An enriching, meaningful new year!

May it bring much that is good and real in your life.

I shall put your lopsided smile in some story someday, the combat pilot’s sharp gaze that scans miles of empty desert, that completely shrewd infotech brain with a mass of equations and calculations, the smooth professional calm so essential in your current line of work; that, and the color of sunlight on straw bleached.

The old church is at the end of yet another winding lane past a row of spiffy office blocks and a valiant industrial estate for small scale units that hasn’t succumbed to the ever-increasing price of real estate. J says the altar features the same gold leaf design as it did two centuries ago. And you need special permission to reach the other church, now in complete ruins, in the hi tech IT export zone, but its supposed to be the oldest church in all Mumbai, from a time when it stood amongst verdant fields and rolling hills with tracks that meandered about. Some of the old village names exist, with lanes that are shortcuts that only old timers know, and you can find them if you look for them.
Strange how some signs remain even after so many years, and you can find them if you look close enough.

A Joyous Christmas.

Of the paper lamps with intricate cutouts outside the shops that I tried to photograph-three were file errors, one or two are ok shots, nothing like the lanterns dancing daintily in the wind.

Stepping in at the Sacred Heart Church to photograph it, light-festooned trees, lights on the high wall and all, I felt like an intruder and quickly stepped back. Today, I shall try again.

Yesterday’s reception was all aglitter and quite okay, we sat all huddled and put the parade of bling and nice intricately embroidered sarees and glitter thread salwars and flowing shararas into two simple categories, “liked” and “naah”. Got home midnight, but the traffic on the highway was horrendous.

P’s news left me shocked, perhaps ought to think of something apt from the scriptures to quote, light and dark.

So did the BJP win back home, nothing can stop this juggernaut now, and history will repeat itself as liberals shut up. Sad.

NYT story: The US has been funding our esteemed western neighbour’s onslaughts on India.
Blunders and wonders, and the world is indeed a strange place, oh my!

Merry Christmas!

Here is my sub!

So over the last few days you dissect the database into three; for cards, chocolates and calendars, and you wonder, how many are still there, how many survived, so quick shifting and merciless this industry is. And you look at the subprime tally, 10.8 billion at one prestigious firm alone, TEN POINT EIGHT billion and how much is that in rupees or God forbid, the lira or the Turkish currency before they knocked off the swimming zeros? And you wonder what the suits were up to, why no questions were asked, the Emperor has no clothes but are you blind, and someone forced to move, homeless in this mad weather, and like dominoes stacked to collapse, where what next.

Tis the season, but much too much.

sorry but I'm seeing double. am good.

abc's
A page comes back littered with pov’s. I didn’t know so many existed.
Now I don’t know what to do. Toss a coin. Yes, I said thank you.

Trying to think from an antisocial viewpoint is so bloody tough.
Manic, childhood trauma, race, revenge, superiority. Recipe for a madman-loner.
Yes?
Not if you’re the snook your nose and shrug-trot kind.

Terrific, the subs rate. Gush-write it, send it, forget it.

Maisel is so right.
That anchoring is addictive. Meaning- giving.
Like thirst.

Bright lights on the trees, ‘tis the season; a wonderland and wishes-come-true feel to it all.

Fluffy clouds a light streak on a pink peach dawn, sultry seagulls and crows wheel overhead. Clarity.

Taught Aunty y’day how to use rediff bol so that she, too, could send forth a volley of sms’s for free. Mildly amused. Patterns and circles, ring a ring a roses.

And I chanced upon a superb shop, a Spencers’, a real lifesaver.

Abstract, yes?

2 days of assertiveness training.
Maybe a better way of handling stuff than bottling it up, all pickled in brine, and then kaboom! one day with a well placed sock on the jaw.
:)
Perhaps.

Of course the words are dry as a stick, or like a photo, unidimensional; that’s because I am as well, and if you don’t like it you may as well lump it, I shall continue to write of bombs that blink at inopportune moments and casual rambles through century-old bazaars that become life-defining moments; for lissome lasses long-legged (but of course!), that cavort on sun-kissed beaches or sob away when you push a button, you may as well wait ‘nother lifetime. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

Dilli shootout. A fourteen year old butchered in cold blood by his own classmates at fancy IB school. No more will we be able to scoff and say, “nah. Not in MY country.” What a licensed gun was doing stored around like chutta paisa I will never know, but then some ppl should have to take an exam to be parents.

Why is this happening?
Not my country. Not my faith. Yet.
The snow covered streets of Colorado are far from bustling Mumbai.
A schoolbus, for heaven’s sake a bus with kids, in the neighboring country to the west I refuse to call by name.
So completely random.
Tomorrow, my home state votes. No way must the genocide of 2002 be allowed again.

Slow down, the forecast says; slow down and listen to the earth move on its axis.
In peace.


She waits every Sunday evening, laptop on the ready. This is aunty, aka my ex-landlady.
Quick with questions, slow to get it.
Taking notes so that she remembers.
Photographs. Sepia. Color. Some thumbnail only.
Of her wedding. In all her finery, that fresh-as-mountain-dew look on her face.
Of the kids.
Of homes moved across the country, three kids in tow.
Of the son’s first birthday.
His graduation ceremony.
Of the son’s first frigate, and its not a toy.
Of the grandkids.
Day one, year one, scrawny baby.
Day one, year twenty-five, stethoscope in hand.
Quite a journey. So much to note.

The stream that flows past point A is not exactly the same that flows there five minutes hence. The current is different; the body of water is different, the ripples and eddies that the wind sketches on the glass-like surface is different. In the flowing, does the river bank change, whittled away bit by bit, deposits of silt, sand and grit carving its course?

Isn’t it strange how we need our little pats, that nice woozy rush of approval? In writing, or in any art, is there ever a dispassionate creator who works for himself alone? So, what does that make me- an exhibitionist? Would I like to write if I were never read? No, I don’t think so.

Damage control initiated back home, doors to be metal-welded shut.
Silver lining: No encroachments. Not as yet.

The translation contest results are out. Some other time, perhaps.
Any takers for a story?

So Omaha has another claim to fame in addition to Mr. Buffet.
What kind of rabid gun control law is this?

In the meanwhile, I stay calm and take it day by day.

It is horrible, this feeling of helpless nasty.
I watch distanced.
Once again, the doors have been sprung open.
Once again, the lock hangs useless.
There is nothing much left inside.
Don’t you know?
There was nothing much anyway, don’t you know?
The people, laughter and fistfights have long gone.
Just old photographs, scraps of paper with an awry doll or tree, some music notations.
Two chairs, dust covered, in case someday we need them. Now gone.
Old photographs, a visit to the zoo in kindergarten, Heidi, Churchill.
That LP record, gloated over, Karen or Olivia or some such.
The tanpura is overturned, broken.
Glassware still there, the domit ovenware-gone,but its users left a long time back.
Books, some brown paper covered, are scattered
Perhaps in poems and philosophy, there is nothing to steal.
The double lock leading to the kitchen is useless now.
They’ve broken the attic door, the fence spikes that it took three grown men to lift
Gone now.
Storeroom emptied out.
My grandmother’s brass vessels, or her grandmother’s, who knows
Awol.
It is horrible, this rage, and cussing the thieves to generations gone and hence.
A repaired door, but for how long?
Had I not chanced to visit, no one would have known.
Detachment, aloof is a coward’s fate.