Would you let me be your pillow

If I promised never to betray

Every drop that ever wet me

Every dream you let slip away

There will be days...

There will be days when both yes and no will be equally wrong. When what you choose affects not just you but a lot more. On days like that, breathe. Remember the little girl who wrote letters to God. She is still in there somewhere. Find her. Let her tell you who you are and who you ought to be. She knows.

There will be days when the injustice around you will numb you down and make you feel vulnerable and powerless. When all you'd want to do is cry out loud. Do. Allow the grief and the nonsense of it all to wash you down. But remember to wipe your tears to a day that is a tad brighter. Do what you can to make it happen.

There will be days when it will be hard to rise. When the prospects of the day ahead would be daunting, and the comfort of warmth and inaction tempting. Sometimes, rest. Slow down in the swirl of your coffee and indulge in the familiarity of a book. Turn up the classical music and soak in a hot tub. Let the good things heal you. Eat. Replenish what has been lost. Call a friend. Go to a cafe with the book. Stay. As long as you want. Leave behind a note of thanks.

There will be days when the past will overpower you. When the bitter memories will trouble and the happy ones will hurt. When a song or a smell will take you some place else. Some place sinister. On days like that, let them. Watch the replay. Laugh. Cry. But remember to get on with the present when the play is over. Like any performance, there'd be lessons. Take them, and move on. There's something shinier, prettier, happier awaiting you today.

Rant

I do not look at the world the same way after 1984. The book has awakened in me something basic but something that I have been conditioned to ridicule and suppress. 

I had a short talk with X yesterday, and we talked very interesting marketing. And he mentioned, in passing, the differences between the nature of the markets in India and China. Nothing new. Perhaps it was the way he said it, the terms he used. We all know India is a difficult market, and that we tend to prefer a cheaper product even if it is of inferior quality. The new China, on the other hand, is very brand conscious. In his words, some of them, would cut down on meals to buy a brand they covet. So, he talked about some super elite products. We'd raise the price, he said. And we'd limit the volume. That way, the brand becomes more covetable, elusive, elite. Interesting as the whole interaction was, there was something sinister about the examples. For a fleeting second, I saw him as this enormous talent unaware of his own role in this unnatural thought driven by greed that is gripping the world and slowly strangling out of it of all that should be natural and easy and free. 

Capitalism is this giant ever-growing organism that has grown its limbs into all our lives. And I see nothing wrong in that, as long as it functions as an organism. In balance with the world outside. Giving and receiving in equal measure. It has altered all of us. In unimaginable and sometimes frightening ways. It does not just fulfil needs anymore. It creates them. 

A society progresses when it finds leisure. It rises above its current and immediate needs and thinks of more glorious, more noble things. Leisure needs to be valued. Un-knowledge and curiosity need to be preserved. There needs to be, sometimes, a wait before we attain something we need, material or intellectual. We need that wait, that anticipation, that wondering the mind does before it receives or finds the answer, that picture the heart paints before we obtain something. What we don't need is so much boredom. Language is a clever tool. It has the power to scale down the magnitude of absolutely abhor-able things. Boredom in the virtual presence of a whole world of possibilities on a screen in our laps is not ok. It is an indication that the more we have, the more we are taking for granted.

It is possible to be a balanced capitalist. And although we have been made to believe that thinking in this direction is impractical and ridiculous, I believe that this is not just possible but necessary. The ideas of profit maximizations and trade-offs between stakeholders alone, will, by general logic, leave the world a highly unbalanced place, with excesses that are wasted but not consumed by those in need. We are already almost there. It is time we started looking at businesses in their entirety, their entitlements as well as obligations to the environment where they thrive. 

I can not say what exactly would happen if we didn't start to be balanced yet. But this whole unpredictability, opaqueness and creepy totalitarianism in the name of data collection does not give me a good feeling.

Love

Love. In every inch of my body, in every mole of the microcosm I nurture within my soul, in every ounce of light and darkness and all other manifestations of present and absent energy that I am part of. In the rhythm of my heartbeat, and in that of yours, in the one giant heartbeat that we are.

01/ 01/ 2013

You are the one person I'd allow into an inglorious moment. Keep the key to the window from where I am naked and stripped of all pride and strength. Keep it safe. Some day, I'd need you to climb in and wrap me, not in passion or love, but in acceptance. I'd expose all my wounds and ask, not for medicine, but a relieving touch. Give me that. Like today. Be who you were today. Be that pillar, that illogical pillar that stands right there no matter how rough-edged the leaning object is. Tell me I need not fear, because you are there, no matter what. Give me that no-matter-what. Always. I'd need that.

01/01/2013

Resolutions:

- Sustain.
- Love more. More unconditionally. Be more giving. MUCH less judgemental.
- Manage time. More than time, attention. Manage attention. Be where you are, in what you are supposed to do.
- More early mornings. More yoga. More walks. More music. More pens and paper. Much less computer. More camera.
- No more books. Finish the pile first.
- Be more assertive, where needed. And don't. Where not needed.
- Care about the world. But don't be paranoid. Don't let it seep into personal relations. Stop acting like a raw nerve.
- More patience.
- More water.
- At least one monumental trip. Many small trips.
- Less monologues. More travelogues.
- Fear less. But fear when needed. Fear is nature's defence mechanism. Do not strip it away.
- Breathe it out. Let it go.

Remember me?

Long long ago, when leisure was luxury, I had given an hour to your thoughts. It was a precious hour, earned after a day's hard work tackling the immediate. Back then, we were hunters and gatherers. We hunted for moments of solace and gathered half-formed, ill-defined, hazy dreams. The future was not a blur; it was darkness, stark, fierce, dangerous and unknown. Back then, we were small. We were fearing. We were awed. We were worshippers. We were warriors. We were nature. 

Then one day, the hunt led me to a full stomach, a safe abode and leisure, and I stumbled upon the vast mystery that was you. You were unknown, frightening, exciting; you were an ache, a part of me that was missing, that I needed to find. You were the dip in the centre of my chest when I looked at the dim moon, the tinge at the roots of my hair when a sudden chill would shock me, the emptiness inside me on a warm afternoon that I could not explain no matter how much I tried. You frightened me, and like everything else that frightened me, I was on the verge of worshipping you when I actually saw you. You, the strange foreign person with the shine in your eyes, you, who smiled way more than the whole tribe smiled in their collective lives, you who talked in a language I didn't understand, you who inexplicably were the answer to all my questions. I didn't want to have babies with you. I wanted to protect you, to hold you, to smell you, understand you, be you.

Back then, we didn't love or dream. Back then, we didn't create what wasn't needed. But I created a whole world with the idea of you. I was ridiculed initially, and then banished, left alone in the wild with the idea that possessed me. And I survived. I survived the real because I learnt to dream. I found music in the wilderness. And tucked poems on the branches of lonely, banished trees.

I died a young poet. One of the first. 

Do you remember me?

It's not men who rape women. It's women who rape women. Every time you wished you had a son or a grandson, every time you let your son watch you become meek and bear an insult at the hands of someone, every time you stayed silent in self pity, you raped another woman. You gave birth to the society that rapes. You are not weak or small or helpless. Be an individual before being a woman. Demand to be treated like an individual. And settle for nothing less.

Bengalured

Something I wrote for the office magazine: :) 

Today, as I took a moment of break and stumbled on the intranet page, I found the topic, "Things you love about Bangalore". I knew I had to write about it. How could I not? Bangalore has been the object of my affection ever since the day I arrived here, with nothing but an offer letter in hand, a million hopes, and a heartbeat-speeding, breath-stopping excitement about the unknown.

It was January, and the city was at its best; a mixture of blossoming spring and yellowing fall, cozy winter and sweet summer. The nights were breezy, sometimes chilly, but never in a hostile way. So, I guess the first thing about Bangalore that I fell in love with was her weather, which was kind, playful, and sometimes, unpredictably moody. I spent months exploring the nooks and corners, realizing that the city was never going to satisfy my curiosity. I was right. I found myself lost in and surprised by the history and heritage of her buildings, the mind-boggling choices of her shopping streets, the random pleasant encounters with the parks, varieties of vegetation, and flowers! I love how you can take a turn on an innocuous street and be greeted by a giant, bright bunch of yellow or pink flowers.

And then, I discovered Blossoms, the tiny little used book store at Church Street, and it stopped my wanderings for a bit. I mention this place because I discovered it by serendipity, and it is one of my most haunted places in Bangalore since then. It consumes you for hours together with its never ending piles of sweet-scented pale pages. As I blended slowly in the ten million, I too found my niche, places where I would shop, places to unwind, places to meet friends, places to flatter the taste buds, places to go, places to be. And Bangalore never falls short of options. She has lakes, gardens, chocolate factories, craft melas, flea markets, book shops, churches, electronics markets, and of course, tech parks; something for everything in you. Slowly, but surely, I became a Bangalorean too, with a phone camera pointed towards the tracks and a broad smile of inexplicable joy pasted on my face when Namma Metro made its initial trial run.

However, what I love most about Bangalore is not her weather, or her history, or heritage; it is her diversity and acceptance. There is a simplicity about her that never overwhelms you like a faceless crowd of human bots in a concrete jungle. Mumbai is often called a city with a character, but to me, Bangalore has a distinct character too - the quality of never being imposing on her people. She does not try to change you; she accepts you for who you are and offers you a tiny little space of your own to live your life on your terms.

As I sit at my desk by the window and type, a waft of breeze brings me the scent of moist earth, and I smile. I love Bangalore. It's my favourite city in the world, and it’s home.

November 21, 2012

Far far away
where the sun does not set
and the sea meets the desert
to create a metaphor
- sun, sand and sea
- a mirage of a place
you would wish to
sunbathe at,

There, 
on that island of oxymorons,
drenched in salt water
write me poetry
harsh, honest, cruel.
Sunburn me.