the real indian summer

Five months is a long while.

What can you do with five months?Feel your tummy swelling with half a baby,or maybe escape from a place where the streets whisper sad and happy songs.

My life was burning sad and slow, and I felt like little ash bits, blown in the wind, meaning nothing to no one. So I stubbed out that cigarette, and picked up another one.I left a yellowed life on hold, took a trip, and lived another one.

It was a new adventure all over again, like the first time you put a cigar to your mouth, and didn’t know how it wld taste. Do you smoke it like all the cigarettes you have smoked before, do you inhale or let the smoke hover in your mouth before you blow it out, in white cotton puffs?

I came full of such questions and expectations, hearing so many things from so few people that had the guts to venture into this strange land. I came with a map, that I never intended to look at, a brick thick travel guide which only acted as a Bible I never worshipped.My heart is a far more powerful compass and I trust its flitting needle.

Perhaps the reason is simple: a travel guide only allows me to meet places,but my heart, this silly blood pumping mechanism, allows me to meet people— their pasts,their presents and all that they have.

I met (( people)), the “Hey! hello” types, I met (people), the ” So, are you used to Indian food yet?” types, then I met people whom I hung around with, and of course, I met the ones that introduced me to Mary Jane.

She was the sweetest girl I had ever known.She always arrives “naked”, and in this place, it has always been the guys who’d dress her up.Unfailingly,they picked the white paper-thin dress, with no zips.After that, she’d take you on dates, to blissful places you had never known.And boy was Mary Jane one heckuva a friend.She always made people feel special.She brought them each to a unique place where they could see flowers bloom, in 600 ways all at once. Her flower garden was big, bigger bigger than the world itself,and each date she brought every man to a different corner. Wander a little further in her world, and you might meet Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin Mick Jagger and the whole long list, who were firm fans of her coloured fantasies.

There was always laughter, or silence around Mary Jane.A person or two who ran around like an unknowing soldier,conditioned to do all these silly tasks when he couldn’t find anything else to do.We sat in a circle staring into the moonlight air, a blinding in a distance dulled by swarming insects.Occasionally, some one gets up of the seat and calls for coffee.

 

fifteen minutes

I like sitting in a dark room, lights low, listening to your music. As I lay sprawling like an old friend on your bed, without asking your permission, there is only a strange calm that demands nothing of me.

The room is all dark now, except for the blue twilight peeking through your shutters and a table light, florescent, which you keep on, perhaps for sanity; or for fear that in darkness, your hands have a life of their own.

It is this that I love about you, my personal DJ who senses I want something darker on the stereo.You started out with your happy songs and I made jokes about them: saying if I were a company’s CEO, I would develop an exercise routine to fit your sunny songs, then make my workers do it everyday before they jump into the grind. And so you sense my hint to turn off the florescent tunes.

Instead you play me a darker wave: the sounds of alley gazes and hair, manically kissed and loved; bodies pinned flat against a brick wall, in ecstasy.

Such is you and your collection of music for every mood.

By the corner of my eye, I see you leaning back on your rolling chair, dangerous and inches away from doing a backflip. Ever since I’ve known you, it’s been in your nature to live on the edge, to learn from losing tickets and keys,and breaking your back in bumpy falls.Even your closet is a haphazard of clothes thrown around, crumpled and sitting, because disorder is the only natural order to us.

The shelves, though, are a little more promising. Terry Pratchett discworld( because we’re all still little boys), Bertrand Russell “The History of Philosophy” and Henry James classics: still sticking to the arts student’s diet all these years, still, appearing to be a voracious reader.

And then Tom Holt on your pillow, ” Dont lose the page!” you exclaim when I pick up the book, and ” Don’t put the book like that!” when I put it down.I could use a friend like that, who treats every single book as a Bible.

Of course, you’re not great and golden all the time. Sometimes the silence still pours between us, as a waterfall.But stranger, I choose to remember you in snapshots, in moments where I find a world– our world, which will soon fade, and only be starkest,as words on a journal.

 

I resolve to love better

and spend more time with people.doing nothing, actually important with them.One of the best things in life is being bottles of beer in the fridge: just hangin out and chillin’.

 

Eik Paratha, Eik minute

This time it was Rishit CCC15th who hung languidly by the Chota counter, waiting for his dinner.Mess food was ok-ish but he had completed three big fat assignments from Amar Gargesh’s class the day before and decided he deserved a treat.” I’ve never  done so much work in my life,” concluded Rishit, as he struck a match and lit his first cigarette.

A  d e e p, l o n g drawl. Ahh yes, that good ol’ taste of heaven.

“One,just one today,” he said to himself determinedly ,thinking about the three hundred rupees left in his wallet. His heart skipped two beats :it must be his old friend,conscience,who charged him guilty of spending more money on cigarettes than his girlfriend.(not that he wanted her to be a materialist)

Inhaling, he looked at the setting sun, people talking in a distance. “Life is…” Rishi thought for a long while, but like a blinking cursor on a screen, the philosopher in him felt constipated today.

He was done with his first fag but that bloody paratha was not coming, Chota’s eik minute was up long ago. “Bhai yaa..” he demanded, “Eik minute,eik  minute..”came the reply. There  was nothing to do and he wasn’t in the mood to make small talk with people who came by the counter.

Ah, heck, take a second stick,to hell with this waiting.

He stuck the fag at the side of his mouth, strike, and that orange glow on crumbling paper.It’s times like these he thinks about Tharanum’s anti-smoking campaign, “Have you ever heard of a father gifting cancer to his son?”.

He really wanted to quit but being around other smokers at Chota was not going to do the trick.”Paratha and I’ll get out of here,” but if only wishing could make dinner come faster. Rishit was really impatient now, Amar Gargesh’s six more assignments awaited him back at the Maclab, to be done by tomorrow.He felt the heat of his second cigarette was close to his fingers now ,too bad, the second stick had run out on him.

” Bhai yaa, Paratha.. “

“EIK MINUTE,EIK MINUTE”, came that same voice from behind the kitchen door. Rishit looked at his watch, either it had been fifteen minutes or…

He was really impatient now and demanding for his food,he realised, was nothing more than a terrible waste of energy.

Relax, he said to himself, and pulled out the last cigarette in his pack. Shit, he was intending his____ to last two more days.Lighting the cig, he took a good,long drag.

The smoke glid down his windpipe, caressed his throat, fondled in seductive swirls down his oesophagus, till it finally reached his blackened lungs, to be stored as tar.

“Eik minute, ____ cigarettes,” he thought.

Eik minute kills.

 

MELANIE THE FAG HAG.

SHE’S SPECIAL. REAL SPECIAL AROUND HERE.

IM GROWING TO LIKE HER SEOND HAND SMOKE.

 

We are:

running out of things to do in MICA.

MICA is a campus situated just off Ahmedabad,one hour away from the city where all our familiar creature comforts are.I seriously do not know what to make out of life here.I’ve been trying to make friends,progress has been good,but there is an initial fear of THE JOKE falling flat on the ground,even if you try to make another one to save it.

So far Ive made one good and trustworthy friend: Harshal Owalekar, the tall man “enters the room with respect” as he calls it.He has to bend down to fit into the door frames. And I never knew vegetarians could grow so tall. He told me that his parents were both non-vegetarian, so is his Canadian girlfriend, but he quit eating meat ever since he saw a goat being slaughtered when he was eight.

I,on the other hand, have no compassion whatsoever for animals. There is an injured cat on campus which we meet every night at Chota(the midnight cafe). His back is weirdly curved and it broke one of its legs, resuting in his meagre three-legged limp.As if that’s not enough, he got a fresh wound last night which is now coagulated with puss.

This cat is a slinky!When you try to carry it, it stretches its back to unexpected lengths and slips away,like a fish would slip away from your hand.So I lovingly named it —”the fish cat”. The frenchies and my three travel buddies seem to fancy the fish cat a lot, they are always stroking it,loving it, giving it tea and left-over bits.However,I only start playing with it when conversation stops, to look vaguely occupied.

“Poor cat,” and everytime I hear something being called “poor”, I despise the condescension.(if that word even exists) I would respect myself much more to admit I dont have a compassion for animals,rather than fake my caring for them.Im not the perfect girl in that sense.

So Chota is where the cat comes, and where the cat goes.But Chota is also a place of good fun, hanging out languidly under that shady tree,talking, making things out of nothing. Nuria always hogs the tyre swing there, and complains of motion sickness after that.Romain and I had a pretty good time adding to her agony by kicking her around.Oh and did I mention the swing functions as a double joy-ride?You twist both ropes in one direction, and spin it in the other direction then… LET ER RIP !

it’s amazing how simple things like this can bring such psycheldelic fun.I screamed like crazy when it came to my turn…I havent screamed like that in a long time!* cue song:Tom Petty’s free-fallin* (secretly,I miss screaming a lot)

The Frenchies wanted to learn Chinese today, they wanted to say “I come from France”, even that was difficult. We taught em to say Fa3 guo2 multiple times, but kept pronouncing it as “FUCK”.Ironically!Oh but it was good entertainment for us, so im not complaining.

Must blog about this wonderful place called the Chocolate room in the city.It’s a chocolate cafe like Max Brenners and I had pancakes drowning in chocolate today. The smell of chocolate never made me so happy in my life,deprivation really does wonders. There were chocolate panckaes, chocolate pizzas, chocolate cakes, chocolate with chilli,chocolate waffles. Nuria and I were seriously salivating as we were ordering.She had already began to draw pictures of chocolate when she heard we were going to visit the place.Cant wait for our next trip there!

After chocolate room, we proceeded to Hot and Frozen, next door, for main course. We found pork and fish which is terribly rare here.Romain exclaimed BACON! when he saw the word on the menu,his eyes the size of spoons.He even pinched himself to ensure he wasnt dreaming. The guy’ s fucking funny lah, he went to Reliance Mart and bought a jar,which he called his “travel jar”. For puke and pish, he said,in case he couldnt find a toilet on the train/bus.We told him to use plastic bags and he said he was afraid they would have holes!It’s a valid logic that I cant argue against.

On this trip out,I saw a blind beggar, relatively well-clothed, wandering the streets.Indian traffic is crazy, there are autos, motorbikes, cars , cows and camels on the city streets all at the same time.There was a camel-drawn carriage carrying cabbages on it, our auto was SO close I swear I could reach for a cabbage if I wanted to.Crossing the hectic street is always a cheap thrill in itself,you feel the whoosh of cars, the cacaphony of honking horns,and clouds of billowing dust blurring your vision: they come at you all at once.After crossing Indian streets I realise having close encounters with death becomes an everyday thing not even worth talking about.It is with that awareness, that I become fascinated with this blind Indian man, who courageously takes his walking stick with a bell attached to it, and crosses traffic day to day, yet survives the hell of it all. What’s worse than crossing these streets, is crossing these streets blind.I truly take my hats off to him.

After that bried encounter with the beggar, it was back to the sleepy campus.I Romain and Marine sat in one auto.It was dark inside it felt like another world.The cold city wind brushed past our faces as our auto driver cruised along a straight road, we sat still as the city moved with all its life outside,people buying selling, consuming marketing, walking driving, engaged in the vibe.That moment in the auto I felt, was the perfect moment for a first kiss, a proposal, an arm around a friend’s shoulder, a very intimate movie-maker’s moment.If Venice has Gondolas, France has horse-drawn carriages,then Ahmedabad has autos for meringue couple dreams.

Ps. Nuria and I have just planned out first trip to Medawa and Udaipur…an 8 day trip for break. Looking forward to castles forts and lakes,scenery and good music bars.(The Pink Floyd cafe is highly recommended for good shit like Beatles and Jim Morrison.Have a hostel mate that worships “the doors”, her room is like her personal shrine for Jim Morrison)

Pray that we will be safe travelling as two girls,Nuria and I. (gosh, my mom wld flip if she ever knew i did this.)Pray that we will not get into any conflicts within these 8 days.

Besides that, the world’s looking up…and I am still expecting the unexpected.

 

Chilling out in the library now, with this old and cacaphanous keyboard…seiously, it sounds like a type writer.I just typed a sentence and the first three words JUST appeared.Like everything else here, even the computer is torturously slow.

The administration in MICA is not stellar, our timetables took weeks to process and we were referred from this person to that, like dialing a generic hotline and getting through “press 1 for.. press 2 for..” and finally with the last shard of patience left, you get to the operator. Realisation:Singaporeans are pampered with their efficiency.

Classes here are interesting though. We had lectures on music and film by guest faculty,learned guest faculty. We talked about music today: the blurry lines and various intepretations of what constitutes noise, what constitutes music, we talked about “world music” (think WOMAD) and how culture gets butchered in the process of trying to export it for a greater Western audience.

I thought of music and what kind of world it legitimises.Emo music legitimises self-indulgence,hip- hop glorifies the dirty riches, madonna puts awful tights back into fashion. what is satan today can be god tomorrow, as long as we find a culture to justify it.Aint this world a confusing place.So many things seem fluid and perspective-based, relativist nowadays: people search for meaning but allow their culture to change the VALUE of their meaning , which maybe is not meaning at all, if one feels judged for being any less or more.Music is both equally deep and superficial at the same time, and one of the most fascinating paradoxes I never think about.

OK being chased out by the bald librarian now,this com is only supposed to be for library use.But for the sake of satisfying conclusions:I like music. One day Ill try making make some.

 

dealing with superficialities: a slightly self-indulgent piece

Few things have engaged my mind since Ive came.

Coming to a new place,recognising the fact that I’ll live here for six months, is like being born again.I am born again (in a terribly cryptic sense), in a new environment where Ill need to learn to walk, eat, talk with these different people, in hope that I’ll learn how to laugh and cry with them soon.

It is very much like a baby does, all this “starting from square one”, picking life up from the basics, as they call it.

Needing to be brought around is not very different from mother changing your nappies.Everything is dependently simple, and these baby things frustrate my mind.

“What classes did you have today?”
…I’m four months and I learn how to walk.

“How long have you been at MICA?”
…I am two and I learn to pick up my fork.

“What places have you visited?”
….Two and a half, learning how to wear my socks.

And that is where conversation ends.Lovely superficial baby questions.
Life has barely begun.

People mollycuddle you because you are teensy weensy,cute, exotic and different, as an exhibit in a baby shower.We question and answer with too much earnesty to be believed.

I wish to grow up in the eyes of these people, these regulars who have been on the campus for years.I wish to be recognised as a mind that is complex and formed as an adult, sufficiently so, to pen what Ive written so far.

Engage me in complexities, stop being polite, at least hit me, or interest me, because I can take it.

OK,maybe its a mutual thing. I shall start being ugly and imperfect about things, for being nice, perfect and earnest brings us nowhere.

 

I sat at the canteen, had breakfast alone this morning. The rest were pretty much socked out from new year celebrations and unpacking their rooms last night.This is the first of the days that I’ve started doing things alone.

These morning moments spent having breakfast, were mine and mine alone.They sure were good to own.

There was an Indian guy sitting at the next table, a pretty well-built and good looking one, he looked like someone I could talk to.I contemplated joining him, but he seemed like he having a ME moment,absorbed in reading the paper and eating his butter toast.This must be one of the best times of the day for him, or anyone.

Not to interrupt, I picked another table, the one with “the Ahmedabad Times” laying on it. I read my paper, crunched into hot buttered toast and sipped my milky tea .I forked up my omelette in a slightly flippant manner,without regard for etiquette or people watching. I was absorbed in the Ahmedabad Times, evaluating this lead sentence or that, asking myself how I would grade it if I were my journalism teacher.Apart from the canteen man speaking an incomprehensible language across the phone, this felt just like home.(Funny how I am self-conscious enough to describe myself)

I think having breakfast while reading papers must be one of the most universal experiences across the world.Perhaps it is great to start the day by retreating, so I do not lose myself in the stresses and adventures that are to come.

Talking about adventures, we spent New Year’s Eve eating strange food in a traditional Gujarati restaurant. The restaurant was in a “mock village” setting,complete with straw huts, kerosene lamps, and camp fires. It felt very much like Haw Par Villa, or Sentosa, these places made to replicate authentic culture for tourists.I am not a big one for these touristy commercial ploys, but it is only correct to appreciate our hosts’ effort in taking us there.

And this is how the mock rural looked like:Soft and large beds around crackling fires, the perfect excuse for people to lounge and talk in the soft light of glowing ambers as the world goes by.Along with that,village music, the rise and fall of tabla drum beats matched with wind instruments.People danced along to the distinct tribal sound,hands in the air, feet jumping, heads shaking.Do what you will, this is a celebration of life.

There was no booze, no loud techno bass, nothing of that sort, anyhow we still got high. Quite very high, actually.

In a crazy moment, I went onstage and requested to play the tablas(Indian drums). And hey hey, Im a tourist:they couldnt refuse.So started the rhythm divine, and what I thought was a decent attempt of mine to blend into the soundscape.

After the dizzying performance onstage, these two Indian girls came up to me. With every bit of struggling English theycould muster, they told me that I had a “very good spirit”, that I was a “happy person” . It’s heart stopping to have people tell you what they think of you:their words were appreciated more than they wld ever know.

Following that, we went to the musuem at the back of the mock village and saw all these Indian artifacts and inventions.Some were fascinating,others hilarious, mostly things I would never think of. There was this metal cup with a transparent base, people used it when playing cards. So you pretend to drink from it, when you are actually looking through the base to see the other player’s hand.Another was a rolling pin, with a bell in its drum, so it tinkles while rolling dough.It’s actually a rolling-pin-cum-rattle: so mothers can cook dinner and pacify their kids all at the same time—TADA!And there are dumbells that you stand upright to rest your knees on in case you felt tired sitting cross-legged. Geez, the things people do.

The musuem trip had to end so we travelled back to campus where we ushered in New Year having Chai at Chota: the mid-night cafe in sch. Fireworks happened in a distance,noisy parties happened everywhere round campus.Sleeping was a problem, but a good problem,at least this campus isnt a boring one.(but Im off to a slow start, havent started making random friends yet)

On a more personal note,I bought myself a ring for 2008.An eclectic ring with an electric blue stone on it.Ive never accessorised, was always a minimalist.Ive never bothered very much with looks, or taking care of myself. Looking back at 2007,I think I spent too much time caring about other people’s affairs, I NEED to take care of myself.

Someone once commented that I was fearless, but I think Im more reckless than anything. Did some good reckless things in 07.JY actually told me to “jie1 shen1 zi4 ai4″ (be pure and love yourself) which will probably be my guiding light for 2008.I can live as a reckless individual without attachments, life is much easier and more enjoyable that way.But perhaps people can only live that way when they have nothing to lose.And having something to lose is always a great thing, at least you’ve cared enough about something good solid and worthy of keeps in your life.

So as the Lord has shown me, Ive got lots to lose.I don’t live in the fear of losing what Ive been blessed with, but I want to live 2008 knowing that my life is bought with a price, that I always have loved ones rooting for me.

It’s quite a big decision to leave my jaded self behind, for more virtuous aspirations.Cynicism, style, pretension,numbness: all of this shall be kept in the attic for they are the old and outgrown garments that I hid beneath.

I throw my arms open to life again, trusting, only trusting it will bring gifts to a simple spirit.

( I am reading this two weeks later. and I absolutely cant stand the melodramatic ending. see maybe that’s what I felt at that time,so let’s give a little respect to that moment shall we? After severe contemplation I decide not to change it.)

 

genius is as genius does.

This post has been floating around in my head for a long time.I have learnt to appreciate geniuses, and they are very much acquired taste.

I have never thought of myself as genius, and I don’t think I will ever be. Have been watching a lot of “My Brilliant Brain” before I left for India though.Found out that one common thread among geniuses: they tend to be weird people, socially handicapped (in a small ways or larger ones), and not very good in dealing with relationships.

Of course,that’s not true of all geniuses, there are some that are blessed in both IQ and EQ. Though geniuses know a lot, they seem to spend more time with things, rather than people. They seem to love to know more about things, theories, and perhaps perceive the world in a theoretical way where everything can be owned with the mind.

I have never mixed much with these people, been traditionally attracted to socially effervescent characters.But that day when I was leaving for India,I was taking stock of all my relationships, I suddenly felt very guilty, like I havent been enough of a friend to Cassandra.Like Ive missed her out even though she was written into my life. I havent listened or known, though I had so many opportunities to, I haven’t loved, realised or understood, or let this person add to my perspective.

So I called Cassandra and we had a three part conversation, each lasting an hour. I think she is one of the smartest persons I’ve ever met, and definitely one to change my life, to realise how small I am.

Cassandra’s drawings have always been passionate, obsessive, intense ,perhaps evolving from a chock-a-bloc of emotions and a recognition of the fallenness in human nature.I’ve always admired artists and the time they spend to express their imagination, believing in their own worlds and not others. During our conversation, Cassandra told me of storylines for graphic novels, did an extensive commentary on transformers, we talked about Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, King Lear,Hamlet, Taming of the Shrew, Othello, she seemed to be able to quote something from everything.(and I cant confirm what she was quoting was true or not) We talked about Helena Bonham Carter, Tim Burton and many other things I did not know about, many other things which I thought would not matter to my life in a practical sense.

But I am truly in awe of the depth and breadth of a genius’ mind.Of course, Cassandra does not speak in a very “attractive” manner so to speak, there is a “marked verbosity” in her speech, perhaps a lack of what I call “the sense of others”.There are many times in our conversation where I got lost, simply cos she was going too fast, or my mind was too retarded to follow up.

So to free myself of all distractions, I closed my eyes and listened to her on the phone.I think these were some of the best moments of my life, when I was transported to a “universe” that was not my own and truly free to imagine or feel someone else’s world. Some of us, our “worlds”, perspectives are very much rooted in reality and day to day interactions, while others are totally inventive.They have worlds of their own, like Middle Earth, like Harry Porter, like Sandman and all the Neil Gaiman stuff, and this is not the common world that other people can easily understand.Nonetheless, it is beautiful.

I respect Cassandra and people like that. Because my imagination is dull next to theirs. When I closed my eyes to listen, I felt small, very small in Cassandra’s world, almost as someone who would not matter, because I didn’t have all that mattered: which is IMAGINATION. Reality has dulled it, I am boxed because I have obligations to maintain, ties to uphold, people to love: all these being weights to hold me down, in good ways or bad.

One thing though: geniuses are passionate, that’s what they are. They pursue what they want doggedly, without being afraid of opportunity costs: they do whatever it takes because they have a vision of what they want it to be.

I don’t know. I am still contemplating my way in that. I think it is beautiful that people can be so passionate about somethings. As we grow up and meet with failures, it is easy to be ambivalent, to withdraw from injecting so much faith or expectation into things, for fear of failing.But passion carries a long way and eliminates those factors.It is something I desire, something I truly want for myself.

But yet again, putting all your eggs in one basket: there must be some space for disappointment.In the intense pursuit for their worlds, there must be a lot of OTHER things they must be missing out on.

People like Cassandra,people so different from me have changed my life and broadened my perspective.But there is one thing I believe in: there is a common denominator in man, we want the same things when the day is done.That is the essence I am looking for in all my interactions with people: the one same humanness that exists in each of us within the shell of different-ness.

And so genius is as genius does.I am in love with the breadth and the depth of their minds: I think it is a wonderous place awaiting to be explored.