"Tamizh is spoken with the tongue; English spoken with the jaws."

- Arun Prakash Samiaiah

klpd

One thing I frequently experience is a frustration with words, terms and phrases when discussing sex with friends. I often feel lost. I can see she and I both feel it, but we just can't seem to put it to words.

Of course, it goes without saying that if I read a lot more than I am right now, I'd definitely have more words to my disposal. But what I've increasingly come to realise is that a lot of experiences are already predefined; their sentences, adjectives, words claimed by androcentric passengers in the travel of language.

Say, for instance, having sex with someone. Why is it not sex when I have had the time of my life, but it hasn't been penetrative? Does it really matter? Must he nail me? How on earth will my girlfriends and I make do with that pale milk phrase, 'making out'?

I have always intensely disliked that phrase. It captures nothing; it could mean children play-acting, a young girl striking out on her own in a new city, pressing out spaghetti strings from the machine. Why could 'making out' not be any of these instead?

And then, bases. How powerfully they staircase a dip into the ocean. Why must his shirt be unbuttoned, her bra unhooked? What of all those beautiful places in between; the smouldering, the pauses, the suddenness, the crackling cigarette or was it the friction of your corduroys?

I wish I knew hindi better, I'm certain that we have much more fulfilling ways to talk about our experiences, sensations, feelings without having to rely on cheap American imports. 

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

Via Mohit.

Blue in love

He is so classy he takes my breath away.

And he is so funny he leaves me breathless from laughing too!

This is one of my favourite songs. You know, the kind of songs which become like friends. They cheer you up when you're sad, or they drink your sadness with you. They skip in the rain when you're happy, they play in the background when you're feeling blue, they tickle you when you feel cheeky. 

I would really like it if someone serenaded me with this song. Thank you.

8 - Gwrthodwyd

"I'm sorry, we regret to inform you
that you did not say please properly."

What, what do you mean? I said, "Please."

"Our laws are very strict. Please
read the letter carefully."

This letter doesn't say much.

"You must be familiar with our laws. Before
you say please, please read them."

Can you tell me what I said wrong?

"Read the letter. Our laws for pleasing
us are very strict."

6 - Vagabond Drinkers

Me and Glen Fernandez were out for some tea
We came back wearing cross-stitch stars.

Me and Keith D'Souza were out for some rum
We chatted up pixies with Milky Bars.

Me and James Peters were out for some cola
We chased our dreams in wind-whipped cars.

Cybersadism

I was out walking with a friend last night. Around one in the morning he suddenly asks me, you have cash on you? I have coins, I say. He turns to point to an ice-cream shop across the road which is surprisingly closed. If you sell things like juice, junk and ice-cream inside IIT and you are closed before midnight, you should not be surprised about low sales, or uninteresting conversations in your parlour.

Suddenly, I had an intense craving for ice-cream. It was a perfect craving, because the urge was licking up my belly and red-hot whistles were blowing off in my head.

There are varieties of cravings. Mild earl grey ones. Ones which act like additional plugin required pop-ups, incessant and self-updating. There are ones which simmer for weeks, months, sometimes even years without our knowing. Ones which teach you things about yourself you never knew. There are others which haunt you forever, which are never fulfilled.

Barely twelve hours after my perfect craving, I come across this.

And this.

This put my teeth at their edge.

See what I mean?

Just thought I'd share the agony.

(Photo Source)

4 - Semicolons and American dashes

That twirling arrow came from nowhere
Oh God;
I didn't know what to write anymore.

The blinking cursor was stranded somewhere
Oh God --
Punctuated poetry is such a chore.

Ovelle

Over the hill and under the sky
Orbiting the rim of a moan
Circling slowly like a dizziness
It felt like an ocean folding.

Veering narrowly into a crevice
Scissoring sharply on his teeth
Cutting the air with its two knives
It felt like a vertical rebellion.

Rustling quietly, leaves on a tree
Creating spaces for three corners
He was edgy, sometimes leaning on me
It felt like weaving a symmetry.

She came down sliding like a turn
On a whip of lush, thick cream
She swerved slyly, gave me a kiss
It felt like a sweet misspelling.

(Actually) reading Season's Greetings cards

Sometimes life fancies something and runs it in your background, like a v-e-r-y s-l-o-w virus scan through your entire hard drive.

I lost mine. It just decided to get lost and I never found it. Actually, I think it just got whitewashed. It was heart-breaking, "why me?!" and existential. It was weird, trying to figure out the songs and albums which I'd downloaded, some just for keeps because they are never too far away from who you are.

Hello! And it's good to be back. Of course, things here will be changing but when did they never?  Not never, always ever. I've always found understanding negations the hardest bit in grammar. It's hard to connect the two meanings.

I was talking to a good friend of mine, and I told him that sometimes when you try really hard to search the meaning of something, it's like dipping your finger into an absolutely tranquil pond of water. There go the meanings, questions and their answers, all the very self-important semicolons, calendar markings and saved ice-cream.

Strawberry, but I am yet to try Baskin Robbins' Chocolate, so I'm keeping it open. This is also a not-so-subtle hint for a treat this festive season.

Season's Greetings, everyone. Read the cards!

sawed off

it's cool to be a lower-case sentence. you know it.

On the promise of eternity

There are no roads left to walk on,
no day left unwoken to.
Caged in the fire of a slow, dying light.

Fixed between a shuttling echo,
the crackling embers of your life.
A blunt knife piercing the passing days.

You are caught as the light in your photo,
fixed, with gazes impaled upon.
Not a sharpness, a streak in sight.

No reckless desire, no drive, no power,
molten with hurt and sigh and pain.
Lost in need, glittering in the dark.

Choked in stillness, in quiet refrain,
"remember when you were young".
Mystery marksman, never to die.

a paperpin's lecture on the importance of system and organisation

"ever since paperpins had come into conception some 50 years ago, they had diversified greatly in form and function. such had their popularity maxed, that they were even picked up by the one hit wonder bill gates, one fundamental difference being that bill was a far inferior creature. not to say that the Human Being was an inferior race, it's just that paperpins associated simplicity with brilliance. Human Beings were too complicated and hadn't yet reached the oneness of mind and spirit, like the paperpins already had.

the paperpins were popular at the offices, but among people who called themselves slanted, nice-weird, loony and et cetera they were quite unpopular. paperpins were twisted and shouted at. they were called names - they were called the Commas in a Long Sentence. simply said, it meant that paperpins were like lots of Commas in a Long Sentence, like grammatical paperpins which never allowed a sentence to come to an end, making it more and more inexplicable and multilateral, holding compound meanings and contextual leanings together with a single, deftly-bent, snap-clasping inch of aluminium alloy.

however, paperpins had been created for an important reason - systematic organisation of paper. words, and the papers they were written on had to be neatly ordered and re-neatly re-ordered. paperwork would be lost without them. red-tape bureaucracy would become a carnival ribbon without them. paperpins effectively held entire nations together. could you imagine a world without paperpins?

Human Beings, however, have been known not to like discipline and order; some of them quite hate dealing with organisations which, for all practical purposes, exist on filing systems (paperpins being their basic elements). these organisations include banks, courts, schools, universities, public libraries and any sort of government-like offices, where Human Beings seem to be their most distressed, suppressed and harrassed selves.

to them, i have but one question: is life possible without system? is it possible to exist without structure, rules, foundations, regulations, stipulations? what would we be able to ever achieve without a formulated plan in life? filing systems form the core of organisation, the greatest mental ability of Human Beings, a concept so abstract it has yet to be mastered completely. we cannot, at any point in time, allow ourselves to simply.."

The so on and so forth continued for a long time that day. The paperpin was a brilliant speech-maker but became quite complicated and winding in its meanings, not quite unlike its physical structure. Its speech was given sparse applause, as predicted. But one thing remains quite unblemished, despite the paperpin's overtly preachy and quite boring speech - that a (long, burdensome, obsolete and frustrating) system is important, if only to create the purest of magic, escape, spirit and freedom within ourselves. Whenever we get the chance, it's the system we break free from, and we enjoy it, don't we?

(Picture Source)

Shopping for bubbles

Late Nights - Let's first talk about why people think being voluntarily awake at night is 'not healthy, beta'. Living in IIT has its benefits when it comes to being an insomniac. If biology works en masse on a species-to-species basis, you know you're well into the grand scheme of things because if you stop yawning at ten pm, so are around 3800 students. This educated guess (thanks, Mayur) includes professors. Isolation has been ruled out, because this whole jing-bang lot of disagreeable people go back to the Stone Age when we were all hunting in packs. How can my internal body clock be dysfunctional?
Nein.

The Secret To A Good Life - Given my present location, I think I can say yes even to my self-doubtful bag of thought-peanuts, because not staying in Bombay makes you think of Bombay more and more. I know why people living in cities are unhappy with their lives. It's because cities don't have halwai shops. Halwai shops, ladies and gents, are the world's most gastronomically attractive places. And if there is anything of considerable consequence that we have been doing ever since we woke up, it is eating. Food is the soul of that man called Life. Food encourages, food nourishes. Food loves unconditionally. Do you know the secret to a good life? I know. It's too simple to gasp at. The secret to a good, wholesome life is - more butter. You disagree with me? You know what you've been missing, then.

The Lizard's Point of View - The lizard lives on a reverse plane of familiar surface. Its 180 degrees is the shape of an unruly crescent moon to us, its 360 begins where we end ours. I've often wondered what would happen to my optic nerves if I were given a lizard's angle of incidence and reflection for one night. a) my beloved glasses would be the first to perish but b) gravity would become very timid a concept from what it is now. Quite a cracker thing to be de-conditioned of, even for just 24 hours.

The Letters 'e' And 'l' Are Beautiful When Doubled - I once nearly had a pen-friend called Priscilla. Isn't her name the prettiest you've heard? I would have written back to her solely for the musical thrill her name held to me, were it not for gusts of wind when I was copying her address down. Look at them, just look at the words -

eerie
melee
between
tweezers
preen
breeze
weed
fleece
sweep

You could write a poem a la carte Edward Lear's Classic Nonsense just because .. well just because of the way they sound when you double them.

The. Ees.

The
eerie
melee
between
the
tweezers, which
preen
the
weed
but
fleece
the
breeze, of its
sweep
.

And who doesn't love freebies?

Ditto with the twelfth letter. When cloned and put together, they sound like they just have to make a point.

The. Ells.

Of pills. And the shrillness of Bill 's illness.
Of gills. And the thrills of Will's kills.
Of hills. And the smell of Jill's dills.

Now, someone
was talking about the shallow
and hollow
but mellow
bellow
of a
yellow fellow

When all
he ever did
was yell
oh Hell!
(You see, he
fell)


[Shopping for bubbles will continue eternally. More so because the shopper's having a lovely time. Hope you did, and will too.]

"Them Academic Suckers"

Them Academic Suckers. I never really liked them in the first place. For me, school was a place I ran away to from home everyday for a blissful six hours of pure fun and expression. Not that that was the original purpose of school. Duh, yeah.

And then those ASs. They'd always be wanting to get the highest marks in all the exams, assignments, even those goddamned class-tests... everything requiring pedagogic evaluation. At least two months before these exams were to take place, they'd be all over the place, creeping up to the teachers with their innocuous little doubts . It was all BS anyway, the rest of us knew perfectly well they knew everything and would go around asking only to impress the teachers. Teachers do get impressed if you ask them specific doubts. It means that you've read through the text thoroughly. Sheesh, I have to admit, they were smart on this one.

They would look down on the rest of us from the rims of their glasses, as if we were lesser mortals, born to shrivel up like plastic wrappers when near fire. Just before the exams, when the rest of us would be busy cramming and splitting our hair on those complicated diagrams, which used to look like the London Underground map and reassuring ourselves and others that it's just another test, we'll do it like we've done all the others, I used to see them flitting from one AS to the other, asking each other in hushed whispers. Once I actually eavesdropped on them, and I regretted doing it sorely. They were discussing something which was 178 pages after the last chapter specified. I was sorely tempted to scream, "Okay!! So you're smart. Can't you talk like normal human beings for sometime? Have the Martians got to us already??"

Once I was graciously invited to these post-examination discussions by a friend who was an AS himself, but not so severely so. I went along for the experience. Usually I would be found in the school-grounds experimenting with methods to dispose off chewed gum, or singing at the top of my voice "Born freeee...as freee as the wind blows...as freeee as the grass grows..." but that day I thought hell, let's see what exactly it is that goes on here. I was in for the most nerve-bending boring times I have ever been subjected to. The ASs had occupied a deserted classroom (and here I was thinking that deserted classrooms were meant for first kisses) and were sitting with the question papers sprawled out in front of their benches. They were all locked in a battle of who could shriek the loudest, and who could bonk the other with those irritating test-questions I had already blissfully forgotten, the hardest. There were some superior ASs who answered the last, and their answers would be the most complicated and long, and would invariably include everything the other ASs had written, and more.

A typical discussion went like this.

AS 1: "So what did you write for the sixth part of the twenty-second question?"

AS 2: "Well, I'm not sure I exactly remember.."

AS 1: "No no, come on, I too am not sure....I just want to confirm..."

AS 2: "Oh well, I wrote that a particle moving along one dimension, like the particle between two walls, is described by a wave function that depends on one spatial coordinate. A particle moving in three dimensions, like a single electron moving around a nucleus, is described by a wave function that depends on three spatial coordinates, x, y and z. It's for three marks, and I think she'll cut one mark because I didn't mention that the wave function gives the probability amplitude for finding the electron at the coordinates (x,y,z), and the square of the wave function gives the probability. What did you write?"

AS 1: "Something similar, only I also included an example that Helium has two electrons, so the stationary states of the electrons...."

For obvious reasons, I cannot for the life of me continue to enlighten you about this extremely engaging discussion on the answer to the sixth part of the twenty-second question.

When a week or two would pass by since the exams had finished, the rest of us would be evidently uneasy. This week would be the week when our papers would come after correction. Which meant either toppling off the cliff, or just hanging by the thread. The rest of us would be happy just to scramble over the cliff and be off. Our ASs, however, would be satisfied with nothing else less than scaling the cliff, standing tall and proud, and gleefully watching others scream and submit to painful gravity. Ouch. I know.

My friend and I would be standing near the classroom door, watching out with hawk-eyed precision for any suspicious-looking packages or papers our teachers would be carrying in their arms. As soon as we'd spot something dreadfully familiar, we'd announce it to our class. This announcement would evoke three kinds of responses. One kind would be a collective sigh. This would be from the people who were expecting to just make it. The other would be a deep-throated groan, accompanied with loud forehead slaps from those who knew they were not going to make it. And then, there would be wide "Look at my pearlies, will ya!" grins and ecstatic rubbing of hands from our ASs.

Finally the teacher would enter the class. The tension inside the four walls would be enough to crack open anyone's skull. Paper-distribution would be done according to roll-call. The teacher would call out the roll numbers, and the respective students would go up and take the answer-papers. The walk from the bench to that table would be the longest for us, and the shortest for them. It's another thing that we would always be sitting on the last benches, but it was still one hell of a walk anyway. The teacher would either give a smart nod, if it were an AS, or a drooling, evil smile were it one of us. And then, horror of horrors, the teacher would ANNOUNCE the marks. In. Front. Of. The. Entire. Class. I still don't understand what kind of twisted sadistic pleasure they would get out of this whole calling-out-the-marks ritual. There would be whimpers of protests, cruelly pillowed by the teacher's ominous voice.

After this, we would open our fates and read the red-inked reckoning, still glistening on our papers. But usually this would not last too long. At least it was behind us. Now the ASs would be in their form. There would be some sitting in a corner, with a oh-what-a-good-boy-am-I kind of grins, and we would immediately realize these were the ASs who'd got full marks. The ASs who didn't, however, would be in a frenzy indescribable. They'd crowd up in the space available between the teacher's desk and the first bench, their arms flailing around with their papers, fighting for....oh no, not their torn or lost map-sheet, but half a mark. Or even more catastrophic, one mark. "If she got it on that question, how come I didn't get it too?". I would almost shout, "coz they did it by the inky-pinky-ponky, and you got left out, dunkhead!!" I mean, honestly. They'd fight like the way kindergarten kids fight over whose glass is filled with more orange juice.

I used to look at these people, eyeing them from a mental distance, thinking, damn, why? Why the whole charade? It was bigtime basic knowledge that they were cosmically shining bright material. Then why the fretting over who wrote what, who wrote more, who drew more, who made what?

Another thing I couldn't digest about ASs was the whole thing about not showing off. If I'd ask them something as simple as, "So how many lessons are coming this time?" they'd never have a clear answer. And if I'd ask them something simpler like, "So have you done this chapter?" the answer would be "Oh no..I've not even reached there!". Yeah, I'm going to believe that. The OTT modesty show was something that really put me off.

AS 1: "You're MUCH better than me, look at how much you got on that one."

AS 2: "Oh no, just a fluke answer, man."

Cut the ribbon, and get done with it.

I think I'm done talking about them now. It's time for the others. It's time for the rest of us to come out from our closets. So maybe we won't make it to the top Universities or Colleges. So maybe we won't get the pat-on-my-head and goofy smiles from the teachers. So maybe we won't have normal parent-teacher "interactions". We have fun. In fact, that's an understatement. We have the time of our lives. We have a life, inside AND outside the school. We probably know the school better than the janitors. We will be remembered by the teachers as students who gave them a laugh, once in a while. And...we have (and are making) some of the craziest, zaniest and most beautiful memories ever worth telling our grandchildren. So there.

(This was a piece I came across in one of my drafts. I'd written this in a fit of righteous indignation while in class 9. The ferocity of the descriptions draws a temperate smile across my face now, but I love the spunk in this girl.)