Feigned Parody

Whatever is good to us, becomes our God.

Give a man a city in the clouds and most times he will refuse its citizenship if the travel requires wings with his own mind.

We build structures upon structures and yet they are turning into houses of fear rather than worship and gratefulness.

Instead of indignation at the loss of common sense and the big label on our foreheads that screams stupidity, we misplace it on religion.

We are given not one but two feet, and yet we feign insecurity and ask for crutches all the time.

This assumption that humans are insecure is the most bloated and stuffy lie ever told.

And are the crutches at least solid ?
Nope.

They can't show us directions anymore, if they are mostly forced faiths and un-experienced beliefs.

Whatever promises security, becomes our goal; whether it is a fellow being disguised as a miracle-man, or a vermilion smeared stone.

Because sadly even our crutches are rusted and over used.

Why create Gods?

Instead of going to the roots and flesh, we keep dusting the skin.

Why try to get rid of our weakness when we cannot see and accept our strengths?

Perhaps the creation of 'religion' was the biggest mistake of humanity.

Whatever is not good to us, becomes our devil.

So, are we going to boycott entire mankind now?

Winter's Skin

It brushes against me,

Against my cheeks

and freezing fingers.

So graciously grey in its icy embrace,

Stabbing me, slicing through its edgy hushed up haze. 

I miss its presence as I drift to cozy sleep.

No longer an alien 

is its thorny touch;

Whistling in my ear it stifles my strolls,

Arched inside my head, like an avalanche it falls.

I could get used to its isolated love.

It makes me real,

this winter's skin.

seeping through settled numbness it spills, quivers

and leaves me, threatened, amidst a battle of shivers.

I've altered into a floating trace of its solid truth. 

(November '13)

The Way Words Bleed Beyond Their Letters

First Morning in SF :

There is no greater happiness than meeting your bestest friend after 5 long years and eating your heart out of Bhel Puri and Sarvana Bhavan specialities.
And seeing the first snowfall ever of your life as soon as your plane arrives into the terminal.
And sleeping in after girlish laughs and a warm cigarette, knowing you did not have to get up early, but when you finally did manage to shake off the blankets and step out to see the sunlight that is getting colder and colder, you would be greeted with the Californian peaks around you.
San Francisco is being so nice!

Truth be told, I started this blog a couple of days ago and it read something like this -
 'The light outside is tender and the library is dim and silent. My head though echoes with uncomfortable, tangled up threads.
It feels like I am lying on the shore and the storm has passed, yet the waves tease my feet and I cant still afford to get up and walk farther away. The sky seems overcast and I am warned of another impending storm, but all I do is lie still and make up sentences, trying hard to make sure that they are laden with meaning.'

'Drab drab drab! Why so sad??'
One of my friends asked me after reading. A couple of them asked the same thing, actually, with regard to some of the previous posts as well, but only those who were really close to my life too.
When I had other people read it, sadness was the last thing they saw.
Makes me wonder about the communicative power of language. I am finding it increasingly vague, formless; it cannot stand on its own feet without the support of the actual 'you' or the imagined 'you'.
It is the writer that gives it its (other) meaning.
A hat is definitely a hat always, but it is the writer that makes it sit either on someone's head strolling through tropical sunshine, or in a damp hanger in a cold room.
So you have the actual meaning, and the assumed meaning. (Not sure if 'assumed' is the right word here).
It is kind of like our lives - What it really is, what we assume it to be, and what we portray it to be.
(The air seems to be getting too complicated around here now!).

But when it comes to Art, how honest is too honest ?

My professor back in London had once asked me  'Can you afford not to be honest in art?'

What is it that draws the difference between an autobiography and a fiction, and what defines that which lies somewhere in between both? Is it ever possible for a writer, or any artist, to write or create beyond their experience?
How do they do it?
Because of late, every time I start reading a book, I immediately Google the author's background too. And almost always, (at least) the first book is startlingly similar to their deepest and most profound experiences and their immediate backgrounds.

But coming back to the communicative power of words - yes each has its own meaning and that can't be changed, but there is a vulnerable part in them that opens up and lets its blood flow in unknown veins as well. There is a part of them that is always attached to the writer, whether that connection is seen by everyone or not, and there is a part that is always attached to the reader.
It is more like the the readers are creating the story as they read it.

But there are some stories, which flow beyond time and space, and them we call the fairy tales.

I am more than ever in love with Abstraction! That sly thing, always peeking its head even in the most literal efforts, even in the seemingly most obvious answers.

Does feel like a happy aura to close the post with, but let me try and make it happier. And let me do it with visuals, rather than words.
A few pics from the wee bit I have seen of SF in the past few hours -

The tiny snowfall at Denver airport yesterday:

Haunted Spaces

Some spaces eat you up,

Some spaces spit you out.

Some spaces do not exist,

Except in their own barren womb.

And there you find the remains of nightmares,

The long gone scents of wilted waters.

There, fingers touch and voices call

Deep from the abyss of unnoticed deaths.

White could be the walls hiding brown blood,

Or pure the curtains veiling its own massacres.

Like sharded tombstones of a hidden demise.

A baby boy buried in cubes of ice.

A man with an axe, proud

Of his ability to order death around.

Knocks on the door

With no one out there.

Dear little cottage,

Is this play fair?

A sweetened sourness.

A limping calm.

The mind licks the air around,

Shuffling on three feet

One in the sky,

One on ground,

One inside a tortured sleep newly found.

  

A shifting silence

Peeps through its mask;

Cursed to a life

In the realm of thoughts

Protracted by memory

And blessed by my being.

  

Stop the knocks,

I don’t want your pain

Let me sleep

And be fine again.

Clear out your hoarded memory,

Brush out the skulls, brush out the axes.

There is still sunlight outside.  

Dented and Tainted

Perhaps the only beauty about something pure and unadulterated was its immense potential to be dented and tainted.

Everywhere she looked, little Margot found dents and torn pieces. She found them exquisite, almost divine.

Poor little Margot. She was addicted to aches, but she was not sad at all. It was as if sorrow sieved itself and kept the thick rocks away, giving her a paltry sip.

She would walk down the streets and smile at shopkeepers. They greatly amused her; sitting there with their precious wares waiting for someone to come take them away in exchange for a few notes.

What did ‘to possess’ something mean? Who gauged how pure your possession was or how intense your propriety over it was?

People around still danced, still painted, and still dreamt beneath the torn blankets. That was the essence of life - to see beyond the torn covers. You had to get out of your covers and stand naked in the snow.

Little Margot dreamt away. There was nowhere else to go, she knew she had arrived and she knew that she had started on her soul path.

A very wise woman had once told her, that when things start falling in place just like that, without you needing to put in extraneous efforts, it meant that you had started on your soul path, the path you are meant to be on. And from then on nothing else would matter.

Little Margot had trusted her, and when things actually did start falling in place without the need for her constant prayers or oblong wishes, she knew that she was on her way. She still battled with the past but now, with her stars completely in her favor, she found her long lost dancing shoes hidden right below her nose. 

She found her long lost voice, and now what she spoke made complete sense to her soul. 

Nothing and no one could insult her essence, for she knew what it was and could finally defend it.

Life had lied to her before, though, saying that as long as she had 'light' within her, she would be perfectly alright. 

So she had sat in her little room and kept spinning as much light and love as she could from her soul. It was almost a penance. And yet, people found her empty. 

People faulted her seeming lack of love. 

Life had lied to her; for it wasn't enough to have light within, you needed to stand on the rooftops and tear your heart out and blare out to the world that you did possess it.

She felt cheated, not because the world misunderstand her, but because no one bothered to try to understand. 

She had almost lost her senses yet no one saw anything, except the bland outer smile.

And now she lay, alone yet at peace, on her little bed in her little dark room. She could see the stars above, and they were her stars. All hers. 

She did not need to climb up to rooftops , and she did not need to sit at shops to sell her thoughts and feelings. 

She had found her soul, and would not trade it for anything.

She preferred being dented and tainted than being a bland emptiness.

Maybe her soul did not have light, but who cared.

It was blue, just like her.

My 'Normal'

I am able to breathe!
Really breathe.
I live in this little cottage on the corner of a very quite street in a very small town called Alva in the Mid West.
I wake up when my body feels ready, and go to sleep when it feels tired. I eat when my stomach asks for food. I am not following any schedule.
Been a while since I've been kissed, but I am not exactly clamoring for a new love or to find a companion to fill the 'normally' expected empty space.
I do not find the emptiness.
I feel healthy - mind, body, AND soul.
My Mondays and Sundays all seem the same.
I take walks, drinking in the aura of what this space has to offer - little cottages with adorable little signs and gardens, empty stretches of streets which make you feel like you are in a movie set or something, great big trees which paint shadows whenever the sun obliges, or just rustle around when it is windy.
My life right now revolves around books from the library, a studio where I go and paint or draw when I feel like, the little market down the street, and a couple of great friends with whom I share conversations and long drives, art talks and movie nights, and a few performances whenever and wherever I am asked to.
I am not planning fervently about my future, though my mind is giving me hints of some great ideas for life which I know will mature soon. I am not exactly earning as much as I had thought and desired, but no qualms. It will flow in soon, I know.
I am watching small town parades which make me relive my childhood images crafted by the Nancy Drew books, high school Cinderella pageants, some crazy movies, and possibly some rodeo games in the near future.
I do not have a new sim and there is no net connection except at the library.
I am slowly but persistently learning French.
Sometimes, when I walk back to my little cottage and snuggle in for the night, I hear footsteps on the empty floor above in the dead stillness. (And I swear someone stroked my head a couple of mornings ago, until I started whimpering in my sleep).
Is it the quite? Is it the solitude? Is it another dimension?
I am not on a holiday, I am not in a dream, and it definitely does not feel like a far away illusion. It is very much real, because I can feel my own breath. My soul is on a great vacation, just breathing. And breathing.
Back home, people would laugh at this 'life'. No job? No marriage or romance? No schedule? What exactly do you do ? Or who exactly are you ?
I don't need definitions for myself. I don't need definitions for my life. I don't need anyone to tell me what my life should be like.
I don't need to be 'normal' by your standards.
I need joy, MY joy, and I shall define it however I want to.
But I really do fear going back home, and that, to me, is the only thing that is not seeming normal right now.

Books, books, books!

Books that have influenced us - one of the most interesting threads doing the rounds on facebook. It was lovely to look through the many lists, and with the kind of obsessive love I have developed for reading and writing, I thought a Blog post would do it much more justice than just a status (I mean come on! Who isn't bored of the blue borders by now. At least a little.Whatever).
After much mulling over I think I have tracked down the main books that have influenced me.
Here goes my list :

'The Swiss Family Robinson' By Johann David Wyss
One of the first books that got me hooked to reading and travel and writing.

'And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos' By John Berger
You have to read it!

'Margot Fonteyn - A Life ' by Meredith Daneman.
I owe my affair with ballet to this book. I shall never get over it. Or her.

'Memoirs of a Geisha' By Arthur Golden
It taught me that reality can be beautiful and magical, just like a dream or an illusion. It is only our resistance to reality that makes it lose its spark.

'The Road to Damietta' by Scott O'Dell
Love!

'A Room of One's Own' By Virginia Woolf
It helped me think better. It helped me realize that you do not need to be grand and all over the place. Simplicity would do. It would do great! With both your thoughts and words.

'The Witch of Portobello' By Paulo Coelho.
Need I explain?

'Rebecca' By Daphne Du Maurier
and its sequel
'Mrs. De Winter' By Susan Hill
The best atmospheric novels I have ever read. And the use of language. My Lord! what use of language.

'The Book of Promethea' By Helene Cixous
Honesty can be as bare as bare can be, and still be beautiful. And comfortable.

'The Fountainhead' and 'We the Living' By Ayn Rand
What a brilliant mix of philosophy and creativity.

'On the Street Where You Live' By Mary Higgins Clark
Mystery and murder at its best;
and
'In Cold Blood' by Truman Capote
true accounts of a mass family murder told with such detachment that it makes you shiver.

'Uncle Tom's Cabin' by Harriet Beecher Stowe

'Sylvia Plath - Complete poetry Collection'
Writers can be 'trained' academically and still be natural and not esoteric. Her poems helped me get over this 'academia' mind block.

'His Nameless Love- Portraits of Russian Writers' Essays by various authors
Nothing like a hidden love story or an untold real life saga.

The (more) important reason that made me actually think deep about this post is that I am convinced more than ever that writing is where I belong. Weird happenings and coincidences ( There is an as yet un-revealed reason out there, I know, for there is no such thing as a coincidence in this universe) have revealed myself to me, and now I feel at ease. Nothing to prove, nothing to show off - just my good old books and this aged laptop which is nearing its last breaths, but still holds all my random scribbles patiently. And a candle to create 'the' writing atmosphere.
Now all I need to do, is stop writing so selfishly about myself and let myself dissolve. Into the minds and words of writers like the ones I have mentioned above, and allow my mind to breathe more. Grow more.
And stop trying to be emotional or clever. I don't mind a bit of rust and racket here and there though, but just enough.
And it doesn't seem like a new path, but something that has been taken out of the closet (no pun darlings, not yet).
Everything has gone, yet everything has actually arrived now. Everything is empty, yet nothing has felt fuller before.
So here I am, being (hopefully) me.
If words ever left me, I should cease.
Thank you, dear books, thank you for all the mirrors and the magic.

Much Love!

MID LIGHT - The Prologue

'One voice, hazy and distant yet lavish and pregnant like the last few awkward steps of a journey, sweeps fervently across the sand.

One voice, half-swallowed by the white within, smacks against the roof of the head, manages to trickle out feebly, rueful, and loses itself in the crammed up world.

 One voice, a grand pulse, pounds around bushes and mountain peaks and throbs amidst ripples and hurricanes, cuddled up on the throne of the heartbeat of the universe.

Fastened to the world by other peoples' prayers, a mere justification of their grand attachments,our life is probably not its own intention sometimes. It escapes the iron anchors that hold it in existence through three songs that voice three dimensions - an alternate voice that could have been; the present voice of silence that is, where the rain slides away as if always falling on slippery glass windows; and a parallel voice that should have been. '

'MID LIGHT - The prologue' explores these 3 dimensions of possibilities through poems and short stories.

Publishing it as part of my final MA Fine Art Show; come along to Chelsea college of Art and Design to buy a copy and leave your valuable comments.

Hope to see you all on the 5th of September! 

Ciao!

...

Everything is ruptured, in a very beautiful way.
Like dreams that have lingered for too long.
You know what I mean ?

Premature Paranoia

It does not exist if I do not write about it.
It cannot kill me if I do not open the door.
The blood will not trickle out if the cut is sealed with a kiss. 
But the lips are burnt.
The skin might turn into red ash.
Keep away the rituals from me, I say!
Put me not on a funeral pyre;
please just bury me beneath the waves.
Or perhaps inside a casket of gold,
let my death know the shimmer of stupidity.
Too much of sanity is stifling my existence,
Bound in the chains of jabber and pretense.
Cut the chords, and let me float away.
Away from myself.
But look, there s a knock on the door.
Is it the sword of sorrow?
Is it the knife of grief?
Or is it an endless procession of pity hidden behind a mask of smiles?

- A prisoner of Existence

As I Trod Along

I have become obsessed with words, with writing. Any/every experience now gains its true worth only when it is trapped behind words. My diary pages are filling up faster, and so are my frustrations when words form in my mind and then disappear before I leash them on to a paper or a word doc.
Just like how a few days back, while waiting for the bus home, two elderly couple stood next to me chatting excitedly. One couple got into the bus with me, and the other started walking back (home?) on the pavement. The traffic was slow moving - we were caught behind a signal - so every time the bus moved forward and stopped, the couple walking outside would catch up and wave at their friends inside. This happened several times, and I was witness to this gleeful exchange between them. Had the four of them been childhood friends? Had they gone to high school together ? Had they met later on in life ? Or were they very recently acquainted and were probably taking leave after a first evening of bonding ? oh who cares, for those moments of waving and laughing, and then pointing and exclaiming 'oh look! its them' and waving again was so beautifully childish and childishly beautiful that neither the past nor the future mattered. I caught those moments and have recreated them here in words. But my authority over them ends here, for God knows how many people will read it, and how many different imaginative visuals will appear into their mind's existence. I am not only recreating the experience, but also creating similar experiences for others.
Well :)
But more than this affair with words the thing that is making me extremely happy as I make love with life here in London, is the current weather. Not the weather per-se, to be honest, but the fact that I can wear all my lovely tube tops and shorts and dresses without smothering them with thermals inside and then band-aiding them with sweaters and jackets on top, finishing off with a nice little scarf or shawl, like a flower laid on top of a gloomy grave. Oh my!
(Actually, I think my affair with words is stronger).
Another happy thing is that for a change I have not felt that time has flown by. I can still savor the first days/weeks, and have memories of almost every single month.
Also, the best thing about travelling alone - you end up in a place where no one knows you, and your sub-conscious mind is somehow freed of the fear of being judged. And compared to your own past self.
Especially as an artist. Like how people in Bangalore were surprised I was spending so much time and money on Ballet when I was already doing Bharathanatyam full time from so many years (duh). Or some strange thing like that. And since no one here knew what I had been doing all this while, no one actually could tell me if what I was doing now was right or wrong or if it would lead me somewhere and blah blah blah. And now when I actually think back on everything that I've done in the first term at uni, I am surprised myself at how, unknowingly, I have been exploring many different paths which I never would have otherwise. Does it have to 'lead' somewhere? Isn't Art for Art's sake enough ?
What exactly does 'get serious' mean ?
The self, and the artist self, is always in a flux, always in a state of changing and evolving and dissolving. Though there are as many boxes in my brain as there are in a rubric cube, they are all somehow connected.
London hasn't changed me, or helped me grow, or any other weirdly sentimental thing like that - it has just let me breathe. (That was weirdly sentimental as well). All those long train journeys to the countryside, exploring the rain sodden city streets on Saturday afternoons, flying into a different dimension in that glorious place called the library, escaping to Covent garden and browsing through the markets umpteen times - all this, very simply put, have just let me breath. It was more about 'being' me than 'finding' me. Of course, a couple of years down the line I am sure to discover some other seeds that have been sown now, and would have then blossomed and matured.
What I find very amusing in this city is the co-existence of past and present. Like in a time warp where clocks have melted away inspired by Dali's painting. It puts me in a very incomprehensible state when I gaze at the old old monuments and houses looming, nonthreatening, in the background of a very mechanical hubbub.
Wait what exactly did I start to write off with ?
Ah yes. I don't know. A lot of stuff probably.
Frankly, I am not sure what to write. Its been nine months since I left home to find my place in the world. A lot of smiles, lots of tears, lots of joy and lots of memories to sum it up.
But apart from that, all I can write about are those moments, those simple, beautiful moments that catch you unaware as you trod along.
To finish with, the rain spoke to me again today. In a very wonderful language. As I sat in the library morosely, finding nothing that could stir my mind or heart or senses, I had decided that the dryness of summer had seeped in. And then, the skies opened and it poured. And poured. There was lightening. And grave thunder. And as I walked to the bus stop in a very amused state, I drank in everything that this seemingly dull day now offered - The washed blue sky, the reflection of the fresh green spring on the puddles, the almost empty streets with few souls strutting around with umbrellas, and the kiss of the last trickle of rain as you brush past bushes and shrubs bordering the pavement - all captured in my heart (and my camera).

I don't know where this life is going to lead. Where these words are planning their next navigation and where the maps are being drawn.
For now, its just the rain.
Ah no.
The sun is out.
Again.

Moonlight for Supper

Looking in/Looking out.
Breathing in/Bursting out.
The sun might go down in the west, but rises up later in the Northern city in my dreams. I hold it and squish its sticky juice of light. All I want is chunks of moonlight to eat.
Supper has to be sweet, you see.
Because moonlight does not demand hunger, require an appetite; moonlight does not promise satisfaction.
It simply stays on the tongue like a paper boat on a puddle and then dissolves into anonymity.
Like a drop of white blood.
Oh shame be upon my judgement!;
Is it nothing but sunlight in a subtle disguise ?

Mamma Will Never Know

Little Margot had traveled out of the womb of time.
She was displaced. Misplaced. Unplaced.
From the verge of the cliff of ice, she had managed to float.
Above existence.
Above herself.
She had crawled out of the womb of space.
Her sorrows and joys had married each other, and she pitied the anonymous state that was left behind.
How ruthless it seemed to live without a name!.
Trees were neither blank nor green.
It was neither dark nor light.
Neither Margot, nor not Margot.
Where was she?
Who was she?
What was she?
Some relations melted and some froze; and she really couldn't tell which ones she preferred more.
Letting go is not always a sign of strength.
Holding on and on is not always a sign of weakness.
As she had realised, we are all children of circumstances.
Lo! What she had been holding on to did not make sense to her when she was asleep, but was truer than her own existence when her eyelids arose.
Because it went beyond to a meadow strewn with grey violets.
Violets who had managed to trap their tears and give fragrance a chance.
Mamma will never know that her daughter was probably half insane.
Mamma will never know that flying not only gave her daughter wings but also cut off her threads of blood.
Mamma will never know, or probably never understand, that her daughter had lost her own self, had flown up to the kingdom of thunder and lightening, and was happily prancing around in the lashing rain of night.
Little Margot now slept under the waves of sand.
Mamma will never know.

Amanda echoes everywhere

This is a tough post to write.

Bullying at school and at college exists at different levels, for different reasons, everywhere around the world. Having been a victim myself at college (for a completely different reason and a completely different manner than the one shown in the video below though), it is very easy for me to relate to the fear of fear, and the fear of not belonging. Of feeling like an outcast.
At 25/26 we are quite mature; but how do we handle it at 15/16 ? When I look back I see a total blank, for along the years I have found a way to numb the pain and even ridicule it. But when I try to imagine a 16 year old me back in that situation where no one talked or no one sat next to you, it makes me cringe and wonder why I was silent about it. It is easy for me to say that now, but that 16 year old still just shakes her head and cries silently - she had always thought it was her fault, she was not worthy of love, and that what was happening was what she deserved.

I wonder how many more 16 year olds are going through this for whatever reasons and how many 16 year olds are buried inside 20's and 30's and 40's.

Is it possible to ever empty yourself of your earliest experiences? To see with fresh eyes?

Last fall I attended a 'Beat Bullying' Training workshop and was taught the various ways I could handle a situation if a young person were to show signs of being bullied or being depressed.
I SO wish I knew these simple things back then. Unfortunately I could not follow the workshop and become an online counselor because of my college schedules, but it certainly opened my eyes as to how much going on is actually all hidden. And so much of it is unbelievable, the newest being Cyber bullying. In fact even 10 and 12 year-olds have massive depression problems and suicidal tendencies.
Who is to blame?
The new 'generation'? The 'modern' culture and upbringing? The 'too early loss of innocence' age of technology ? The whole system ? Parents ? The educational systems ?
Is there any one answer or any answer at all?
Not new stuff really; but every time you come upon an incident it shakes you up and wakes you up again, no matter for however brief a time.

Reasons don't matter, whose fault it is doesn't matter, what matters is that a young person's vulnerability is taken for granted and misused against them. It doesn't matter who misuses it - for family, friends, the society-  everything matters in shaping an individual and break a cord with even one of them, and you have a person scarred and cut. It doesn't matter for what reason as well, for you cant really compare people's experiences and say 'They have gone through so much more! you should learn to cope up!' - Because that is perhaps the most insensitive thing to say; for peoples reactions to pain are different and of varying intensities.
Some cope, some seek help, some just give up.
Some do not realize they need help until it is too late.
Some just cant fight anymore because it doesn't seem to make any difference.

I will not give judgmental remarks about Amanda and about her particular situation here, but will definitely say that talking about the bad uses of the net and the lost innocence of the present youth is all just crap talk. If only we all can keep our common sense intact.

 P.S - If you see a child or a young person, just smile. Those years are supposed to remain as smiles, not as scars.
One smile of yours could build a child's life; you never know when and how.
And wherever, whenever possible, sensitize kids against bullying.
Please.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOHXGNx-E7E

Notes on a young summer day

I have begun to dislike sunshine.
So audocious, Pricking the eyes like silver thorns.
Drying up the oasis in the heart.
Winter is where I belong, below the frozen sky that looms majestic like a cube of ice.
Huddled up in the blanket of chilly winds.
Breathing in the blue tinged breeze.
Savouring the warmth of a hearty drizzle.
I do not want the illusion of color that springs out when you hold a glass to the light.
I want the blandness, the unabashed void that need not justify.
The cold that is not shackled up in acts of sympathy that would make me cringe.
The absoluteness of Nature's dream - saturated siesta.
The whiteness of her heart and the blue waves of her soul.
I want to drink in the origin of all birth.
I want to lie down in the death that is born before birth.
I want to freeze.