ask, "When did you know you might be a writer? How did you know?," one of the things I tell them is that they may be designed for that life if (a) they need to do it in order to feel good about themselves, even though (b) doing it almost never makes them feel good about themselves.

- Jim Shepard

got money?

2009-06-23T18:40:00.000+05:30

ladakh fever is ON!

tickets are booked! jackets are bought! jaws are set!

i'm BURSTING!

most of us are just going to laze around eating momos and doing yoga. one of us (me) might also be working full time on just trying to breathe. not milann. see widget below!

for when saturdays used to mean apple juice in a wine glass

2009-06-20T13:24:00.000+05:30

...to mumbai

2009-06-19T12:18:00.000+05:30

found poem on gtalk chat with scratchpost.

dramaqueen: when you going?

scratchpost: i'm so excited
i'm at the airport
waiting for flight

dramaqueen: o!

scratchpost: tokyo to melbourne to canberra to sydney to melbourne to mumbai to ladakh to mumbai to goa to mumbai to pune to mumbai to kerela(hopefully) to mumbai to the netherlands

dramaqueen: hahahaha

scratchpost: ...to mumbai

dramaqueen: :)

what's czech for, i love this movie?

2009-06-14T14:11:00.000+05:30