Microcosmosis

Good Intentions

2012-02-11T14:18:00.002+05:30

So are you succeeding in saving India?
Actually, I believe "India" is helping me save myself.

*

It is always the way, isn't it, that the decent, bright kid sets out to untangle a good, meaty problem and, somewhere along the way, finds he's pulling his own threads apart. The thinking traveler travels to Tangier, say, as an exercise in demystification, but the greatest upheaval he experiences is while looking out the window and unpacking his absurdly composed suitcase. The writer attempts to reveal something about the world but can only repeatedly reveal himself.

*

Whatever man, anthropology blows.
Nobody wants to be explained in a textbook.

Mumbai Two - Yahaan Kaise?

2012-02-01T17:30:00.011+05:30

So what what what are you here for? I came for a job, I say, or one half of one. I came for the next step, I say, to put my foot down (but which way is it pointed?). I stay for the buildings—can nobody else see these heartstopping things standing around everywhere—and for the seven rupee lunch, and for the warmth and the pause in urgency (another three month placebo for the ongoing freak-out over how exactly my five-foot-three presence is going to alter the course of the world). And what are you doing here? What is anyone doing here, really?

That young white family, dad wearing a beard like a hedge and delicate white prayer cap (taqqiyah? I thought that meant cushion), mum following in a holy shit is that a burqa? Or, wait, let's start over: A woman in a burqa walking along in Colaba—hey why is there a limp blond baby in her baby backpack—dude that is not your average Indian Muslim family. Everything I ever wrote about hybridity and plurality in all those Comp Lit. essays goes out the black and yellow cab window and I find myself asking how does that even happen, I mean white Muslims, okay, sure, but conservative white Muslims? One good value judgement deserves another, after all—burqa means conservative. (Saba Mahmood is ashamed of me. Meanwhile, Woody Allen's Hemingway is telling me I'm too self-effacing It's not manly!) But seriously, seriously how did that family come into being and why was it walking so decidedly toward Regal Cinema on a Monday afternoon? I would like to know everything about them. Why are they here?

Similarly, the young white couple lying in the brick soil and scraggly grass of the Oval Maidan at evening rush hour, playing a guitar (for realz), I mean who told them public spaces could be used that way in this country? Can't they see everyone else is on their feet playing cricket? How did they acquire the immense grit to go so against the grain in a foreign culture—when in Rome, do what the Romans haven't yet thought of—at the risk of, well, anything? Why did they leave the damp green fresh mown lawns of their own landscaped lands to come here of all places, to brave smell crowd heat dust conscience disease, to place sweet music on the afternoon breeze? Why are they here?

And me—walking, feverish on a weekday evening, feeling a part and apart, in my Birkenstocks and Pickathon t-shirt, dented steel bottle dangling from my right index, plastered with Powell's bookstore stickers, looking like an absurd parody of the devoted Oregonian—why am I here?

What does it mean to be placed, re-placed, dis-placed? What does it mean to think about place? What does it mean, again, that I am here, now, in this place? What am I here for?

Mumbai One - Reality is the first story

2012-01-20T18:18:00.019+05:30

The train has blue seats and contains wafts of evening bath perfume even after the wind has hurtled through it for a few kilometers.
I am reading a gift I have received across many kinds of distance.
John Berger is leading me calmly in an initiation into resistance, resilience and reality (which, as he says, is the first story). I look like another city and I feel weightless in this one. Two pre-ten boys are selling plastic clips through sheer guile and underage flirtation.
They hop on in the middle of a page with their big smiling voices.
I am full of rage and will brook no slumdog references.
(When does compassion become ferocity, and vice versa?)
If Mumbai is Manhattan, where I am headed must be Brooklyn.
Low buildings, sea breeze and youth scattered on nighttime streets.
If I am infected with this fearlessness I may never leave.

Marginal Reassurances

2012-01-13T12:12:00.003+05:30

Tweets in Arabic are right-aligned.
Bombay Dost, a gay men's magazine, is 20 years old.
The two rupee coin has a picture of a hand signing "2" on one side.
Indian paper money is sized and texture-marked for recognition by the blind.
I am going to have a new name soon, and it won't need words to speak it, just hands.
His inept smoking might just save that teenager in the passenger seat.
Wild flowers now bloom where the rosebush died.
Street dogs are fat and thick-coated.

Conundrum #3 - First World Problems edition

2011-12-30T19:27:00.004+05:30

Nikon vs. Canon
iPod vs. Android

The amount of idle mental energy I have recently spent on how best to resolve these non-dilemmas is ABSURD, GRATUITOUS AND DISGUSTING.

Happy Holidays!

My favourite ever blog

2011-12-21T03:06:00.006+05:30

If I were slightly better at self-expression, the following would be my blog soulmate. As it stands, it's probably more like my blog guru. (Shocked and awed by resonance and relatability, I always seem to choose, in true Indian style, to touch feet rather than meet eyes. (The most effective preservative for an inferiority complex is a fear of not matching up.)) At any rate:

http://pleasepunctuatethis.com/

Emotional expression with the piercing accuracy of a cold knife.
Read every word.

It's like the saying: Don't get mad, get even more reasons to be fucking furious.

2011-12-18T00:02:00.005+05:30

ME: Oh god I hate people who exhaust me...

MUM: (opens her mouth to speak)
ME:...but more than that I hate that I care about people who exhaust me.
MUM: (closes mouth, look of bemusement)
ME: (sudden manic laughter)

Silence.

LEARN THE GODDAMN LESSON YOU FOOL

Life Lesson #14

2011-12-02T00:33:00.001+05:30

You can't stop people from engaging with other people in ways you wish they wouldn't.

[And you'll never stop wishing you could.]

No sense of proportion

2011-11-27T23:27:00.005+05:30

I know it doesn't feel like it right now, but the entire rest of the world is, in fact, more important than this one little thing.

Theater of the absurd

2011-11-23T01:59:00.008+05:30

Ricocheting from home to home, banging down doors yelling FEED ME FEED ME, never staying long enough be fed, going steadily insane from increasing hunger, always returning hopefully to empty kitchens with hands and mouth open and swallowing painful clumps of bitter air, still surprised at the absence there.

Important Questions [Part One of Many]

2011-11-16T00:47:00.006+05:30

What is whimsy? How does it differ from romanticism, escapism, and, most importantly, indulgence? Can it hold its own against duty? Does it impair or enrich conscientiousness? Is it an act of privilege or necessity? Is it a support or a catalyst?

[Er, let me check with the chef.]

Life Lesson #13

2011-11-13T22:08:00.001+05:30

Convenience is not the only virtue.

[It's not even in the top ten, really.]

11:11 11.11.11

2011-11-11T23:18:00.006+05:30

Sitting in a verandah haven, air heavy with the perfume of alstonia and the smell of beagle, head full of city-fragments that don't quite cohere, but insist on their own significance.

I cannot believe the symmetry of this moment.

Literary lust

2011-11-11T01:57:00.004+05:30

Eileen Myles, like some other women I know who grew up not understanding why everyone treated them like girls, has that thing men have where they pop out of the womb already feeling important and necessary.

...it’s okay to feel this way, content to be living and writing in that spot between sex and sadness. Being a writer. Being full of it. Being female.

(from this)

Slowly, sadly, we became irrelevant to each other's lives.

2011-11-10T01:38:00.007+05:30

I laugh at the jokes of others, and don't miss anything.

Sudden November Perfume

2011-11-08T23:45:00.001+05:30

When someone mentions the gracefulness 
of the nightsky, climb up on the roof
 and dance and say,

Like this.

If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is, 
or what "God’s fragrance" means, 
lean your head toward him or her. 
Keep your face there close.

Like this.

When someone quotes the old poetic image 
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
 slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
 of your robe.

Like this.

If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
 don’t try to explain the miracle.
 Kiss me on the lips.

Like this. Like this.

(Rumi)

Fish Don't Fly (Karma Kola 2.011)

2011-11-05T01:41:00.010+05:30

Hands full of glasses, lungs full of smoke, large laughs, little skirts, high heels, big dreams. It scares me when people look this good and stand so tall, confident taking up space and conducting their lives, zero jhijak, full throttle. Empty bottle. Khali botal, masti total. The scene has gone beyond the hotal, and spilled out across Delhi's spacious periphery. Dust blows back from under their wheels into the city's interior as they emerge from it, unscathed, unfazed, freshly bathed at midnight. Like a compulsive calorie-counter, I begin silently to compute how many hours went into that make-up, that hair, that outfit. Not just tonight; years of practice until the right shade, the right style, the right fit. Every one of them self-trained in a highly evolved curatorial art.

I bite. I am mesmerized. I stare at the women and even peel open an eye for the men. How did these people happen, and where have they been? Are they the same kids I went to school with? I didn't see it, but they must have grown past routine considerations of social etiquette, likeability, glamour; past even bravery, to blossom into a realm of pure, unselfconscious being. How did they do it? How do they do it? I simmer, humiliated that the implicit altitude of my high road hasn't actually allowed me to transcend anything. Here I am, craning my neck, watching these strange beings casually stand around on my glass ceiling. I experience a sort of myoclonic jerk, and almost fall. When I realize the ground is still beneath my feet I feel euphoric with relief.

They must always have been around. They must have looked different before now. Or maybe I wasn't paying attention. Now I am, and here they are. Groomed. Lipsticked. Perfumed. Pleated. Yelling one more song. Shelling out bills like handfulls of confetti. Air kissing on both cheeks. Talking to each other like they have something to say. They must do. But what is it? I am aware of a web of knowledge being spun and respun all around me. But what is it transmitting? They all know something I don't. They are serious about it. They understand the importance of trading this information. I don't know what it is or why it's important. I'm full of questions. I can't tell if they're good ones. I think they started out rhetorical, but now I don't know my own answers.

Does it mean something when a kid hoots about holding MDMA during a drug-satire? Why am I drawn to the one man in a Fabindia vest? Why does the word fuck seem to have an echo? Is there something to say about the blond girl weaving intensely in front of the blond boy, both sets of pupils exploding? The lead singer's wig, the musicians clothes; the drunk Tibetan girl throwing up in the loo; the posh Delhi club and the reference to Frantz Fanon; the tiny top-hat in the hair of a girl from Lucknow---are these things noteworthy?

The taxi driver plays Sai songs. He introduces himself with his name, followed by the focus, location and progress of his education. He's at the same college as my Dad. I went to the same college as his cousin. He plays cricket and goes home to eat his mother's homecooked food. His brother owns a cab company of thirty cars. He's an extra for the night. He drives like a mosquito flies; a mosquito propelled by jet fuel. He calls me ma'am. For the first time ever, I don't protest. I lock the gate, go upstairs, call my mother to let me in. Pixie-cut still perfect, she comes to the door. I debrief briefly, and say goodnight. Five minutes later, she calls me to say hi. Ten minutes later, I have my face in a navy blue silk sari that once belonged to my grandmother. Three hours later, ma'am is asleep.

Things I have done in the last five days:

2011-11-04T00:31:00.013+05:30

Set up a bank account.
Hallucinated sufi music.
Tried on 347 sari blouses.
Eaten 4 types of paranthas.
Listened to an Israeli qawwal.
Spent 2+ hours at Jama Masjid.
Gone to a bar in a kurta-pajama.
Created an online photo portfolio.
Acquired a potential freelancing gig.
Been recognized because of my glasses.
Run into an old friend in a public place.
Pulled my first post-collegiate all-nighter.
Shared an autoriksha with 2 lovely strangers.
Eaten 10 bowls of homemade fruit chaat (approx.)
Been cellphone photographed by 3 teenagers (approx.)
Had an hour-long conversation about Indian aesthetics.
Seen the precise spot where my Mum first asked my Dad out.
Hesitantly/unwittingly photographed a famous photojournalist.
Discovered the existence of an Instituto Cervantes Center in Delhi.
Watched Egyptian whirling dervishes against a lit-up Purana Quila.
Listened to carnival-tango-flapper-jazz by a Mexican Argentinian band.
Had 6 day-dreams about a green-sari, white-rose-in-hair, literary romance.
Met the wonderful, seedha young man who's marrying one of my best friends.

d) All of the above

2011-11-02T00:41:00.010+05:30

"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." - E.B. White

I've been circling ineloquently around this very thought for some years now, and after much unnecessary dialectical thinking and stress paralysis (do one, do the other, freak out and end up doing neither), I have, as always, settled on the most optimistic answer:

Do both.

Shattered hearts on a cloudless morning

2011-10-29T00:10:00.010+05:30

Weeks, months, years later, here I am--damp, distant, glue drying in the cracks--wondering what the big deal was, and how I failed to notice the absence of real loss.

Maaf keejiye, pehle aap kurta peheniye aur urdu bolna seekhiye.
Phir hum sochenge humne kuchh khoya bhi hai ya nahin.

Life Lesson #12

2011-10-27T01:57:00.004+05:30

Seeing is essential; showing is incidental.

[Laugh; forget the joke. Look real hard; forget to lure. Thrill, throw your head back; forget to tell. Peer through, push down on the shutter release, and please feel free to forget the film at the bottom of a backpack for several months afterward.]

Paradox #1

2011-10-21T15:36:00.006+05:30

My estimation of my own value is highly contingent on my ability to find things valuable, but I'm often so busy evaluating myself that I lose track of the value of things.

A Small Action

2011-10-20T01:08:00.006+05:30

This (mine), and other testimonies of the privileged for parity at
http://westandwiththe99percent.tumblr.com/

Life Lesson #11

2011-10-18T23:47:00.001+05:30

Rescue is not romance.

[Even if it feels like it at first, it really isn't, I promise.]

Terrors

2011-10-18T13:11:00.005+05:30

Realizing there is a glass ceiling for self-improvement.
Realizing someone is indisputably better than me.
Not being dreamed about.
Not being regretted.
Being terrified.
Being stuck.
Longing.

Running into Inspiration

2011-10-17T19:52:00.006+05:30

I saw Arundhati Roy this evening, looking at a set of photographs of Afghan women on display at the Habitat Center as part of the Delhi Photo Festival. I got the chills. She is breathtakingly beautiful. And very slightly solemn. An incredible presence. Photographs do not do her justice. I was instantly self-conscious about my pants.

Possible actions were to hug her, touch her feet, tell her what her work has meant to me, and offer condolences for the abysmal recent treatment of her friend and colleague David Barsamian at the hands of the powers-that-be of the Indian State. I settled on leaving her alone, and shuddering quietly at the omen this is for the coming months. (Extremely positive.)

What a punctuation to a day full of questions about words, images, purpose, confidence, and giving your life over to a passion.

Conundrum #2

2011-10-15T18:33:00.006+05:30

Evocative, yes, but perhaps a little more provocative?

Conundrum #1

2011-10-15T18:28:00.003+05:30

I'd like us all to be grown-ups now, please, and stay forever young.

Handwringing

2011-10-14T23:30:00.002+05:30

To a dusty shelf we aspire,
In an empty room we sleep.
And so, to quench the fire:
A decent daily weep.

On Caste, and Sassing Strangers

2011-10-13T18:20:00.008+05:30

Well folks. It's finally happened. Today, for the first time in a lifetime of being Indian, I was asked what my caste is. So shocked was I that the paintbrush slipped in my fingers and made a deep disbelieving swoop of green across the belly of the diya I was decorating.

Kya ji?

It is 2011. I am helping paint diyas at the Blind Relief Association for their upcoming Diwali Bazaar. And a middle-aged co-volunteer I have just met, with dark hair and a grey goatee, wearing a crisp synthetic apron with a set of cartoon cutlery printed on the chest, has chosen to ask me, as the second in a series of questions, what my caste is.

His first question, an irritated follow-up to my quip about him needing a chair more than me on account of being buzurg, was, "How old are you?" His third question was about my education. I had to tense every muscle in my face to prevent myself from asking him whether I was being vetted for marriage, but I managed. I had learned my lesson:

Never sass a stranger. He may have a different interpretation of things.

(Or a gun.)

Brass tacks:

Over the course of six years spent abroad, I have resigned myself to having to explain and represent India. I do it as best I can, sometimes with enthusiasm, other times with great reluctance. I try not to disperse ill-researched opinions (as a CNN-IBN reporter discovered on approaching me in Khan Market the other day), and I try to be as thorough and fair (i.e. full of disclaimers) as I possibly can. I spend a lot of time thinking about India. Which is why I am so thrown when something surprises me to such an extent.

Only three weeks ago, I was explaining to a concerned friend that caste is overemphasized in Western understandings of India, and that is has been entirely irrelevant to my life. I made a point of disclaiming the privilege and uniqueness of my experience (wealthy liberal parents, alternative/international education, etcetera), but also maintained that, as social determinants go, caste isn't as much a factor in urban India as it's thought to be. Certainly not as much as, say, class. I still don't think I was entirely wrong. But I don't think I was entirely right either.

I think I have only scratched the surface of the extent to which my experience of India is mediated.

I have been back in Delhi one week, and I am seeing it through fresher, more vigilant eyes. I am doing many things differently, some by design, others by instinct, and still others by sheer accident. I am listening to Classical Music. I am spending a lot of time alone. I am conversing easily with people over the age of forty. I am learning roads and routes and neighborhoods. I am eavesdropping on the conversations of strangers. I am insisting on Hindi. I am reading whole magazine articles. I am taking notes. I am wearing bindis. I am asking questions about the smallest and most obvious of things. I am speaking up rather than going along. I am paying attention to the way things work, and I am beginning to see. And most important of all, I am beginning to see the lenses through which I see.

This sucks because I have to admit I don't know a lot of things. But it's great because I know I'm learning.

Incidentally, I deflected the caste question. First by pretending I didn't know, and then by telling him my father's Sikh. My mother says I should have told him that she's the same as he is. Maybe I'd've got a marriage prospect out of it. I chose to withhold that information so that the Khatri Uncle could meet at least one person to whom caste is, in fact, irrelevant.

On Interruptions, Tangents, Repetitions, and Fixating on Details

2011-10-13T00:01:00.009+05:30

I attribute to Hindustani Classical Music all my annoying conversational contortions. Listen long enough, and you may begin to hear beauty in the complexity, superfluity, exaggeration.

This revelation/self-justification is brought to you by the annual
Delhi Classical Music Festival.

Disclaimer #912734786457

2011-10-12T16:08:00.006+05:30

The author of this blog feels the truly superfluous need to warn its limited readership of an impending, if insignificant, shift in its content due to a recent shift in the author's geographic location and a corresponding shifting of her mental center of gravity.

Which is to say, I have moved back to India, and will now be saying things, sometimes in an unfamiliar language, that a lot of you may not find quite comprehensible, relevant or at all interesting.
(Not that anything on this blog thus far has been any of those things.)

But hey! Thanks for sticking around through all the blurbs and haikus.

Perk

2011-10-07T08:28:00.003+05:30

The great thing about distance is that it has a pleasingly poisonous effect on one's preoccupation with irrelevancies.

(In other words: I am in India, and bitches ain't shit.)

Fine Print

2011-09-30T10:04:00.002+05:30

When dismantling the machine, be careful not to destroy its parts. They can be usefully reassembled in various new forms.

Life Lesson #10

2011-09-15T05:34:00.005+05:30

It is every lemon's responsibility to make itself into lemonade.

[Or squeeze itself over a kabab, or get mashed into a jar for achaar.]

I am merely one such lemon. And if I am lucky enough to be very slightly juicier or more fragrant than some of the others, it means only that I need to be squeezed harder.

Heave

2011-09-14T01:01:00.007+05:30

(Lester Freamon gets it.)

Beating the odds, hours and herbs.

2011-09-05T15:25:00.002+05:30

Head like a melon
burst open: high-impact hurt,
all sweetness inside.

Words from a crying little boy:

2011-08-29T01:53:00.005+05:30

"I can't even call you on the phone because I'm not old enough."

One of my better lines.

2011-08-13T07:53:00.003+05:30

Oof, those careless boys
with their broad-spectrum charms and
quick intimacies.

Romance

2011-08-09T11:15:00.008+05:30

Sweaty and dancing
in the starlight, I fall in
love with a mustache.

(And then the man behind it.)

Lit Wit

2011-07-28T14:13:00.003+05:30

"Listen: I don't have anything against autobiographies, so long as the people writing them have penises that are at least a foot long when erect."
- Roberto Bolaño

For (and from) Robyn

2011-07-25T11:53:00.001+05:30

The Spoof is in the Sniffing

2011-07-18T11:59:00.005+05:30

Imposter lilacs,
hanging off the trees: I can
smell your trickery.

Noteworthy Suggestion:

2011-07-18T02:17:00.004+05:30

Date A Girl Who Reads
Or, you know, don't.

She had to make a supernatural effort not to die

2011-07-17T04:19:00.004+05:30

Wanting to die's a
natural response. Just be
sure to live instead.

Progress Update

2011-07-15T11:45:00.003+05:30

The troops have found no
battle, and so are picking
daises in the field.

Over and out.

Did you hear?

2011-07-13T05:35:00.003+05:30

Went to the woods and
found you wandrin'; emerged, and
found myself--afield.

Subsisting on fantasy

2011-07-08T05:39:00.012+05:30

So you aren't lithe, french, mexican, an artiste, long-limbed, the dancing lover-muse of Degas, Gauguin, Matisse or Pissarro; you own two records and no player and the older you get, the less you can sing, but the more you feel your throat swelling.

You can always solace yourself by wrapping a faux-impressionist painting around your hips and and walking flat-footedly across town on a cool evening in July, a weathered book under your arm.

Story, with reconstituted bits of Paolo Giordano's The Solitude of Prime Numbers

2011-07-02T02:48:00.013+05:30

Fearsome, the violence with which she satisfied her whims. Not a hint of decadence; only a fierce, almost unconscious focus. She went, she did, she moved.

He announced his determination to stay as far as possible from the machinery of life. A deliberate gesture; a carving out of space. A refuge, perhaps. On his own, he was aware of everything he was. Speeding outward, nothing else could keep up.

Feeling special is the worst kind of cage a person can build for himself.

Sometimes, she felt a need to abandon her own weight. Often onto someone else's body. To feel their arrogant affection attempt to muscle out the contagious air of tragedy surrounding her. They never did succeed, and she went on, with the lack of something enfolded in her, still smiling.

All lacks are pretty much the same.

Life Lesson #8 - Addendum

2011-06-13T21:18:00.004+05:30

Love is not a despite. It is, I think, a respite.

[But take away its beginning, and you're left, always, with spite.]

NY8 - Weirdo

2011-04-25T05:01:00.006+05:30

How she hated words, always coming between her and life I read with my eyes as I wrote into memory the perfumed treelined paradise of a particular Park Slope street; the odd aching alien calming familiarity of the two little blonde girls Half our proceeds go to Japan! selling 25¢ Oreos and 50¢ lemonade in recyclable cups all stacked neatly on a miniature foldout picnic table with a daisied tablecloth; gusts of beach wind across an oasis of green in the middle of Brooklyn I'm on an island; people passing on the street speaking things from past pages of my script I'm trying to enjoy it while I can leaving me to my vicarious déjà vu, frenetic, heartened, overstimulated, whatever But it's better, much better, than all that old envy. No lenses, but my senses turned
all
the way
on.

NY7 - Vanity

2011-04-23T03:16:00.007+05:30

Many many people on the street sneaking strange glances at me on the street, in bookstores, in cafes. Brief visual interactions that appear neither appreciative nor critical. Recognition, mostly, with a tinge of either embarrassment or bemusement, as though they'd all seen me in some seedy internet sex-tape or silly YouTube video. Oh how I hope it is the latter. Or perhaps, much better, we're all simply feeling observant and brave, noticing each other and interested enough to stare a little. I don't mind. I do it all the time. Bright pink boat shoes and slim progress into 2666. Thick-knit rust-coloured scarf and an equally thick, spring-yellow copy of something published by Gotham Writers Workshop; extra cilantro. Grey-sweatshirt genius. Still, I feel I am being watched. Like that guy whose life turns out to be a reality TV show, and his bright blue skies a well-painted backdrop. Hope these blossoms I've been looking up at aren't made of styrofoam.

I am most definitely inclined that

2011-04-21T11:01:00.005+05:30

(But it's still reassuring to see it on a poster, and to know there's at least one beautiful soul out there who feels the same.)

Idling

2011-04-17T13:08:00.005+05:30

I have dreamt nightly of your face,
and walked the landscape of my life with the rhythms of your writing
ringing in my ears.

Judging Books

2011-04-16T12:47:00.009+05:30

I've just peeled tentatively open a slim, soft, signed copy of a novel called The Solitude of Prime Numbers by an apparently very handsome gentleman named Paolo Giordano. It was sent to me by a trusted friend and reader, and I am already committed to it over the several sad others sitting on my shelf because it has perhaps the loveliest epigraph and dedication I've ever read:

Her old aunt's elaborately trimmed dress was a perfect fit for Sylvie's slender figure, and she asked me to lace it up for her. "The sleeves are plain; how ridiculous!" she said.
- Gérard de Nerval, Sylvie, 1853

*

To Eleonora,

because in silence

I promised it to you

*

Jagger would have something to say about this.

2011-04-13T20:41:00.007+05:30

I said to them with foolish trust, Let's do things with our lives that aren't just about looking cool on facebook, and they cocked their heads and rolled their eyes and ruffled my hair like I was a child with an unusually active imagination.

I asked for companionship and she made promises that were full of youth and you.

I demanded his life and he sent me a schedule.

Sermon of the day (with a half sandwich).

2011-04-12T10:11:00.009+05:30

The true threat of social media is that it falls us in love with people we don't actually know. Its value lies in its inverse ability to disinfatuate us with those people (or ideas or things) we might've cared too much about had we known less. Quite egalitarian, really: fair, if mediated, odds of succeeding or failing at rendering oneself romanceable.

I'm just keeping an eye above the spectacle while I eat my tomato and cheese.

(See what I did there?)

NY6 - Late Night

2011-04-10T10:11:00.006+05:30

Last night, a girl was poring over the Nicomachean Ethics on the C train at 3 am, armed with the best kind of highlighter, seated opposite a homeless man whose socks were worn down to bright white spider webs and whose fingers had hardened over with a new, sad sort of skin. The optimism I've been nursing withered some, and my propensity for value judgments re-ripened in a quick second. I pulled a clementine suddenly from my pocket and we all partook in happy little wedges; citrus always cuts through sadness. Blossoms have begun to blossom and the winter puppies are growing up and everybody is having a bit of a flirt. When I leave the house wearing my "Take Off Your Pants!" button, people I pass on the street appear to be considering it. But I've failed to procure a pretzel and my hands mysteriously smell of henna and first avenue is full of November Delhi perfume. As always, I will settle, with infinite substitute joy. Which, as it turns out, is still real joy.

NY5 (Belated)

2011-04-08T12:45:00.003+05:30

The city was out today like a nineties executive determined not to take any calls, ambling into the slowly solidifying promise of springtime, the day's paper under its arm. Out walking its dogs and washing out its minifridge on a patch of east village pavement. Out wearing top-heavy sunglasses and talking literature over late lunch in Gramercy. Out leaving little chocolates on doorsteps and offering a mint to a girl in preparation for a tentative public kiss. Out of complaints and out of excuses and out for adventure with a vengeance.

Here is just as strange...

2011-04-06T20:19:00.011+05:30

...as everywhere else.

(Well, yes, I do think I am able to adapt to a wider range of elses than most, thank you for asking, and this, forgive me, was not my experience. But thank you. And forgive me, but may I have another doughnut? No sprinkles, thank you.)

After all.

2011-04-04T13:08:00.004+05:30

It turns out I can't wait to be back in India.

(Photo mine.)

Life Lesson #9

2011-03-25T05:15:00.003+05:30

Always resist being your own biggest obstacle.

[Even though you very likely always will be.]

Heart over History

2011-03-14T10:10:00.022+05:30

Oh man. Out of Africa has broken my heart clean open.

Which is weird because my first reactions to colonial-era films are usually always political. I have no idea why this one should escape. I think I should feel terrible, or second guess how I do feel, or protest, somehow.

But I suppose once you get used to a certain narrative of history, you learn to feel between the lines. Something other than discomfort. Something other than rage. Something other than what is now so obvious to me, it has become almost invisible. The fibs are transparent, glass-like: tangible, yet uninterfering.

Until, that is, you think about it enough to realize once again that it's the presence of lies, rather than their tangibility, that's of the essence.

***

(April 8)
On another level entirely, this film is so resonant it scares the pants off me. Does someone really need to die in order to facilitate a nostalgic resolution and a successful writing career?

Communism, Cunnilingus, and Common Decency

2011-03-13T01:30:00.004+05:30

Click on the image if you wish to go to a magical place where all your questions about North Korean female sexuality and all your prayers for an unprecedented Internet experience will be answered.

Why

2011-03-04T03:52:00.005+05:30

To be able to express yourself, to be able to close the gap—inasmuch as it is possible—between thought and expression is just such a relief.

- Arundhati Roy
In an interview with Amitava Kumar for Guernica Magazine

Be cool, man, the world's watching.

2011-03-03T01:14:00.005+05:30

There is nothing quite so disheartening as having to persuade your fellow countrymen to not be such complete nutjobs.

[I'm sure folks with American passports can agree.]

Annie Hall

2011-03-01T12:14:00.001+05:30

I think I might like New York a little.

Of Naturalized Artifice and Other Revelations

2011-02-26T12:19:00.003+05:30

Thanks to SongSoo, bright spark, significant person.

Letter

2011-02-25T12:12:00.008+05:30

Dear F,

I find myself surrounded by the imaginative debris of my most recent read, a slim but monumental novella by the always astounding Alan Bennett called The Uncommon Reader. The most pertinent thing to say about it for the purposes of this letter, although too mechanical a remark to really befit the work, is that it is everything I have ever wished to know or say about reading, writing, and English Royalty, squeezed through a much more sensitive, seasoned brain, and poured across one hundred or so pages. The following, for instance, plucked a resonant string:

"The truth was Sir Claude had no notion of what the queen should write or whether she should write at all, and he had only suggested writing in order to get her off reading and because in his experience writing seldom got done. It was a cul de sac. He had been writing his memoirs for twenty years and hadn't even written fifty pages."

I wonder if this isn't the hidden, terrifying reason I aspire to a life of writing. Because it is, somehow, the suburbia of ambition, recognizably noble yet too safe to really be significant. A cul de sac career. Comfortable, finite, foreseeable. A place where there is no more journey left to journey.

It seems the book has turned me into quite the wintry romantic, dulling my cynicism and softening me toward everything. One has even begun to wish one were a queen, just so one could get away with referring to oneself as "one". In all seriousness, though, apropos of this writing business: I do feel something brewing inside me and by jove it isn't tea.

Can't decide if I want to move onto to Jane Austen or D.H. Lawrence next. No doubt the sex will be a determining factor. Write soon, won't you? It gets lonely among all these skeletal trees and literary Brits.

Love,

L

Entry-level nothing

2011-02-24T09:37:00.007+05:30

We're sorry.

There are no Junior Public Intellectual positions available at present.
Please check back with us in the fall.

Revealing

2011-02-19T23:55:00.007+05:30

Here's what I wrote in response to a rightfully angry, yet slightly off-kilter Salon article, regarding it's confusion on the point of Nir Rosen's controversial tweets in the wake of early news about Lara Logan's assault during celebrations in Tahrir Square last week:

Unquestionable crime, questionable media.

"And your opinion of how she does that job, the religion her assailants share with a few million other people, or the color of her hair has nothing to do with it."

Nothing to do with the heinous crime, certainly, but EVERYTHING to do with the western media's coverage of it.

Which, by the way, is the point Nir Rosen was attempting, in an admittedly crass way, to make. A person's belief in the validity of that point need not necessarily be interpreted as an apologia for the assault perpetrated on Logan.

That people so adamantly interpreted (it) as such smacks of defensiveness. Nobody wants, after all, to admit that the horrible abuse of a white woman celebrity is more worth reporting than the similarly horrible abuse of anonymous non-white women.

Saying that someone's tragedy caught the media's attention because she looks a certain way is not the same as saying that that someone deserved her tragedy for looking that way. Nir Rosen, I believe, was making the former point. He chose a highly inappropriate time to make that point. There is no good time to make that point. He should absolutely be criticized, chastised, even ostracized, what have you, for publicly withholding his sympathy, for implying that her "war-mongering" reportage somehow balanced out the offense against her, and for being such an ass about making his point. But his point, underneath all the insensitive rhetoric, was still not that she deserved the assault, but that her assault would provoke a unique (and in his opinion overblown) media reaction--one that would not exist were it not for the way she looks. This nuance is crucial to me. Victim-blaming is a terrible, sick thing, far worse than being unsympathetic or insensitive, and we should take care in accusing someone of it.

Because let me be very, very clear: that she is blonde, attractive, a celebrity, was allegedly promiscuous, might have made an arguably 'bad call' getting into the thick of riotous celebrations, and 'was in the Middle East, after all' are not and should not be cited as excuses for the assault on her. Any form of "she was asking for it" is unacceptable--no woman is ever asking to be forced upon. In any setting. No matter how she looks or what she wears or what she has done in her past. No aspect of her conduct or personality or appearance should be license for her violation.

The incredibly sad truth, however, is that her appearance might actually have had something to do with why she specifically, over other women in the square, was assaulted. And she is still not to blame. Her assailants probably had no idea that she was a pro-war reporter, but it is possible they took her to be a symbol of what angered them. Anti-American sentiment does exist, some of it highly misguided. Misguided enough, perhaps, to imagine that it is reasonable to exact historic revenge from one woman because she looks American. Just as misguided as those who deliriously took her assault to be confirmation of the bad-character of all Arabs or all Muslims, no matter how insistent on democracy. For it is equally likely that this was an isolated incident. Still, one cannot ignore that this is what someone, somewhere took the opportunity to do at a moment of great political import.

Conflict--cultural, moral, political, historic, "civilizational"--has always been played out on the bodies of women. That is the material point. That is why Lara Logan gets sexually assaulted during a victory celebration at the end of peaceful protests demanding fair government. And that is why Lara Logan is refracted through tabloid tragedy and turned into Exhibit A for the case against the Arab world.

All of it boils down to the same crappy fact: women's bodies are still not respected as absolutely being their own. A fact highly visible these days in the Republican party's charming efforts to redefine rape, and restrict reproductive rights to the point of complete illogic. It is the woman's body: she decides whether it is rape. She decides whether to have sex. She decides whether to use birth control. She decides whether to continue the pregnancy. She decides her appearance, her apparel, her profession. Somebody else may disagree with her choices, call them selfish or foolish or risky. But nobody else is entitled to pronounce judgment on what she may or may not do to her own body.

Myopia

2011-02-12T06:32:00.008+05:30

Easy to forget there's a whole world out there waiting to be longed for.

One more, for the long road ahead:

2011-02-12T00:15:00.004+05:30

Mubarak se azaad hue Egypt ke logon ko azaadi mubarak ho.

(Don't miss the graphic.)

A tweet worth blogging / Social media is so meta

2011-02-11T18:14:00.005+05:30

If you don't know what "some cartoons" refers to, see this, and please also understand that a friendship between us might be difficult.

NY4

2011-02-06T15:31:00.005+05:30

What looks like a fourteen year old boy comes in wearing a grey coat and a beautiful butter yellow tie, and buys a small cup of coffee. A strange desire to watch the superbowl surfaces. The same banker winks at me twice, pre- and post-latte. Infidelity need not be chronologically concurrent with a relationship. Optimism is easier when one doesn't have to explain one's anxieties in full; a momentary frown needn't provoke an emotional third degree. Baseball players are the best looking American sportsmen, or perhaps I'm just a sexual racist. Didn't expect Paul Harding's page 24 punch to the gut. Still haven't written that goddamn letter. Do even french people know how to say "Sartre"?

Inside an image

2011-02-01T01:56:00.005+05:30

Warmth. Joy. Relief.

Photograph by Carissa Gallo.
(Click to see its origin and brethren.)

NY3 / Oh such a prima donna sorry for myself

2011-01-28T04:54:00.010+05:30

Something is very wrong. Big name bookstores smell of seduction and lobotomy. They're marketing in India as luxury brands stuff that's basically lower class product here. I pass girls that look and smell overwhelmingly like plastic puff pastries, and forget where I am going. People aren't stopping to listen to the band with a bucket-bassist and a ghungroo-percussionist. The tentative balance between envy and admiration has been tipped way off. Snow made banal by sunlight and efficiency. No fruit all day. Every sound an irritation except this:

Spicy noodles aren't spicy. I don't have a crush on anyone. Laundromat's givin' me the weepies, and not the good kind.

In other words: look at this fuckin' hipster.

So weary all of the time.

2011-01-27T09:08:00.009+05:30

The song most resonant of and somehow also most soothing to an incurable case of longing.

This version, specifically. Elegant and heartfelt though other versions are, not one of them approaches this one in terms its swoon or the sheer depth of yearning.

Listen: a voice bluesed raw. Haunted, hysterical, restless, listless, sick at heart.

NY2

2011-01-21T03:48:00.007+05:30

Union Square subway stairs, again, this time with one resolute tear somewhere inside one spectacle frame. Sudden sadness, Etta James casually shredding hearts, note by minor note. Michelle Williams' doppelganger in tight blonde curls waits for her skim latte. Charles the quiet, Colin-Farrel-looking Frenchman comes in for his single espresso, says Sank You, sits, shakes his head at New York One, stretches his empty cup into my shaking hand, and leaves, that same black and grey scarf tucked into his jacket, hair perennially freshly washed. Come out of a blues-induced stupor at Adorama to purchase one roll of 120 mm B&W film, speaking with an alien voice I didn't even have a year ago today, and the man behind the register looks at me with a kind, puzzled, sympathetic expression, the question behind which, in a fiction of my life, would be "Who broke that girl?"

NY1

2011-01-20T05:16:00.002+05:30

Walked home with a mouthful of secondhand smoke, peering in at happy hour strangers. Two Latina girls ascended the Union Square subway stairs in front of me, both instinctively hiking their tailbone belt-loops, holding them up all the way to the top of the flight. George Bush's doppelganger was buying spinach. I know exactly how many inches of snow will fall on Friday. New York One didn't say a word about the earthquake. The content of the postcard has been revised three times since last night, when I woke up and penned it into the penultimate page of On The Road in the post bedtime darkness. I am on the last dregs of that Bic pen I lifted from the bookstore, and can't seem to find its kind anywhere else, for love or money. Sixty dollars in my wallet. A day's wages. One hundred or so pages from the end.

Stoneking and Sal Paradise

2011-01-19T08:43:00.003+05:30

...evaluating the hardness of the steel halls and the softness of the woman who is not there.

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest

2011-01-16T04:09:00.004+05:30

Attachment is such a difficult thing to undo.

Marry me, Heems.

2011-01-13T05:54:00.005+05:30

Your great grandfather
was Edgar Wallace. Mine was
some broke brown subject.

Another life

2011-01-10T10:40:00.004+05:30

I hope I am the child they never had.

Cactus

2011-01-03T04:36:00.015+05:30

Mexican food is always bittersweet. You eat, cry, remember.

You loved him because he improved you. You aspired for better. She was, and you hated that. They played the music you wish you'd been listening to. You tried harder. You loved her because she was so like you. You built upon yourself. You hated him because he destroyed you. They denied their own magnificence and accused you of delusion. You failed again and again to be original. Mariachi made you blue.

They rode swift, beautiful bicycles and pretended it was nothing.

Platanos are best eaten through tears. On the floor, in underwear and a party sombrero that covers your eyebrows and disappears you. You see yourself in an imaginary and spit out a suddenlaugh. A speckle of fried outer shell lands on your ankle as though it were a target. Through the hurt you realize you still prefer yourself.

You feel relief at the resurgence of ego. You rip spitefully into a burrito.

You read. You flip backward through the pages and gape at the parallels. You've written it all before. You wonder about your envy. You wonder about the merits of outward confidence. You wonder how convincing you are. You figure you must be. People tell you you are cool. You hold on to the dregs of your disbelief and call it humility.

You romanticize yourself. You put flowers in your hair. You try on improbably high heels in unaffordable shoe stores and pretend to tango. You sing like you see a black woman in the mirror. You look at strangers as though you remember their naked bodies.

You roll words around in your mouth and marvel at your tongue. You lick anything within reach. You sleep with nails digging into the back of your neck. You wear collared shirts to facilitate breathing. You disappear behind thick glasses. You emerge like a potato from an old brown coat. You breathe in frozen air as though it were absinthe.

You start to forget, but continue to love and hate. Both. Both. You make plans and abandon strategies. You persist. Then one day you put chip to salsa and nothing happens. Your winter lips scream at the jalapeño, but nothing else stings.

This is how 2011 begins

2011-01-01T13:04:00.002+05:30

With me in a strange city, in a red dress, in non-snow shoes, walking down a street, looking at people, stopping to talk to someone who calls me a free spirit, stone sober, headed home, content.

Because I FELT like it, THAT'S why.

2010-12-26T13:48:00.003+05:30

Brutal

2010-12-18T09:31:00.004+05:30

There was a time when I'd've said,
I'll bring the leaves; you bring the lead.

Life Lesson #8

2010-12-16T09:16:00.003+05:30

Love is not a despite.

[Despite what you've heard.]

Indoors with massproduced cake

2010-12-13T06:18:00.002+05:30

On this particular Sunday evening, there doesn't seem much point in listening to anything other than this:

Letter

2010-12-12T12:50:00.006+05:30

Dear F,

I would most gladly have told Sula to stuff it were it not the case that she was already, to put it crassly, being stuffed. On a presumably regular basis. She has, you see, eloped. And with who else, do you suppose, but our most maniacally lusty friend Val. (It occurs to me that seeing as it is Val, they must merely have run off together. Vows of any sort are unlikely to be involved.) But before you go chastising him, please be reassured by my irrelevant opinion that it will not last. No combination of two such highly inconstant beings could. Plus, their names share far too many similar syllables. It is uncomfortable to hold them both simultaneously in one's mouth.

(And before you jump to dispatch an entire letter to respond to that last, let me save you the trouble: That is, indeed, what she said.)

In any case, I do not see why Sula's stupid little fantasy should bother you. Your darkness, storminess, and general boorishness are only too well established. Something you'd have done well to remember when you were trying to convince Ms. Ali of your worthiness. There's no point attempting so vigorously to air dry a reputation you have spent so much time dampening. Instead, be content: damp reputations make for fertile narratives. Feel free to phrase it as such when next you make a run for her money. Not that it will help. No amount of moisture is likely to have an effect on her arid intellect.

Love &c

L

What is the purpose of life?

2010-12-11T07:53:00.004+05:30

Everybody has got 5.5 liters of blood.

#100

2010-12-04T11:40:00.004+05:30

Apt, I think, to mark the one hundredth post of this blog, late at night in a still-foreign country, spending time with that part of me which continues to heave in nostalgia and aspiration for India, its landscape, its people, its textures, its film, its possibilities.

I look forward to this film knowing full well that I will be ill-equipped to absorb or ignore the impact I feel certain it will have on me.

A sense of humour about India...

2010-12-03T23:38:00.005+05:30

...is something I am not generally understood to have. That's probably because no American humourist has ever gotten knee deep in dye.

I will always love Conan for his participation in this. Regardless of whether it was due to contract, coercion, or accident.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: There's too little India in the American imagination beyond Bollywood, poverty and the Taj Mahal. And while this idyllic little piece doesn't see absolutely straight, it sees something, which, real or not, I like.

Letter

2010-12-02T12:16:00.007+05:30

Dear F,

Please do not.

You know exactly to what I am referring and I trust that you will not, in your classic nonchalant manner, disregard my opinion merely on the grounds of ambiguity. I have explained to you many times why I insist on refraining, in our correspondence, from being explicit on any matter that may draw me into the petty politics of your social sphere. I have also been clear with you, in person, about why I feel, most emphatically, that you must not continue with this.

Please, do not.

Also, Peter's sandwiches were better. Pout all you like.

Love &c

L

PS: Sula is convinced that my letters to you are addressed to an imaginary Fitzwilliam Darcy. Her evidence is my alleged tempestuous love for Austen, and her assessment of my similarity to Elizabeth Bennet. Thought you'd be amused, although, needless to say, I rarely agree with anything she says. How can I when she insists on such a high degree of bombast and inexactitude?

Black and white world.

2010-12-01T08:28:00.003+05:30

Vision: Standing on a disembodied staircase in a very high place, with the anxious swoop of vertigo taking me over and the sudden sound of copter wings interrupting my fall.

Vicarious: Standing smally in front of a guy with a large fake crocodile on his head (or is it an alligator?), damp in my little coat, hat, and wellingtons, fallen rain swimming on stone all around. Rickety bicycles sliding by and disappearing around buildings slowly softening into themselves.

Vaastav: Standing on a cold, indifferent sidewalk, wishing something in this city would sneak its hand into mine.

For Robyn

2010-10-29T09:46:00.011+05:30

I love my man better than I do myself.

Even feminists get the blues.

El amor no es un sentimiento; es una abilidad.

2010-10-17T06:36:00.004+05:30

It is tiring to discover profundity embedded in mediocrity.

Let's get something straight

2010-10-16T03:49:00.009+05:30

At some stage, you've got to come back around and realize that you still really love that which you spent so much time pretending not to care about. And that you never really minded that toward which you once expressed such vitriol.

Letter

2010-10-10T11:08:00.017+05:30

Dear F,

I must inform you that attempting to fall asleep while facing a typewriter is a notion with the inevitable end of failure. My fingers begin to flex, and consequently wake up my brain, which, as you have so often witnessed, has a marked tendency to dance at rather inopportune moments. Indeed, once the Olympia has nudged me away from sleep, everything else begins to pull at my attention as well, not least the adjacent posters of Carlos Gardel and Cora Madou. Now, I know your disdain for Spanish and French and everything voiced in them is quite as robust as ever, but you must also cede that your preoccupation with the existential despondence of German and Russian is no less bland to me. Nevertheless, we can meet in the middle and communicate quite workably in this language whose beauty has become moot, its utility being no longer controvertible. Plus, who can resist the aristocratic lilt of it, even when written?

My point is, this new life, with its new furnishings, although elected, is proving an unexpected challenge to my sense of my own adaptability. Perhaps you were just in taking a skeptical tone in your last letter.

Your poetry, incidentally, was terrible. I am harsh because I do not wish you to waste your time with it, ignoring your rather more obvious talents for prose. Your prose, as I have repeatedly gossiped to your noted embarrassment, is quite spectacularly rhythmic and makes the pages on which it lies almost orators. Ironically, you are far more prosaic in verse. Pardon the pitiful pun. And the awful alliteration. Consider it retribution for your performance at the park last month. When I visit next, I do hope you will find it in you to restrain your partiality toward pig Latin, and limit your reading to its original language. Nor, I must be plain, will I tolerate any more taunting about my distaste for the waltz. You are aware of my thoughts on the issue of gown versus ghungroo.

Lastly, while you are at your own disposal, please do ingest something other than coffee, toast, and the odd cucumber. There are about fifteen varieties of apple at your local market, you know. I counted. Not to mention the hearty three course meals Mary is always offering you. She has kept a place for you at the table for almost a month, and it is gathering dust. Please go make use of it. The offer, I mean. You consume enough dust as it is.

Love and admonition,

L