Status quo

I haven't been doing much lately, in terms of productivity.
But that doesn't mean anything, because there's always something on in my head.
Either planning, retracing, dreaming, procrastinating.
I have a lot going on, just nothing to show for it, yet.
But if you believe me and take my word for it, I might tell you what it is.

That's kind of the basis of everything to me right now. Me getting by on my own word. Those castles in my head that get visitors, whenever I see that someone wants to hear me out. But I do spend time mapping it all out. Replaying something or imagining something- endlessly in those rooms. I've found that I am unable to have long conversations with anyone because I lose interest while they are talking and find myself roaming around those large, airy rooms of my own. And when it's time for my response, I try not to say the first thing that comes into my mind.

I probably can't stop talking about myself. It's really surprising that when I'm in the company of some specific people, I don't. Does that make me a total hypocrite? Because I probably would like to say something or ask some questions that bubble up inside me and mostly have to do with myself. Is that cowardly? Or is it just something to do with my equation with them?

So, these rooms are large. Pretty well organised. Designed. Some of them are visited way more than the others. And I really think one of them just contains all the things I can't have. One for sure is filled with all the ways I can be the boss of everything. One is all the raison d'etres I have ever felt.

 Do I have castle-to-castle rivalry? Well, yes. Favouritism.

Maybe if it wasn't for my recent lack of productivity, I might have had to keep dousing raging flames in one chamber and then the next. I've had warped visions in some, hazy and smoke-filled, confused. Some with violent flood, damage and destruction. Some morbid with ugly, wild, gesticulating projections on every side, closing in every time I walk in. Some plain painful. Some so intensely beautiful and musical that they end up repressed and locked for fear of losing them.

So it's really nice to be able to enjoy all of this at a simmering temperature. That really sounds a lot like coming-of-age to me. I understand now what it means to be aware of your own self, no matter what ecstatic or pitiable state it may be in. The rooms are no longer random, but chosen, deliberated and necessary. The frequency of their operation is not only emitted but also absorbed. The time taken to understand this is perhaps the most crucial absorption of all. And that each time they are occupied by a conscious me, they evolve.

Nothing beats the human spirit more than change. It's the one unstoppable force, this linear nature of time. And no one can put any numbers on that. No one can read these hopeless numbers.

It's infinitive then, my lack of productivity.  I can call it an imperative journey, an astral must-do, if you ever want to hover above the grind of institutionalized productivity.

Thoughts?  

Follicular - The movie

An AQUEOUS HUMOUR production

FOLLICULAR is a documentary film about the ‘all types that make the world’. In cities and towns where appearances, fashion forwardness, conformity, or the lack of which, marks popular judgement and social constructs, Follicular is an independent film that takes a look at the relative individuality of people.

We introduce the film through commonplace sights and sounds- everyday instances that shape our public personality and perception. The crew explores people of different ages, backgrounds and cultures, with very different ideologies and self-concepts. This is apparent in the three different segments of the film. Follicular is a probe into the consciousness of individuals through a basic physical manifestation, hair. Dressed up, dressed down, non-existent or in irreconcilable conditions, it documents an uncanny exploration of this physical attribute and its internalization.

Follicular is the maiden project of Aqueous Humour productions. On sultry and humid home-town afternoons with friends and a pack of cigarettes, the mind tends to wander around people, conversations, impressions and ideas. Then one tends to make a movie.

-June 2013

Here's also a rough, RANDOM, unfinished trailer of the film, with no subtitles, bad quality sound and confusing edit, which does no justice to its content whatsoever. Still, since we've got no better option at the moment and are very lazy to resume work on this project, watch:

Also, to redeem ourselves, here's a clip of the introduction/opening of the film. May be equally confusing without the remaining the 47 mins of the film, but what the hell. Excuse low upload quality. I've had to reduce from 13.9gb to 40mb!

Music of Follicular by Peter Cat Recording co.

The reason the entire movie isn't online is because last year we had decided to send it out to the film festival circuits once it was complete. Well, it's still not complete. We need to put in one more little clip somewhere in between, subtitle the whole movie, get it approved by the censor board and cut a good trailer, unlike the earlier one. That's a lot of work. And we be lazy. And distracted. And frustrated that we can't get this done with. Vicious loop. All there on a post-it that I look at everyday. 

Ghosts

'Leave that one on', I said, just in time.

Your fingers left the switch. The lamp glowed. Soft, warm and swaying slightly.
As if it were me.

Vitreous

With the moonlight to guide you, feel the joy of being alive. 

The day that you stop running is the day that you arrive.

The night that you got locked in was the time to decide. 

Stop chasing shadows, just enjoy the ride. 

-Enjoy the ride, Morcheeba

22nd Jan 2014-8:59 p.m.

I wish I could pause my mind.

I wish for a moment, I could tell someone, anyone, exactly how I feel. Spill all on a bare canvas, a blank page, soak it drunk in the ink of my thoughts. I am not supposed to repress and bear down this way. At least, let me make the smallest of gesture, an minute exhibit, a glance, a touch, of expression. How I find myself locked within infinite walls and boundaries of conduct and deliberation. Am I going to end up in some sort of mind prison, alone, starving? No, I'm already there. It's a very strange new territory, familiar only at rare times but still so distant and alien. Uncomfortable. Annihilating. Exhausting. Starving. Saddening. Aching. Draining.

Hopeless. 

Midnight insight

Let these words speak.

Let our eyes never meet

cause even if you love me,

what would the people think?

What would they do to you?

They'll just keep fighting

and I'll keep writing, to you.

Even though I fly through the smoke,

doesn't mean I made the flare.

I might have fire in my throat,

doesn't mean I made the flare. 

-Dragon

by Breathe Owl Breathe

Rogue

The winter that I had been waiting for has come and gone. But I'm still
here, trapped inside the ice cube that I slide into my tall glass of amber warmth. I'm covered in cuts and bruises, wounds and injuries of many blows that I delivered to myself lately. I am a shape unhappy with myself, twisting wavy strands of my short hair around a lot after a hot bath to make me feel a little more presentable to myself. I wake up feeling drowsy, from heavy dreams and heavier eyelids, to go about a day that has little to reveal itself for me. When I think about how I have reached here, it all melts into a hazy and fragmented ether. It seems I have lived many lives already and that I'm newborn now, taking shaky steps for the first time with no particular direction in mind. Everyday, I see at least one thing that inspires me, and it may as well be something very small but it's there. It also leaves just as soon as it had come. I've already allowed myself too far into a realm so obscure that I cannot withdraw without some awful tremors.

I've realized that over the last decade or so, my perspective on my self and my reality have changed many times. It's hard to admit that I feel like I have regressed. When I read things that I had written earlier, maybe a few years ago, I am jealous of my old self. How dulling it is to find that I have not moved higher, better. Somewhere, my ego and defiance, faint glimmers of hope, show themselves to me and I like to dwell on them before moving on to another cigarette. More than ever, music has become my constant companion. Just today, I thought about how I used to relish, and really relish, being by myself most evenings. Now I make desperate attempts, and loop playlists, so that the silence doesn't consume me and my thoughts, and possible loneliness. It really is the kind of winter that I wanted to share with somebody. And sure enough, I did find myself warm in the glow of a secret happiness. But just as it started getting comfortable, it was asked to vacate. The madness of contemplation overdid itself.

I'm finally 25 years old. I realize that there's surely a long way to go, maybe in this exact manner, and maybe not. I'm done dealing with juvenile issues like finding my "identity", purpose, and jargon like that. I feel a temporal complacence that is extinguishing what was left of any burning passion and drive to be constructive. I am the looper. I am the bitter-sweet hangover of a beautiful evening, even if for the wrong reasons. I am the drunk call you can count on to pick up the phone. I am an ugly remnant of what used to be a quirky, laughing, predictably tragic entity.

The possibilities of growth are endless. Like an emotional decision taken in haste, spouting off in mad directions, where an infinite chance to seize what ought to be rightfully yours beckons. The sky is clear tonight and the moon almost full. I however, am emphasizing on a zero-content, chock full of bullshit conundrum. An unhealthy type of nothingness. It's the strangest thing you can find your self at- places that you didn't know existed within you, happy places, and yet, a dreary misery over the mess you have made out of it. These cuts and bruises on my body are but reminders that I have been sliding, slipping, clumsily teetering my way through what is NOT the worst and lowest point of my life. Too often I find myself preaching words of advice with such a forceful confidence that even I am alarmed by my vehemence. These words are, of course, what I myself need to hear most. Not that the boomerang has returned back to me. I strap on my jacket of denial and turn face the other way.

Chances are, I am an addict. To nothing in particular, yet certain patterns jump out at me. I tried to psychoanalyze what latent troublesome bit of my past is manifesting itself in me right now. Failed. There is  nothing except for a taste for indulgence that I have acquired. An itch that i just have to scratch. Trouble that I just have to create. Work opportunities that I just have to ignore. A song that I just have to listen to. So indulgent that the opulence of it all disgusts me in return. Friends and acquaintances appear to have evolved, some of which I like, some I look at with mock-interest.  No one seems to be thoroughly disapproving of me and I wonder if anyone, anybody really knows me at all. And where do I begin, if I want to unwrap myself to somebody, without coming across as a half-baked solicitor of poor judgement?

It's all easy to say that I need to take one day at a time. One simple, looped day. One entirely fluctuating, mood-driven, unproductive, cold winter's day. Entirely spent in the hopeless pursuit of unfruitful ventures, rhetorical assurances, meaningless interactions, egotist pride. The magnetic romantism of this type of life is very strong to a mind as fickle as mine right now. There have been choices made that bear testimony that I have absolutely no logical reasoning to my behavior/personality/opinions. But who runs after logic in cases like these? Don't answer that.

That ice-cube that I mentioned will probably melt one day. And I will see that all is fluid around me. Simply water that takes the shape of whatever it is contained in. And the cyclical nature of my days will take shape into a consolidated, meaningful, well-reasoned existence. Healthy, happy, loving, understanding, well-behaved existence. Might even look good on me.

The buildings ran amok and people froze

A few minutes ago, I lit my first joint in weeks. A friend left me some, more for his safe-keeping than my consumption and I rolled one out of boredom and an acute need to break the stagnation that is my every evening nowadays. I went out to the balcony of my room and kept out of the eye of my mother’s driver. Lit it. Waited. The lampshade hanging in my room casts a diffused glow into the balcony. It looks pretty. Below, the dark of the children’s park next to our house is hollow black. My eyes don’t see very clearly anyway and I can’t make out anything in the dark shapes below. All I can make out is the streetlight some distance away and a car or bike passing in the road. In the dark, all that moves is their light.

The buildings don’t move. They never ever move. In the darkness, they look more patient than ever, waiting only for people to animate them. The ones who built them. I thought about a story and here I am writing it. The problem, the one that’s really biting me, is that I can’t thread it together for nuts. I have been alternating today between mild love-type exhilaration and uncontrolled laughter and a dull sword-over-my-frustrated-head kind of moments. And wondering if I would black out after eating the humongous monster aloo chaat made by this guy in the marketplace earlier today, i.e., wondering if the unexpectedness of the giant gut-buster would cause a serious alteration to my physiology. My playlist goes on and on and on. I went to the riverside today. The river is calmer than the sea and I am dreadfully out of practice (writing). Kites and crows fought for scraps of dead fish strewn around the sands, while a deadly sausage-fest style party of about 200 boys danced (?) in the restaurant-ship close by, to Chikni Chameli that played real, REAL loud. The Kites won the fight easily (boy, they are huge; wingspan, large) and scattered the smaller scavengers who waited their feeding turn.

Me VS giant Gut-Buster

I am just a little buzzed. December is cold in Assam and my hands and feet feel numb. Apparently, it gets colder next month. I can’t wait. For a long time, I have been thinking and thinking of how this is my first proper winter at home after years. I am completely confused over what to do about it. Eg. Bonfire, morning walks, work, live life to the fullest, etc. Everyone keeps telling me that I do nothing. Day in, day out. Every day that I have moved back home. And I know it to be true. I am so bad at freelancing and setting any rules or boundaries for myself. But I don’t really want to rant about it here again.

So my new rant will take on a more conceived form. Do I mean controlled? Maybe. Or maybe I mean concentrated. Maybe. Since I can’t and won’t post my exact thoughts on to the internet, maybe I can think of some metaphors. Damn. Back to Plath again (Metaphor is a poem by her about pregnancy). She is so scary. She is so subtle-ly scary. You just don’t realize when she slips you a good, solid one that hits you right on the top of your brain, a resounding, light, but well-placed smacker. Some pages left to finish her novel. I’ve abandoned it in its most terrifying chapters. Sylvia has woken up in an asylum of sorts. Face is different colours. Hair in short tufts. Under electric-shock treatment, etc. Scary stuff. And so wonderfully metamorphed (tisa word) from the initial opening pages of a thinking-girl’s Sex in the City style New York.

Flash news: Gut-Buster has got me. Am I stoned, cold or sick? Can’t tell because I feel fine but keep imagining/noticing my eyes darting way too much as I type this. But while I was in the loo, I thought I looked fine. Maybe it’s a good idea to fall sick for a few days. Then I can bypass the whole bling ka-ching Xmas/New year’s hype.

Idiot. Not escapist at all.

I think now I shall write a bit about my confrontational issues.

I cannot confront.

On a personal level. Anything. Anybody. Myself.  It gets a bit too much and was pointed out to me today. I kind of knew this in parts, but today, friend said it’s been a problem with me. I think she said it from experience. And that makes it true. And if it is true, then I have a serious problem that I have to do something about because it may be a root cause of my frustrated sedentary life. Friend (as friends do) gave me exact advice on what to do to counter the confront-issue, the execution of which is being currently delayed on my part. More on that later. It’s a vicious loop.

Gut-Buster has shattered my illusion about having a tough, Indian stomach. I have prided myself on it, many a time, eating many a junk in copious quantities. Pride, pride, pride. Shame on me. Where does it leave me in the end? Wondering if the maker of the GB knew what his lovely, exotic, 120 bucker concoction would be doing to me. He had insisted that I stand next to his chaat-chariot and eat it. He even PACKED some extra for us before we left. It was ditched at the earliest convenience. 

Pride. Another deadly transgression. Is it not a fine line we tread between actual egotist pride and a self-preservation purposed defence mechanism? I think it is. But how do you know all the time that which is which? You don’t. And hence, the fine line, as always, is blurred.

Since I am sort of spilling all, might as well write about the puppy thing. Looking at the new puppy, I wonder with what ease people tell you that a young dog will get used to anything, eg., sleeping at a certain place, toilet-training, whatever else. My point is that puppies are expected to adapt to given circumstance, enthusiastically learn their manners and not really question. This they do. And isn’t this very doggy-attribute the hallmark trait of the evolution of the human kind? Adaptation. Human ability to accommodate, progress, develop, face odds, eras, disasters, dictators, diseases, Justin Bieber (LOL)? Then aren’t we all feeling a little too smug about being the “masters” of creatures whose very characteristics we mirror so discreetly?

Who will learn cursive anymore? Who will take out a notebook and (fountain) pen down daily expenses? Who will make dog ears in books? In some future, I may well be so accustomed to technology that I find it easier. It’s with a painful ache towards analog that I think I may ditch it someday and not care anymore. Digitisation brings us all a futile step closer to the far more superior alien life that we descend from and I just pulled a below-the-belt one. Futile only because us mixed-humans are stupid. Attention spans are extinguishing. There is no privacy left un-invaded. Weed is illegal. Gay sex too.

I cannot think of what to write about anymore. But I am happy about writing a little today. Sad that it’s about to end right now. But let this be recorded as a beep/dot/jolt in the recently-so-symmetrical line of my evenings’ life-support system. One small step for me, a giant leap for... Jalebi. The Day the Buildings Ran Amok and the People Froze.

And beeps are important. ;)

Jalebi at work