Catch up and Leave Behind

A lot has happened since I last said anything here. I'd started this blog when I began my Architecture course 5 years ago. Lo and Behold, I'm almost an Architect now. Well, a few months more and it'll be official, meaning the degree will say it. I knew it approximately one and a half years ago in my heart.
Anyway, past few months have been quite eventful, there's change everywhere around me, inside and outside. Since I started working out at the gym, its like I've had a new lease on life. It makes me feel absolutely wonderful, outside and more importantly inside. I feel powerful, an individual who has the power to change her life. 
All the work that happened last year was a positive outcome of this change. More importantly, the change in state of mind. My association with the people around me has reached another level of intimacy, it feels like my life was dormant up until this point and all I was doing was chasing dead ends but now there's this thing, feels like life has burst into my head and it's all so very real and so very beautiful.
The thesis was like a force feeding off me and at times I was feeding of its force. My work, my guide's faith and the will of the project itself led to some very convincing life-altering revelations about what kind of Architect I want to be. The marks were never my concern. All the learning definitely was, and I'm so very satisfied with all my take-aways. Some revelations about myself were alarming but as somebody very wise said to me, "Your personality is impermanent." Which means, there's always room to change, to change yourself and more importantly to change your mind.
I will probably upload some of my favorite stuff from the thesis research. I wish I could keep telling everyone I meet about it and never stop talking, just go on and on and let more ideas be born out of the ones in my head, but the constraints of time and lack of ones to pay attention or understand cut short such mad dreams.
And currently, the internship has begun and I've met such amazing people that I knew of but never really got to know. I'm very thankful for such interactions. I've suddenly started believing in intuition, when I meet people I just know when there's some kind of connection and sometimes that connection remains dormant until the time is right and takes full power when the time for it comes. I've noticed this with a couple of people who take center-stage much after I've met them and felt like the connect. 
Also, my teaching at Make a Difference has made me fall in love with the privilege of opening minds and showing them possibilities. The transition between student to teacher and teacher to student was omnipresent for the past few years. Now, I'm taking up an opportunity to be a Teaching Assistant for Second Year students in my college. These were the same kids that we'd guided through the Introductory workshop last year, they are full of energy, excitement and eagerness to do. I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop last year and this year with them promises to be wonderful.
So life's a bunch of concentric spirals and I think the smallest one is in the process of being completed. The travels and travails are in the background while feelings and experiences take the spot light which is the only place where my real awareness lies.

So leaving here for now, emptying half my heart,
predicting the end, at the point of start.

Love.

PS: Read: Why Men Won't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps, Barbara and Allan Pease. 
Fun read, albeit slightly sexist but read with more than a pinch of salt. 

Listen: Into the Dust, Mazzy Star. Perfect rainy day song. 

Some of the thesis work,
range of feelings and spaces
that might inspire the same.

Value the empty to value the full, fully

Life is going past me in the form of relentless days and nights.
The universe is on it's own insolent schedule.
Weather inspires a throat full of knots.
All my occupation is of distraction, all I'm doing is so that I don't have to do what I ought to.

I have reached an impasse.
I need some distance but how does one swim in the water of a half-empty glass.



That man, in that black box has left without any trace and nobody knows he exists and I'm starting to wonder if I've been crazy all this while.




PS: Random rambles are back, I've been keeping myself busy with some birthday prep for a loved one, fingers are crossed, hope I won't have to look away this time.

Listen: 'Keh ke lunga' by Amit Trivedi and Sneha Khanwalkar from Gangs of Wasseypur II

When the world skipped a beat and I was the only one who noticed

It was like the inevitable outcome of a wait.

A baby is born at the end of 9 months.

There is wakefulness after sleep and day after night.

You finish what you have started to do or leave it mid-way.

Time moves and the evidence is in closure.

It was one of those things you are promised will happen at the end.

But this was different.

There was the wait and the faith.

Patience for the end, for the "at last".

It didn't happen, it didn't come, there was no end, there was no outcome, there was no baby at the end of labor, no day after night.

And everything moved on just the same. 

Nobody looked surprised or perturbed at the very least.

It was as though nothing was wrong.

Time conveniently skipped an end and everyone was fooled.

It was dream-like. 

Talking to someone you burned yesterday.

Nothing.was.wrong.

It was as though I was the only one who knew what happened.

Nobody believed me. 

This unnatural turn of events went unnoticed.

There was a time when I believed that gaining was the outcome of yearning.

I was proven wrong.

Time still deceives and skips and turns and loops over and over and over again on itself. Well played.

Listen: Cokestudio season 2 mixes, especially 'Yaatra' and 'Badri Badariya' from the Amit Trivedi episode and 'Dungar' from the Clinton Cerejo episode.

Read: Blind willow, sleeping woman by Haruki Murakami, made me want to write again :)

:|

Through all the inordinate, jumbled mass of words,
 Like an unnecessary splatter of amateur murder blood,
 I lie scattered, inarticulate, wearing a fresh coat of dust.

Am I Dreaming?

Starry moonlit sky
As the holy waters go by

Thoughts of mind
Body of an aural kind

And you, my only way
To know what is true; and what seems astray

Jading my unconsciousness are you,
Totemic, earth-believer









Listen: 'Sacred Science' from the collaboration of Karsh Kale, Baiju and Harigovindan.

How I stopped getting kissed, getting wild and still got a life

Linearity is a lot of fun afterall :)
The last two months have been about prioritizing incessantly and cutting out the variables in my course of existence. Also i tried very hard to feel fully and let all the craziness take over life. Yes, its been bad. A lot of psychological trouble manifests physically i've noticed. But its all good in the end. This experiment has yielded wonderful results although I still remain in search and yearning for all my loving.
I love sabbaticals, this holiday has reinforced that is new way of life seems to work pretty well for me. Somebody once told me that the most boring way to live was to be bouncing along safely in the middle of the apparent crests and troughs. Most of which I used to think are mental make-ups. There's a lot of drama to live and I love it. Besides, now I feel like an Architect, the internship helped clear a lot of dread about wanting to admit that I am an Architect, there I said it. Phew.
I am also a Teacher, I miss my kids at Make a Difference. I'm trying my very best to help them explore all the ways that they can learn best. So far, its been really good. Children are imperceptibly passive learners and to understand that is the greatest joy because no matter what we do in class; they are taken something back each time even if it is the tiniest thing.

Meanwhile, I've found some beautiful new music and literature too.
Zeb and Haniya are Pakistani artists who make soft rock-blues-jazz-alternative-ish music. The vocals are simply inspiring.



Listen: Aitebaar from their album Chup


Happy Diwali :)

Juvenile delinquent

Stupid silly
Silly ridiculous
Ridiculous shame
Shame hurt
Hurt pain
Pain anger
Anger disappointment
Disappointment expectation
Expectation unlawful
Unlawful bastard
Bastard love
Love stupid
Stupid silly


PS: Victoria by John Mayer

Happy Ganpati

Lesser Gods

To all the loving, needing, wanting, winning, losing, missing, yearning in the world. More than those who have been...and stayed....and gone. A projection of all the love gained and lost.


Flower Boy

He who smells of rain. Spells of an evergreen forest

A winter bloom. Race of uneven flesh

Powers of the collective of known. Upholder of belonging

Incantations. Holy verses bathed in pleasure

Pain of wanting, untarnished. Intensity of inescapability

Ungiving, forgiving, denying. Cobwebs of familiarity

Sweet, sweet smelling agony.

Stranger

Betrayer, son of the night.

Further than far.

Eyes of a cold faraway fire.

Perfect imperfection of hands.

Spine of fetal, feline recoil.

Conflict in the depth of silence.

Lover of the mirror.
Hands;Body;Mind;Heart-Soul?



Piece of Moon

Man of a whole universe.

Glib. Incorrect. Endearing.

Mind of the skies.

Home of his embrace.

Uncovered, blind faith.

Beautifully complete.

Sparkle

Formwave of love.

Ever-denying, control.

Powerful bursts of firework.

Inextricable unpredictability.

Listen: I will possess your heart; Death Cab for Cutie

Luck By Chance?

Relief, I know what it means to feel it in its full entirety. Do I feel anything fully? Now I do.

Third year: First class pass.

All I feel is relief, not happiness. It was never about doing well. To do well is to grow internally, to know you’ve achieved what you’ve wanted to. I do feel apathetic too. When an outcome has no true reflection of hard-work, talent or aptitude how can it be valid? In my bubble of security am I really better than the others? The answer is within me. You are as good as you believe. There can never be a justification in the cruel joke that they call the ‘result’.

For the first time in my architectural life have I thought of ‘The Fountainhead’ as an example; Peter Keating will always know in his heart who he is and how good an architect he is, no matter what the world says.

I look around with sheer disbelief.

Having said this, I am really glad to have gotten it over with; no third year to re-visit. But my empathy lies with those who deserved much more than they were destined for.




The Irreconcilable Trinity:


Deserved, Desired, Destined


If the three made peace, the world would be a better place. Or just teach me how to desire what I am destined for, not more and definitely not less.

Wound

Battered, black and blue

Bruised, crimson and red

Recovered, purple and pink

Healed, yellow and beige



My temporary tattoo, 'sore' reminder of incidents never to be owned.





Read-ing: Last Man in Tower, Aravind Adiga
Listen-ing: Coke studios has some really beautiful mixes :)

Happy-shiny Raindrop faces

Happy, happy rain of your eyes
and the grey sparkled sky

Silent cold shiver of your spine
and goose-fleshed delight of mine

Bronzed wet matted hair of yours
With the smoke and sun in mine

Silver dreams behind your closed eyes
The best of my day-dreams

Splattering, ungraceful,tumultuous wind and rain
Mirror of our desires, unnamed

We wait for the rainbow today
wondering how far off will be, again?

Hot air-balloons in a moon glazed sky
Floating to a land called Away




Clouds float solemnly past me as though at a funeral. The tears have been shed, the window hides in her cloudy veil and the shroud of summer stretches endlessly above. We will mourn the death of summer's insolence a long long time.





PS:
Read: Curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.
Listen: Parachutes, Coldplay

Elec.tri.cal Storm

Mundanities:
The internship has provided a new perspective to architectural perception.
First week of school makes addressing the evolution of a hypothesis to take an ethical stand indispensible as we grow to become 'Architects'.
Rain brings with it paralyzing humidity. Listless mind, body, soul. Extensive site visits around Bombay ascertain its faceted personality, layered, stripped, coded, perpetually unearthed.
The holiday brought with it unbelievably beautiful moments.

Conflict lies safely within.

Read: From Bahaus to our house.
Midnight's Children.

Listen: Your rocky spine
-The great lake swimmers



PS:

You're in my mind all of the time
I know that's not enough
If the sky can crack there must be someway back
For love and only love

Electrical Storm

Musings

I
It is quite often that I find myself feeling like an after party floor, sticky and untreadable. At the end of every birthday party, like return gifts are a tradition, the floor, unfailingly will be sticky, like something that's gone bad of being over-used.
So the post-party sticky floor syndrome is to feel untreadable, umm unwanted probably but in a sticky sort of way. Like something that you don’t want but which will get stickier proportionately to the amount of not-wanting.


II
It’s probably weird to live as a piece of something else. Imagine being a broken piece of mirror. Its identity will always be associated with the whole although it is decisively broken and lives independently. Therefore it lives shadowed in the perception of the whole and identity remains associative, unestablished.
Pieces always feel the pain of the whole. Jagged edges are always virtues of broken parts, the greater puzzle of which the part is, will always ignore the blemish.


III
Living happens inside and outside your head. Life is lived in aspiration. To wait for things to become better. To want to be elsewhere, all the time. In another space, inside one's head. Sometimes in the need to be in another person's story space. To be relevant in alternate spaces. Today will always be lived as tomorrow’s past I read somewhere.



PS: Try looking at yourself in the reflection of a mirror, looking elsewhere and not into your own eyes, it’s like observing another person. I wonder how movie stars watch themselves as somebody else.
Conversely, if some looks into your eyes, you stop observing them. The equation definitively changes, to what, I can’t seem to articulate. Food for thought? Comments will be appreciated :)

New Year Wishlist?

Welcome 2011

The New Year as it seems will hopefully see some progress in the life of many.
I will clear third year architecture.
I will teach at Make A Difference again.
I will do something for mental and physical fitness!
I will give up non-vegetarian food for good.
I will not be scared of accepting how I feel.
I will blog more.
I will post what I write more.
I will think more, constructively.
I will learn music sincerely.

I.will.do

Exodus

Well no, not exactly.
But of course.
How can you tell?
Its in what you say.
But i've only been looking.


Objects have names and names become objects.
People are repeats, better versions of each other.


Lives are lived parallel, orthogonal, intersecting, bisecting, trisecting.
Destinies are a sorry geometry.


Liberation is lonely.
@ Music: SOS



Goodbye 2010




PS: (Read) Invisible Cities
(Listen)A Sort Of Homecoming

Dystopia Utopique

Today's the day when you know exactly who you are, exactly who is important, exactly where you're going, exactly what you want. Its sublime, equilibrium has been attained.
Then you forget how to go the toilet, forget what to say to anyone, forget why you go about things the way you do, then the flux, then the change, disillusionment. Now there's a semblance of the before like it was a dream away.


Civilization is like a crying child who doesn't know if its hungry, sleepy or plain cranky.

The Time Machine

All the love in her life had ended in different proximities. In a frenzied moment she was in X's building, Y's bed, Z's arms and A's head. The past faded into yellow-orange-red-maroon, all at once.

Dormant/Release

And its raining now!!
Finally the skies have given up and unleashed in full glory our beloved monsoon rain. The earth is cooling off and the encounter with each drop is nothing less than violent. These two elements bonded to each other since eternity meet in great grandeur from the months of separation. They are like lovers scorned and re-united by resistance, the reaction as precedented is epic. They have reconciled and the Earth manifests in their fertile union.
I love the rains, they have an innate quality of being so endearing that you can spend lifetimes looking far into sheets of their downfall. They particularly love the attention as well, finding every opportunity to shower their love on you. Moreover its the season of my favorite song!
And no matter how cliche this sounds, snuggling into a comforter with a cup of coffee and the vast volume of rain in the distance makes me feel extremely content and safe. Of course, listening to Jack Johnson only heightens the joy of monsoon :)

Blog held me at gun-point and demanded a post

Death penalty for Amir Ajmal Kasav!
While all the bureaucrats, politicians, government officials, police officers etc. heaved a sigh of relief, the strangest questions rose in my mind. I'd once very vehemently believed that capital punishment is what this man deserves and nothing less. But today i question the very norms of society and its policy-makers. Who gives any human being the right to sentence another man to death, who for that matter gives us the right to sentence lifetime captivity for another living being?
Priorities in this country are misplaced, there are villages without electricity and children still walk 5 kilometers in search of drinking water, and we spend valuable money on the security of an international terrorist. A drain of resources to the tune of 33 crores has been incurred by the government for Amir Ajmal Kasav's security and maintenance. I'm not taking sides, merely speculating at the dismal conditions.
I understand very well that with the hanging of Kasav, all that is associated with the 26/11 attacks and the horrifying impotency of the government displayed by their reaction, will be hung as well. It is a statement to the people, a promise of sorts, re-instating the authority of the government and its stance towards not only terrorism as a global phenomenon but also towards any force that causes harm to the people of India.
Finally the government has taken some action and the people are happy. How is it that they are not able to see through the phoniness? And yet again I remind myself that I do not represent India. The one billion people are not clones of me. "I" will always remain type-casted, marginalised, minoritized and unimportant.
The people who are this country will always be those who have a tarpaulin roof without any amenities or a pukka house with a water connection, depending on who is in power. I cannot expect to be protected under this faux-democratic system. And unless the disparity of our populace is bridged, we will continue to wear our best poker-faces, pretend like nothing happened and 'move on'.





PS: too many things on my mind, I've merely mentioned some things that are bothering me, each statement creates immense conflict which I cannot deal with right now. Phew!

The Thinking Chair

It stood right there in the corner of her room, each morning since she had ever known; it was always there, unwavering, faithful. It was her grandfather’s chair and she remembered climbing onto his lap watching him as he rolled his pipe and settled down to begin a story. The magical quality of the stories was enhanced by their unfolding within those layers of hazy smoke that came from his pipe.
That was a long time ago and since he had passed away the chair was seen as redundant and discarded into her room which was also a makeshift storeroom. She recollected not minding it because it reminded her of him, his tobacco scented breath and the sweet-smell of his beard forever etched in her memory.
Those were some of the best childhood memories she had, the time she spent with him always passed by in a haze and she could keep listening to him for hours. He had the most peculiar way of telling stories, his stories never seemed to have an appropriate beginning or end, they was like one big story of which the smaller stories were instances. She would keep asking him if the story was over and he’d always say, “It’s up to you little one, the story is only finished when you want to hear no more of it.” She remembered thinking about how the story would never end and become like one of the Arabian nights tales because as far as she was concerned, getting tired of any story for her was like getting tired of splashing in monsoon puddles in the heart of Central Street and she surely wasn’t getting tired of that anytime soon.
It made her sigh, childhood fantasies. He called it his thinking chair, he said the chair gave him the inspiration to weave the web of stories and that he wouldn’t have been able to recite a simple tale if he wasn’t sitting on his thinking chair. She had almost believed him and had fervently prayed for its safe return when one of its arm-rests needed repairing and had been sent to the carpenter.
Story-telling had always fascinated her. Conceptualizing another character’s scheme of thoughts had always excited her. After his death, she had tried to gather the courage to give it a try, but being too scared of the outcome, of the very thought that the chair wouldn’t respond to her and refuse to flood her imagination.
It always felt good, thinking of the past, her most intimate joys and insecurities made her feel as good as sipping hot coffee and snuggling into her rug while it rained outside, comforting, that was the word.
She had managed to become a writer, though not a very famous one but she enjoyed her work and that was the only thing that mattered. This visit to her old house to clear out her room because it was being sold, re-introduced her to a world that had been her own, not a very long time ago. This time she decided to give it a try, there was no childish fear anymore, only the inkling of curiosity made her want to give it a shot.
She settled down on the chair and closed her eyes, all she saw was his sparkling face and flashes from the multitude of stories he had told her. At that moment she knew. Under his protective shell of self-sufficiency lay the desire to have a safety net. It had always been her, all his inspiration to narrate stories had been her, her enthusiastic face always ready to get blown away by his tales, and she knew he could have never disappointed her. She was his thinking chair.







This is something i wrote ages ago, figured i must have all that I've written in one place, forgive the violation of space-time.