Cogito, ergo sum

PARENTAL AND VICTORIAL ADVISORY…adult content

I wake up at 9… Early for a Caturday… After half an hour of deep Zen, I call Pallavi. We had plans to go shopping today.

When Pallavi came to India a month back, her husband was moving to another location within the US, so she had packed all their glassware into one carton, padding it with most of her clothes, for safety. After one or two apartment moves, hubby misplaced the whole carton somehow. So now most of her clothes were gone, and she needed to do a fair bit of clothes shopping.

They had a lot of fruitless argument, and she concluded – “I’ve learnt my lesson. Next time, I use his clothes.”

I asked her how she was going to afford it, because they are on a rather tight budget.

“Oh, he’ll think of something” she said airily. I looked at her face, and felt certain that he would.

I was just going with her to shop vicariously. She asks when we should meet. I say, afternoon 1 pm, optimistically speaking (Once I have reached deep Zen, it takes hours to shift me). She knows me. She says 11:30. I say OK, but don’t start till I tell you so.

9.30 now – means I have to start in an hour. I immediately start doing something irrelevant, read some stuff, watch some sitcom, play a violent game, run some music, mostly at the same time. Then I have a silent communion with my soul on whether its lucky day has come. Apparently it has, cause I take a bathe. I decide I am hungry and get some tea and eat whatever is in the house (yesterdays dosas) and I’m ready… at 11:30 sharp. I call Pallavi and tell her I started. She says ok, she will take her bathe now. I am deeply hurted, but I get over it.

I find the slowest bus to our destination, optimistically named “Express” and get in. In Chennai, male female seating arrangements are fairly rigid (hallelujah!) and guys generally don’t sit next to women in the women’s section. The bus gets a bit crowded and a few guys are standing. The seat next to me and next to the woman in front of me are both empty. In situ like these I generally get off my seat and move to the seat in front of me. So a couple of guys can have my seat.

I get up and move. None of the still-standing guys budge, my ex-seat remains empty…Jeez, its annoying being noble these days! Meanwhile the woman in front seat jumps as I drop into the seat beside her. She looks at me suspiciously and looks behind at the seat vacated. It looks like a perfectly good seat and its empty(). She stares hard at me. She is certain something is up, am I a man in disguise, after her virtue, her purse or her life? I could be...

I can feel my lip twitching and I know that if I turn and look at her, I am going to grin and grin hard. So I carefully look at the scenery outside. She doesn’t relent. She has turned fully to look at me and is giving me the squint eye in all its glory. I regretfully fight down the unholy urge to put my arms around her and blow in her ear.

She finally gets bored, gives up, figures I’m just another crackpot (true story), and gets back to ignoring me. At length she to gets off the damn toy-bus showing us the city. I am done with embarrassing seat changing stunts. Morons must Stand.

I move to the window and stare outside with the iPod on full blast. The bus stops at a petrol bunk. Imagine a city bus in Chennai, with fifty passengers, suddenly leaving its regular route for no apparent reason. There was widespread unrest. I got 9/11 flashbacks (I was in bed during 9/11 but I swear I FELT something… perhaps it was my dinner, perhaps … a FEELING) …

Anyway I thought the driver was trying to kidnap us; I looked hard at our sorry bunch and then yet again, maybe not. He wouldn’t get much out of us. My net current worth was 10000 Rs. Including the kidneys and my hyper-myopic eyes. I looked at the window speculatively and tried to judge if I could wriggle out of it and drop to the ground if it came to violence (The doors were shut). Probably. While I was planning my commando moves, one earnest guy who had to get somewhere quick, asked the driver if he could open the doors. Driver (crackpot #2) refused. Apparently, we must all be incarcerated during re-fuelling.

The guy doesn’t get it and is getting mad. The other passengers have figured that refueling is just an act of God, and with classic indian acceptance, are just ignoring further proceedings and waiting patiently. Anyway, before our hero blew a gasket, the bus refueled and we were thundering downtown at 5kmph.

The bus stops at a signal. There is a man scratching himself as he walks past. He sees me looking at him and grabs himself suggestively (He probably figured I find crotch-scratching irresistible). I have seen far too much of men in India to react in any way to his idea of Nirvana. I just stare at him blankly, its neither interesting nor shocking nor anything. Its just there. You have a penis just like all other guys. Get over it. He gets bored with my noncompliance and walks off.

I think of what his life might be like, if what he does for kicks is grabbing himself for 5 minutes in the sun during burning noon to get some random broad in a passing bus to react. It is rather depressing. Perhaps I should have oohed a little…

The bus meanwhile is still sitting at the signal, examining its nails and looking bored. Pallavi calls. Should she start? I tell her, I’m stuck in a jam, I’ll call her once I get somewhere close by. She lives very close to T.Nagar where we are going shopping and can get there in about 10 minutes. I live on another planet.

I finish the first leg of my journey and wait for an auto to take me the rest of the way. A bus comes heading for T.Nagar. In a moment of rash stupidity I get in. I swear all buses kick back and pull out a drink with an umbrella in it the minute I show up. So as this bus immediately slowed down I called Pallavi and told her to start. After another interminable journey (God Chennai is HOT!! And I don’t mean the good hot.)

We finally meet. I am tired already and thirsty as hell. We enter an air-conditioned mall with lots of clothes and accessories (Ooooo…shinyy!) and I make a miraculous recovery. It is 1pm. We both carefully refrain from noticing it. I have my pride, you know!

We try on 15 different T-Shirts each, critique each others choices, make witty remarks at the expense of frilly denim cargo pants (they’re the latest rage, and look hideous, like they were made for porcupines). Pallavi buys cargoes and a T-Shirt. I buy about twenty each. When I go shopping, I have neither taste nor bargaining skills. When I am in a rapacious mood, like today, buying everything I see, I can see the Grand National Debt and raise it a Defense Budget or two.

So while I have already bought myself most of what she came here to buy, she looks pitifully at her single pair of cargoes and T-Shirt and wonders – “Where did I go wrong?” Its all in the color blindness honey!

We have shopped for three straight hours before realizing neither of us have eaten lunch. While she is a skinny being who regards food as an accessory, I worship at the temple of Cheese. So doubly shocking that I forgot food too! We go to Murugan Idly Shop, which has become our favorite eatery (Real ghee on the dosas, just the right amount of sugar in the coffee, I’m getting old). We pig.

I wonder whether the banana leaf that we ate our dosas on was edible, because I think I scraped some in with the last bite. Getting my stomach’s subtle hint, I am just considering ordering another dosa., when Pallavi gets a call from her brother. He has locked out her laptop with the wrong password. She shouts out her password thrice to a roomful of uninterested strangers and calls her brother some loving names.

We head back for round 2. We are searching for a jacket for her. She is not sure what she wants, so I buy 5 more shirts in passing shops while she figures out Karma and stuff. We look at a couple of jackets, but they aren’t what she wants. Not that she knows what it is. It is all very Zen.

By now we have evolved a process. We walk into stores, hand over our burgeoning booty of shopping bags (mostly mine) to the doorman and get a token.

Pallavi then asks a salesman – “Do you have any women’s jackets? Semi-formal? Formal is also okay. But a little casual. Not too formal”. While he digests that, I have already headed for the cash counter at a dead run, grabbing everything on hangers in between, and billing them at top speed, before the sky falls on our heads.

After three more hours, I see a skirt. Beautiful in shades of light blue and purple, and clingy, the colors remind me of blackmagicwoman’s paintings. Looks like something a mermaid would wear. I try it on. The material is soft and feminine and really rather neat. I look at myself in the mirror. I don’t look like a mermaid, I look more like a bulldog in a tutu. But I feel like a mermaid, dammit, dats good enough! Pallavi sees the same skirt in a different shade and tries it on too.
Pallavi is a little self-conscious in the skirt– “This thing makes my hips look bigger. I don’t want it, its depressing.”

I am dismissive “Perhaps you’re re-entering puberty? You’re a damn stick! Now get it, it looks great” She is four years younger and half my size for heavens sake! She finally does get it and we make a promise to wear it on the same day together for a Laurel and Hardy comeback.

We are wrapping up our marathon when I notice a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt on the wall– “A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she is in hot water” – I tell her we should amend “hot water” to “a shopping mall”. She glances at our 15 bags that we have patiently marched with for the past seven hours nearly and agrees. By then her tally has steadily increased. No competition for me obviously, but she finally has bought half as much as me…

We bid tired farewells and I catch an auto home and so does she. On the way back, in the crawling traffic, I see one of those cars to my right, with an antenna waving on its ass. I always have the urge to pull at antennas waggling at the backs of cars, its quite irresistible.

But I am a big girl now, so instead, I wonder if I could tell this to a shrink. It would probably have phallic implications. I chortle to myself as I think of two or three different ways it can have phallic implications. The auto driver looks at me in the rear view mirror, chortling to myself at a car antenna, and shakes his head in disgust. Crackpot.

I look to my left, there’s a family on a motorbike. Daddy, the Helmet, Mommy at the back and baby girl in front. Mommy is eating a cut pineapple. I start drooling in about 3 seconds looking at it. Mommy gives one to the little girl and she too starts eating. Mommy tries to push one at the Helmet. The Helmet shakes it off impatiently.

The little girl turns to look at me. She has really beautiful eyes. I look swiftly at Mommy. Naah, baby didn’t get those eyes from there. The helmet is also unhelpful. I look at the little girl again. She is staring at me now. Really lovely eyes, with long lashes. She’s gonna be a heartbreaker someday. I smile and wink at her. She stares back not sure what to make of me. Then turns away self-consciously with a hint of a smile.

The traffic signal changes and I am zooming again. I get home around 10pm and get an SMS from Pallavi – “Hubby called. He found the missing clothes carton”. Amen.

Linger

In my mind today, there grew a Linger, a little glowing ember, an imperceptible tug at my heart, remembered and refelt, that disappears when I search the conscious, dances just out of reach at the corner of my eye, that must be sustained only in obliquity. So I pretend I don’t feel it, and look away, think ahead, let it grow in the back of my head, shoot out tendrils of memory, connecting and reconnecting, ebbing and flowing.

I sit in its moonshine on a dark night, smiling to myself in apparent ignorance. As my mind opens memory on memory, spinning on and out, like a child uncovering a secret hidden away carefully from prying adults. It hums a little tune to itself, as it refurbishes psychedelic walkways, painting them with loving care, brilliant yet transparent, directing a shiver to the back of my neck, chortling as it imagines I don’t know why.

Actually, I don’t know where it came from, not all of it, certainly not why. My Linger realizes so many panorama that I had refused to see. I feel a hint of inexplicable tears, a regret, as it comes back to me, I should have seen it all then, when the now-arcane happened, how much more acute would it have been, could it have been. I blink away at them, ignoring curious looks from my conscious.

Then yet, I am grateful, to be allowed to feel my Lingers in retrospect, and in prospect, mind waves that will keep me living on a shiver, for a lifetime. On a shiver of a lifetime.

Life the Glorious, was all white light when he ruled, but became multicolor when he was revisited, more muted, the brightness, more poignant, the shades. And I fell in love with him, all over again, he who chose me to see his stunning plumage in white light and multifarious night, he who swept me up for the mad mindless rush down scenic pathways, built me complicated webs of Lingers, to carry every path, every leaf, every sound and touch, with me, to explore in detail later, whenever I choose, as I rush around with him, shouting into the wind in sheer exhilaration and in the bright heat of the moment.

Come bring more Lingers to me, my wayward mind, It’ll just be you and me for a while, I am ready to feel now, all that I thought I left behind, I am ready to feel now, all that I was hoping to find.

Hello Stranger

Hi there. We know each other. Slightly. I pass you sometimes at a bus stop, in the bus, in the streets, at work, online, at a party, at a movie, everywhere. Wish I had the time to know you better. You feel like someone interesting.

There is tiredness and pain in your eyes. They are older than their age. I like older eyes. With beautiful lines on the outer corners fanning out. The lines of someone who has lived through pain, and bounced back to smile again. I like people who have seen the ugly side of life and survived to tell the tale.

But I am always fighting a losing battle with time. I am just another faceless victim, with my back to a corner, arms spread out against each side and eyes staring wide in horror as time slowly crushes out my measly existence.

When I think I want to know you, I think of all the people who have been there for me over the years, who deserve more of my time, by every right. But they’re not here, you see, so while the shallow ebbs of my surface try to cover more ground with you, just keeping me afloat, the murky depths of my mind are slowly sucking me into the cesspool of guilt. I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore. I want to just be.

I probably shouldn’t be thinking so much anyway. But what can I say, I do. I think, its a reflex, actually more like ten thousand reflexes. Sometimes I feel like Arnie in Terminator 2, with a red screen in front of my eyes, processing data at high speed about every single thing I see, seeking, weighing, analyzing, planning, comparing, concluding, that reacting is one thing I completely forget to do.

There’s red everywhere when I close my eyes. Reddish-orange. My yoga master told us that when we close our eyes, blue was for peace, orange for anger. Even when I don’t feel consciously angry, its there, when I close my eyes. Red-Orange. It drives me crazy, not knowing why or how. I am all about knowing. I feel like I must be emanating lightning in a short circuit from the top of my head, like a cartoon.

I would love to just react to you, just be. It’s the most difficult thing in the world for me. Would love to speak to you. Someday. Just stop you as we sail past in circles, and demand, tell me your dreams. No, more like, tell me your nightmares. Its not for my ghoulish enjoyment of your misfortunes. You must believe that! But to me, misfortunes always bring out the best in us, the noblest, the weakest, the rawest. I want to know all of that. What makes you who you are. And how you tell it.

I wish you would show me some playgrounds where you were kicked, some heights where you were pushed, some scars that refused to fade, some wars that just couldn’t wait, any more, anything…I could probably make some guesses, but I want your story, the world, according to you.

Do you cry over it still, do you tell it like it doesn’t matter anymore, tell it like a joke, are you putting on an “I’m okay, it was a long time ago” act? All of these are our typical reactions when we are asked to tell our sad tales. There is no right or wrong in it. There is only, which type are you? Will you tell me?

Probably not, I have no skill as a confidante, no comforting manner, no sympathetic noises. I regret it keenly, especially when I meet someone like you, someone I want to know. If only I were less stony, if only I was more understanding, if only I had more time, to draw you out, to paint you as you in all your colours...

Aloha, stranger, if only…

Got to be good looking cause you’re so hard to see
Come together, right now, over me
- Beatles

Satisfaction

Climbing on the...creepers of my... stretched out nerves... throbbed up veins... reaching for the... top the bottom... side the anything... blinking deranged... is it just a ... passing madness... closing in on... a canvas plain... I cant hear no...satisfaction... wiping out my ... starving brain... pour me some more... coffee will ya... stuff me with your... drugs inane... close me up and ...put me down and... clean my filthy wounds agape... close the eyes and... draw in breath and... fold the arms and... glow in prayer... to save my soul so...tear me down and... break my bones and...pick me clean then... sew back my remains... this part of me...is better than good so...this part don't fit so... mangle it and... pretty it clean and ... I'm good as new again...

almost...

cardboard tastes and... washboard whites for... surfboard sights and... stir bored lives... watch endless cries...but sit down quiet... and play with mice...in spineless disguise... be vomitable nice... all polite and wise... when its not my life... under the vise... squeezed slow and sure... every day of every year... every minute to ...just be here... in a barren earth... raped for daily wage... looted pillaged...for a future age... that never will come... that never can come... lemmings go home... drown your own... drown me out too... my reason left its throne ...

long ago...

strumming bongo... in my head... zapped up chorus...bouncing lead... must lie down and... rest in cold when... sweeping vistas... dance past just then... flickers on glass like... here and gone... did I see them... or am I alone... with my jungle drum and... boring drone and... failing ideas and... pulled up socks and ...kicked in rocks and...sucked in stomach and... sucked out luck and... put on airs and... put out stares and... fall out hairs and... dolled up cares and... dulled out wares and... fade out fairs and... monotone rails and ... erratic flails and... mind on the wail on ...sadistic trails and... unholy grails and ... dreams on sale and... hopes up frail set on... played up sails on... murky water pails and... inevitable fails and... soaring tales to... cast a veil on... realities stale and... prospects pale

Satisfaction...satisfaction...satisfaction...satisfaction...beatific benign...so close on the heels of... ennuied mind ... who wants to find... satisfaction...satisfaction... at the base of the ... spiralling climb

How to be what you can be, junk, damn junk in your energy
How to walk in dignity with throw up on your shoes
They amplified the autumn, 1979

- Ignoreland, REM

The falling rain

They all come out only when skies are clear
When thunder’s booming, there’s none to hear
When the rain fall pure to cool the earth
Only to be sullied with smoke, filth, tears
Then rush down the neat drains and disappear
When I’m just another casualty
Of a path hard led
Of lifetimes left unsaid
Of pouring tears unshed
Of nascent hopes mutilated
Hanging by a sliver a thread
There’s only silence unheeding
No one listening but the voices in my head
Cackling, moaning, calling me insane
Try telling the falling rain
Don’t cry, it’s all in vain