Novel practices

Footwear in my dreams,  seeds and stems on my couch, news on TV but what's on my boyish mind? I scratch my head a few times and take deep breaths. Slow down, heart. Death by cardiac arrest, age 23? I should think not.

Thought after thought unravels the day that was. Last night I got back from work and took a small walk through town to pick up a few things I had been putting off. The sea breeze laden air is heavy as I walk through the placid moisture of the air and pass sparse familiar faces. The town shuts down lazily early. I quicken my pace as I pass people and slow down on an empty stretches of  large pattered footpath. Reaching home, it was  a most definitive time to unwind all right. Yes, like those wind-up dolls. Yes, dolls. I figure this is the evening to get done with pending conversations with people. So I get them done with.

Showtime.

Inhale at contraction. 

Look at myself.

Bodies are puppet bags given to the mind.
Must intervene with subconscious habit formation to speed up brain activity. In fact, must eff with it!
You effing idiot. Love? Try PMS. And you're just fat

No. I concentrate. The Serpent soon rises. Meanders above my eyes as we sway. Scares me. But then,

There's really nothing to lose.

Detach. Focus and breathe. Blessed by the presence of my personal choice of elemental magnetism, the sea, nothing can go wrong. Nothing ever did. I start because it's time. I start because it fits. Optimum alignment, did I say?

Exhale at expansion.

Shot in the dark

"You think the world revolves around you!"

Ok, statement made. This time I don't even remember by who, but it's so iterated that all I remember is recognition snaking it's way forth the moment it was verbalised. By whoever the fuck.

"I am a nice person." Hah, I can't say that straight without smiling. Can't write that without smiling! "I swear, I am..."

Someone makes me sit and tells me how to breathe so that I burn lesser oxygen, for meditational purposes, of course, yas. Another makes me sit and tells me how I ought to understand more about cerebro-spinal fuckery (Laxative So Delightful) from her. What?

I want to shed it all. Fling away my weapons, my walls, my books, rubbish:people, some clothes maybe, technology, the matrix, understood truths. But everyday, my Quest is compromised, at first by the bastard alarm clock and subsequently by the endless (role)players which enter and leave my body at astonishing speeds. Night and day, night and day, night and day, I strive unique thought and superiority. Oh, I'm growing old and tired. Yes, I should give up. But hey, at times I do feel so refreshed, I tells ya. Motifuckingvated to fuck around further. By, and for, the giant toy store I wander through, innocent Alice-back at first, but furtively tumbling into the darn hole behind the curtain at the back end (of the store). Oh, you know there's no going back from that one. 

Expansion? Tell me how. Should I push out a third eye from a mental vagina? Should I stare at myself *astral top shot* and confirm how the world fucking does revolve around me?

Yeah, so...
Take a walk, baby, and just keep nodding, yo.

Once upon a painted ocean

I open the balcony door of my new house and the sea breeze wafts in, much welcome. My Buddhist prayer flags flutter continuously, a little stained from the leakage in one box during the shift but still colourful and graceful enough to redecorate my premises with. I remember where I bought them. At the corner off Brigade Road, opposite HM Towers at the Tibetan shop, after a combo meal at Indiana's and some rapid shopping at the adjacent cotton expo.

Yeah, I do miss it. I miss the big trees, the sunny winter sky, the pavements, parks, the bright, alluring lights of my beloved (Brigade road), the haggling with autowalas (atleast they bothered to have a meter), my office, the breakfasts (whenever I woke up on time or hadn't slept the night before), brunches, lunches and dinners. I miss going out for beer in the day time, the wind and sun making me feel like a baked bread, the kind of smell that hovers in the air when you pass a good ol' bakery. Five years in one city, and here I am, sitting in my new office in a new city, reliving all of it, just for a moment.

You can only guess how much I miss the pubs. My evenings occupied with meeting different rounds of friends (although I had my steady partners, you know who you are) and 'downing' the beers, one mug after another, maybe a shot or a few whiskys too, and then some more beer, smokes of course, often the illegal kind, and maaaaybe some fries to go with it. Or fried bacon, if at Pecos.

I don't miss college much, considering that I was never such a regular. I don't miss the formalities of it all, the begging and pleading for attendance. I miss a few of the good times, a few teachers, although even then, much of my memorable moments were outside, probably in my first PG, or the terrace house we shared. I remember evenings when we used to sit on the terrace with pillows and a mat, a little buzzed, or the marathon Old Monk-One Tree Hill sessions, the fights, girl issues. Bangalore was new then, and there was so much to discover. I remember spending a lot of time with one person but neither him or me are the same anymore.

My orange house. I was free. I was myself. I was somewhat unstoppable and yes, I've had a great run. Customised, it was my shelter, my refuge and savior, shaping me, everyday that I learnt to do it all on my own. I've thrown up in some unspeakable places in that house, broken perfectly harmless things in anger, cried my heart out over spilt maggi and kept dogs, five of the best, who tattered the place into even more of an identity for me. I know each stain, every crack, chip, scratching. I know the secret words penciled into the walls. The leakages and the spot to place the mug when the roof leaks. The sunny terrace where I played with all of the dogs, cleaned their poop, tottered about on the terrace ledges, some nights. Uncle has been kind.

I'm not a person too attached to anyone else. At least, I thought so. But I find myself aching for those people that I saw everyday. I want to trace back all those evenings, doing nothing. Don't smoke the J without me, don't go to for 'a couple of drinks' without me, don't make more friends, don't tell anyone else what's bothering you, don't plan road trips, don't buy new shoes, don't make my favourite dinner, don't go on dates, don't buy beer and go to someone else's house. Stop at number 42, Benson Town, and head straight down from the gate, white door. I'll open it, maybe a dog will rush out. And you can come share my slice of seclusion. Sometimes, the knocks on the door were unwanted. I didn't want to but I still let in some people who slowly made their way through my unpredictable moods, and surviving that, my ashtray of a heart. Friends, and slightly more intimate friends, hats off to you guys for bearing up with me. I still don't know why I am like this. But if you know me, you should know that only sometimes do I regret it!

Few months ago, I thought I knew what I wanted. Maybe I didn't. And maybe I still don't. I uprooted myself off the complacency I built around me and arrived in a seemingly quieter place, starting all sorts of new things for no reason. I wanted to be so careless about everything, weight-free, but some of these memories smile up at me from the bottom of the pool of timepassedby, while unpacking all the useless bits of Bangalore I've brought here, and they don't let me go, some evenings. 

It's not going to be back. We've moved on and along with the pace of things around us. It doesn't take me more than half a day to get over anything and like most of timepassedby, it may have all been a gigantic mirage. But I carry with me totems of small kinds, swaying the mind back to breezy days when we shared a smoke, a laugh, a hearty bitch about life, a house, a holiday, a beer, an auto somewhere or the other, and you know it's true, you don't forget.

Re-purposed

Fiasco a la ferris wheel

Don't look down. Just don't.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.


ONCE MORE!

Pachydermal temple in Pondicherry town

The proportion of  her eye in no way befits her body. She moves to and fro, restless on that make-shift plank of sturdy wood below, her stage. It's loud around her and she makes no sound. She is tame now, not among her herd, but cast in the role of Tributary of the Righteous. Years of training and the pokes of the sharp end of that wretched stick teach her to keep her calm, she can't regress now, the Man knows her. And she knows too well, the coins go to That One, the fruits to herself, and the tidbits to the Guy Behind. People come in welcomed throngs, especially on the weekends- free-time for the religious, with their ever-so-intoxicated ritual fervour. She dutifully sways her trunk around their heads, twenty, thirty, forty times a minute. They have been blessed now, by the female incarnation of the god of that temple. She isn't bound like a zoo animal because instead of chains, there are payals on her front feet. Motifs on her forehead, around her ears and stretching to her back. She is pretty and clean, not too big a size for the crowd. She is no beast, but a living temple deity. She doesn't scare, for she is sacred. Her small eyes watch the crowd, discern which one comes next, who carries what in their hands, who searches for the blessing. Mid-way, she sneezes once, emitting a splash of slime and the crowd jumps back. In disgust now? They move closer, daring each other to touch her first. They are safe from her, she can't do much under their watchful eyes, prying eyes, intrigued eyes, fascinated, condescending. Her own never settle, but keep roving, like she might be blind. Once blessed, the crowd around her moves on, to the sellers of many things devotional, commercial and artificial. She stands there the whole day, and weeks and months, for everyone loves her. The kids run about, trying to evade her trunk but then are forced by parents to hold still until she is done. She stands, Lakshmi, on the sturdy wooden plank, name card in place, garland on neck, payals on feet, stump-tusked, trunk swaying, feet roving, eyes...

She stands there the whole day. And everyone loves her. 

Chromosomal hormonal

Things have gotten closer to the sun and I've done things in small doses. So don't think that I'm pushing you away when you're the one that I've kept closest.

Enter sardonic now.