For the Public By the Public

13:18 pm

Things are off to a start but I won't use an adjective to describe what kind of start it was: bumpy to some is adventurous to the rest. So I'll stick to just calling it a start.

I need to go buy vegetables or fruits. My insides aren't what they used to be in my 30s. They demand attention as if they are born again as children. That doesn't mean I want to be a child again.

That bit is done, dusted, feared, and packed and kept in the attic...

17:36 pm

It's cloudy here; with a whiff of the monsoon gathering somewhere across the horizon. The traffic insists on being heard through my earphones--something I quite dislike about it. It's as if it insists on getting your attention even when your attention doesn't want to have anything to do with it.

I'm looking around the room. Evidence of my projects - half done or never taken off - recline against the wall and sink into the floor for a nap. 

A nap! i'll go take a nap right now. 

23:54 hrs

There's a choir of dogs somewhere down the road that's preparing itself for some sort of gala event. I don't quite know the exact details though - of the event that is. Probably the event is already underway! The melody they've chosen sounds pretty much like one emerging from under the hood of a very cranky car: It's in no mood to do anything apart from its job but even that it can't do well.

So, the melody just plods one. And I think it's losing steam as I write this. Well, it helps that it's begun to rain as well. I don't quite like the monsoons here. They are a recipe for some magnificent mess! And I have enough of it to bother about. anyway. 

Well, if I weren't too shy, I wouldn't have resorted to tell you what's happening around me. But I am and so, if you can find a part of me within those paras above, you have a gift. :-) 

22:44

Were I to describe the state of my work desk, the picture you'd sketch in your head would not be the complicatedness of a Van Gogh! It would be complicated but in a very ordinary, has-plans-to-do-things-but-has-not-done-anything-yet way!

I have a pack of visiting cards sitting to my right. They've been there - right there! - for nearly a week now. I haven't used them nor have I any events to attend. And yet, they sit there as if I'm about to take them along. 

Well, what do you see in me buried in all that?...

23:35

Some people, really. I wish I had the ability to haul them into a room and play their own games back at them! As if life isn't enough of a game to dodge, they decide to add to the whole rigmarole! I have never quite understood why people behave so. Is it that their lonely and game playing ensures company for a fixed period of time? Or is it that they haven't ever managed to find other ways to have human interaction? Come to think of it, if I am asking these questions, what does have to say of me? That I cannot make space for another alternative opinion about them? Or that I'm actually playing into their hands and giving them the attention they're hankering for?

Well, human nature being what it is, I doubt I'll ever know.... for sure. 

14:18

I have to admit I can be very fragile. I fall and break like glass--my fall etched in the screeching of the splinters crashing down all over and around me. And I'm just one of several human beings who might be feeling so. 

And it's okay, really. Being fragile is not a prison sentence to being humiliated. It's a gift. For only when you're fragile can you understand the delicate tender sensitive beings around you. 

01:19

Why are we here?

is not a question I stay on for more than a minute. The last time I did that, I spent weeks wrapped in blankets of words that framed the most frightening portrait I ever came across: it was a portrait of nothing. White dominated the canvas and it would not allow any colour to drop on it for relief. 

I prefer to run away into the warmth of colour these days: clutching umbrellas that keep the insisting downpour away from me lest it remind me I haven't yet found the answer to that question...

18:08 hours

I walked a lot today. I walked about in my room wondering whether going out would be a good idea after all. 

The aged air that floated around the window curtains seemed pretty familiar-like people you’ve known for a while. People whom you don’t need to talk to necessarily. People who’ll understand the silence and won’t break it to calm the consequent awkwardness that sets in when one’s a stranger in a conversation. 

So, as you can see I had every reason to stay and not violate the equilibrium of particles swimming around me.

And yet, I did. 

18:38 hours

There's a roll of a mattress standing in a corner of my room. It's been there for quite a while. Has seen me fall sick, cough through my recovery, and slither around pretending to be okay. 

It has also seen Mother come in and out of the room and pray in front of the pictures she's pasted on the cupboard.

And Mother and I both promised to cover it with a plastic contraption of some sort. But neither of us seem ***-bent on making that happen. Partly because neither of us have been able to move our lives close to the direction in which we want it to face. Well, we have--to a certain extent but the extent is barely noticeable.

I can't do anything about it when it comes to Mother's life. But I can certainly do something about mine. And I should.

It's just that I... am afraid and thrilled simultaneously... of change.