Alaya Vigyan

I don’t quite remember when I read about it or where for that matter but I haven’t ever forgotten this phrase. I believe it is Sanskrit for a house where one goes on throwing into the basement things they want to do but do not. I suppose the trouble with me is that I live in that basement as I ‘pretend’ to exist outside the house.

I suppose one could say that independence and the realisation that one is finally in charge of oneself brings along with it a hard look at the ‘self’ in question. In the past I have gone to great lengths to avoid this very confrontation and it is not something I take lightly. My sanity - hangs as it does by a thread - depends on my believing my illusions absolutely. My optimism, my insistence on pretty alternate realities and my overt idealism rests on consistently resisting the truth that I am actually a cynic. That in truth I believe in nothing and I feel even less. I must pretend for myself more than anyone else, or else all my I’s fall down. I was seven when my first therapist told me that I was ‘very creative’. In therapy that is code for ‘escapist’. I also discovered years later when I read his reports that he perceived me to be extremely manipulative. He noted that I easily preempted his changing tones and the tenure of his every question and told him exactly what he wanted to hear. He said I had astonishing control over my emotions and never let my face betray any sign of weakness. He wrote that I smiled at all the wrong things. He found me endearing because I was altogether too perceptive but in a quiet, inquisitive, blushing sort of way. He also observed that I would collapse under the burden of my mental ministrations and my grandiose emotional cover-ups. He stated that my behaviour, if it continued, would lead to an emotional breakdown. He predicted a collapse of the facade, most likely a suicide attempt. He recommended me for mild shock therapy at eleven. I had the first of my three subsequent ‘collapses’ three years later.

I have never really been able to view any of it as an illness though. I don’t suppose anyone who is depressed ever views it as an illness… it is merely an ‘awareness’. I am one of the select few that realise that perhaps it would simply be more convenient for me if life were to end today because I would not have to go to the bank or feel alone or pick out what to wear. Many people feel that way…not many feel that way all the time. Even fewer people cover it up with rainbows and ice-cream. I am all too aware that I don’t react to things as most people expect me too. I do not get angry…ever or perhaps it is prudent to say I cannot express anger…ever. I find it a terrifying emotion, perhaps because I have witnessed all too clearly how easily anger morphs into violence, madness. I am told now by the two friend-like acquaintances that I have not managed shake off with my attitude that this is why I don’t have relationships or friends or …what they classify as ‘a life’. And here I always thought it was because I was merely terrified of not being liked!

I argue with them vehemently about how my constant ‘calm’ shows how evolved I am, that it has nothing to do with being numb. I struggle in vain to push my puns into profundity but there is a problem. They are not stupid and don’t accept any of my neologisms for life. They can quote back just as much Nietzsche and Rimbaud without needing to live it like I do to ‘feel’ unique or…something. I find myself to be little more than a verbal fidget in their presence, trying in vain to explain that the reason I prefer to stay in my room or read in the park over bar-hopping is because I simply find all company ultimately exhausting. Perhaps I have been educated beyond my intelligence. Reading people rather than talking to people, thinking rather than doing, lying rather than living…perhaps it is all finally beginning to lose its appeal. I can feel my Utopia fray around the edges as everything it was covering up struggles to swallow me all over again.

Perhaps it is because I fell in love with a nihilist and he made me realise that secretly I was one all along. I don’t want to confront this information, let alone acknowledge it so I now avoid stalking him. We had three conversations over the past two months and each one left me shaken to the core. I asked him what degree he was reading for at Oxford and he told me it was a Dphil in Theoretical Physics. He was polite enough to return the favour and I told him that I was doing my Mst in Women’s Studies and that my research focused on the human rights situation with regards to religion, Nizam-e-Adl and all that. He searched my face for something and then asked whether I believed in any of it.

“What?” I asked.

“Human Rights.” He responded.

I didn’t really know what to say so I said “Don’t you?!”

“I don’t believe in anything. It’s a moot point. I am curious why you do.”

“Well I suppose I like to think we all should have some guarantees just because we are human. Personal dignity being one of them,” perhaps I sounded sullen, I don’t know.

“Yes but ‘liking to think’ and ‘should’s’ aren’t the same thing as believing. Actually, I take that back: they are exactly the same thing. That’s why I don’t really believe in anything,” he said calmly.

I was quiet for a moment as I took in his point. “I can agree with that, but…”

“Can you?” he raised his eye brow at me, smirking a little.

“Yes, but I also think that if we didn’t have any standard of what ‘should’ happen, we would never have any motivation to change what does happen,” there that sounded good enough, didn’t it?

“So you believe that motivations and wants can change things?” he countered.

“Well, perhaps not all things but certainly some things,” I realised belatedly that I was way in over my head.

“But we have no control over those ‘some’ things do we?” he said,

“No, but I don’t think that should stop us from trying for…”

“...For?” he echoed.

“Something, anything” I countered stubbornly.

“I do” and then he got up abruptly, leaving me to sulk for the rest of the week as I was hounded by all my own some’s that had nearly driven me mad. I kept telling myself that I had overcome that blackness that I could escape it because I never let it fester. I didn’t believe in self pity. Then I heard his monotone echo in my ear reminding me that just because I didn’t believe in giving in to self pity, didn’t mean that self pity didn’t drive me in other ways.

I took to working on my papers and my research kept me busy and is keeping me busy. I started writing again, fiction this time. Somewhere in the middle of escaping his words over the next few weeks I even managed to get my US visa. I would overcome this odd little bout of cynicism. I had overcome so much worse. I spent my days strolling through Oxford listening to audiobooks on my iPod and sketching random walls and trees. This city is truly magnificent in the summer and I relished it like only I could. It is hard to hold on to cynicism when one is surrounded by colour. Then I ran into him outside the Bodleian Library on a Tuesday afternoon. He was sitting on the grass reading…well, math. I didn’t really have the courage to approach him again so I thought I would just pass right by him and into the library but he noticed me staring at him. He greeted me in his usual monotone and asked me to join him.

“Were you going to pretend you hadn’t seen me?” he smirked. I could tell he was enjoying my obvious discomfort.

“I really didn’t see you,” I stuttered back at him.

“Which is why you stopped and changed directions, of course,” he asked.

For some reason he was oblivious to how impolite it was to slap someone in the face with the knowledge that you were all-too aware of their obsession with you. I don’t really know how badly I was blushing… it was a habit of face.

“You blush quite violently, you know?” he observed calmly, the expression on his face unwavering. So now I knew. I also knew that he was cruel. I chose not to acknowledge either observation as I sat down.

“So, you like me.” he stated in a bored voice, while staring at me intently waiting for a reaction. Seriously what was wrong with him? Was I not allowed to salvage any measure of pride? I could actually feel tears build up and prick the back of my eyes. I had never been this embarrassed and I had never felt this vulnerable. And heaven knows that 'vulnerable' was my default setting. I was also horribly paralyzed, so getting up and running was not an option.

“My mistake, believe me I think I just got over it,” I whispered, it was the only way to keep the tears out of my voice.

“No you didn’t, actually. If you liked me in the first place you already knew that I wouldn’t care either way, so if anything, my being a complete ass right now would only make you like me more.” He wasn’t triumphant, at least he didn’t sound triumphant. He was what he always was: brilliant, incisive, honest and bored.

“Yes I get it, I’m a masochist. I won’t bother you anymore.” I said in a rush, I really needed to get out of here before I broke down.

“You don’t bother me. I am flattered actually. You are a lot more observant than most women I meet and I wouldn’t mind in the least getting to know you better. As long as we were clear on what it all means,” he said calmly.

I have never hated myself more than for asking the next question that followed, “And what does it all mean?”

“Nothing,” he said. “If we were to see each other it would be about sex and that’s all it would ever be. I don’t really ‘believe’ in relationships” he was waiting for me to react now, I could tell. He wanted me to be offended or petulant or perhaps violent so he could safely put me in one of the neat little 'woman' boxes in his mind. I could tell that he had been on the receiving end of all of those reactions before.

So I took a deep breath, “No of course you don’t.”

He raised his eye brows slightly. I don’t know how I managed it but I was perfectly calm now.

“Although I do think you have presumed a bit much. I won’t deny following you or liking you either but the fact that I never tried to do anything about it should clue you in on the fact that I don’t ‘expect’ anything from you. And that’s what really bothers you isn’t it, ‘expectations’? Well trust me on this it bothers me more. I expect nothing, which is why I did not try. So you humiliating me like this doesn’t really serve any purpose. Although I am sure it is extremely entertaining.”

I was done, I was even slightly proud of myself when I noticed that he was surprised by my response. Of course he didn’t betray any overt reaction, just a subtle tensing of his jaw but that ghost of a smirk disappeared. I got up and left.

Then I cried.

It has been several weeks since that particular fiasco and I have been rummaging frantically through the drawers of my old dreams to keep myself occupied. I have been editing old short stories I had written that I never thought worth much; I have been writing poems for poetry competitions; I have been applying for jobs with the BBC, the United Nations and well anywhere that would have me. I have also been listening to Saeen Zahoor and Iqbal Bano, which tells me that I must be more miserable than I thought. I know all too well that I am barely keeping the blackness at bay. The mere fact that I haven’t left my room in six days is due to the fact that I sporadically burst into tears without provocation, rhyme or reason. My research continues as I sift my day through Pakistani news stories for my thesis and I was finally beginning to approach some semblance of a schedule until today.

He wrote me an email. It took me almost twenty minutes to decide not to delete it and then another ten minutes to read it. It was short, two lines and as with all our confrontations it was a challenge.

I realise you will probably decline, you should decline… but I was wondering if we could have lunch tomorrow. I shall be outside the Ashmolean at 1:30 pm.
-N
I know perfectly well that I should decline and I know perfectly well that I won’t decline. He is right, I am a masochist but then again I have been waiting to feel for a long, long, long time now. I shall feel this, whatever this is or will be.

Wish me luck Captain, I haven’t finished anything in forever.

The Changing of the Guards

I

It happened rather suddenly.
Time struck the Earth still, overhauling its inhabitants skin-side out.

He walked into the tiny tavern, apprehensive of His audience but conversely confident in His purpose. He was completely oblivious to the reception He would receive but was perfectly willing to wait for the one He wanted. The crowd was small and merry in that naïve, frivolous manner that only crowds can be. They would have to do. The best beginnings were always humble.
He would make something of this rabble. Of that He was absolutely certain. So He approached the nearest table and sat opposite a desolate looking youth who seemed almost as lost as his age demanded of him.

“Incomplete, isn’t it?

“What?” the youth murmured sullenly.

“Everything.”

II

They were a number now, twenty nine to be exact. It was always easy to spot when an idea was catching on. A tangible buzz simmered silently in the atmosphere as every head bobbed up and down in unison, acquiescing without reservation to everything He put in it. Yet, He still approached with caution ... knowing all too well the cosmic consequences of a hasty entrance. He was well aware that real allegiances always sprung from that one ephemeral triumvirate: courteous courtship, supercilious sagacity and carefully cultivated fear. They were still raw and sceptical, frequently hounding Him with ‘why’s’ and ‘whens’. That would all soon change but this, this was the time to keep it simple… true even.

“You are all equal and you all deserve to be treated the same.”

He neglected to mention that ‘equal’ and ‘same’ were not exactly the same thing. Equal was how They ought to be treated and sameness was a state contrived to conveniently keep Them under control. Luckily They never really bothered with semantics. That was what made His job easier than even He could have anticipated. It had always been there and now He could practically taste it: a desperate yearning to be part of something that would allow Them to escape their own little worlds. That was what really made Them so easy to manipulate: They were always waiting for an out, any out. And all it took was convincing one of Them - truly, deeply planting the seed. It would sow and scatter itself.

He had picked a good host.
Humble, quiet, intense and ….not at all easy to dismiss.

Soon enough, however, the host began to develop his own ideas. It had always been a problem with operating from among Them. They couldn’t help but improvise and place Themselves in every equation. Much of it had to do with Their blasted call for constant attention. Some might argue that He sponsored the sentiment from His own desperate need. This was why He was inherently incapable of indulging any argument...ever. So far, however, the only changes He could detect were relatively minor. A mere matter of the Man confusing his own mortality with the Voice's omnipotence. It would have to do.

At the end of the day, They all had an innate capacity to take what He gave Them without question. Programmed as They were, to receive more than give. It prevented Them from having to figure it out for Themselves. It saved on time and responsibility and it motivated Them. It worked. And there was absolutely no conceivable reason to question it. He loathed curiosity. Always struggling to identify that infernal congruent where the first ‘why’ cropped up in their vocabulary. He figured that He had managed to stamp it out of most of Them but like a virulent habit of mind it always had the power to arbitrarily pop up in some. Still, He gathered that the ones that stuck with ‘why’s’ would be bred out eventually.

Their presumption would never be tolerated by the rest.

III

A river of souls as far as the eye could see.

Terrifying in its magnitude.

They marched in time to the clinking and clanging of gold chains that bound Them in neat, narrow queues of thousands. The men and women were always kept separate. Only allowed to roam amongst each other on select days decided by the Man.

The men walked in front. Their chains gleaming, molten in the blazing midday sun as They murmured the Words the Man had given them. The Words helped lull Them into a complacent haze, one that now bound the land. The Words inspired a distinctive brand of drowsy comfort that was impenetrable. Some would come to call it security. They murmured incoherently under Their breath as They trudged their way up the mountain day in, day out. The women were bound in ropes behind them. They were clad from head to toe in dark drapes: their eyes shut, their minds shut and their mouths shut. They did not murmur the words, mutely following the followers.

Among the legion two had been overlooked. They scampered in and out of the Man’s presence never straying in his line of vision long enough to be given the message and handed the rules for their initiation. They were innocuous and rather easy to overlook. They were young and the Man eventually decided to just let them be. Two children could hardly be of any consequence to the grand design. Moreover, one of them was a girl.
They couldn’t change anything.

IV

The Girl never understood any of it. The rules, the unending routine and the eternal obedience was suffocating. And all so that They could supposedly survive something that would someday prove to be 'eternal'. She refused to believe Them when They insisted that being miserable now was the only way to be happy then. Where ‘then’ was They never knew. It was nowhere in sight.

There were so many things she felt ashamed of and she was never able to understand why. She felt ashamed for wanting to be pretty; she felt ashamed for wanting to talk to the Boy who roamed the camps and who had seen her coming out of the lake without her clothes on; she felt ashamed for not feeling ashamed that he had seen her naked; she felt ashamed for wanting; she felt ashamed for not believing the Man who stood on the Mountain; she felt ashamed for not discarding the answers he gave to the questions They never asked by avoiding the ones that They did; she felt ashamed for wanting not to believe in Him; she felt ashamed for not caring beyond today and what she hoped tomorrow would bring.

She felt.
And the feeling was always shame.

And so she did what those who ‘feel’ shame do.

She pretended.
She faked an entire existence, opinion, appearance, agreement and obedience. It was rather easy in the end. They only required appearances and cared little if those were cultivated or contrived as long as they were there. Finally, she could walk among them freely. She tread softly and concealed herself in the shadows that the mob cast as They walked along the scorching sand. As she followed in obedience, They never noticed that her hands weren’t tied.

All she really knew for a fact was that the Truth got you killed and the Lie could protect.

She could lie and lie well.
And so she survived.


V

The Boy had observed a kind of knowing in her quiet subversiveness and it haunted him. It was quite subtle but he had managed to pick up on it. Perhaps because he had been searching for it. He felt that his hunt for another was finally proving fruitful. Being free had proven to be a rather lonely business. He observed a subtle scepticism in her stance and he had carried that around in his chest for weeks. So he nurtured the hope of her with him everyday as he shifted in Their shadows across the timeless landscape.

Occasionally They would ask questions. On these rare occasions the Man would always respond patiently “Because He commands it”. They always felt that this answered all their reservations, that it calmly polished over any itchy doubts. He never understood why They could never comprehend the blatant farce, why it simply didn't compute. Surely, so many different questions couldn’t possibly have just one answer. It wasn’t even an answer, truth be told … it was an even bigger question. The Boy knew then that the Man must be very clever to know how to answer all questions with one answer and still be believed, revered even. So he never asked his questions. His curiosity always seemed trivial when set against the Man’s infallible answer.

She was different. She never expressed any curiosity in what the Man said and seemed awfully content to merge in with the landscape. Whenever their eyes happened to meet across the crowd he saw that she didn’t believe the Man either. Neither did she care about what the Man had to say about Him. Yet the curiosity captured in her eyes could hardly be contained. It was of a different vein altogether, something he didn't think he would ever be able to fathom. A deep yearning to understand the 'underneath'; the 'root'; the 'mystery of and in everything. To scale every treacherous depth. That curiosity practically spilled over. It was too real to be taken in with one universal answer or any call to obedience. It was what had stopped him in his tracks that day by the trees when he saw her come out of the lake. It wasn’t her naked form or her beauty… it was curiosity. He had never witnessed it in anyone his age. They never looked at anything like that. The children did but they eventually always lost it, usually around the time they learned to speak. A child would ask a question and They would counter the curiosity by binding it with their chains of tradition. The frail glimmer would dim immediately until it faded completely.

It was all about Control and They all agreed that the Control was all about Power. Power had always been a problem with their kind and so it seemed the safest course to give all of it to something that was more Powerful than Power.

Even if it wasn’t there.


VI

A day came when They had been marching for what seemed like a thousand years and was probably much more. They moaned and complained now. They no longer felt that effervescent passion for the rules that once united Them.
They weren’t changing the world anymore. They weren’t even changing themselves.

The Boy and the Girl had known from the beginning that no matter what the Man said or what the Man said He said (they could never really tell the difference) none of this had ever been about Change. It had been about not changing. It had always been about standing still for all eternity. They just did it by constantly moving...by trudging forward aimlessly. It was all about following so that They could remain in a convenient stasis-like sludge that would flow in whatever direction was demanded of it.

They never saw it. They couldn't see it and the Boy and Girl had learned to keep silent over the years. They noticed that as ritual began to lose its lustre, They grasped on to the chains even more desperately. Now wearing them like garlands, wrapped them tightly around their necks. They deluded themselves into thinking the cuffs were studded with diamonds. The women began to view the ropes as yards of silk.

Obedience was an integral part of the blind belief demanded of them. The Boy often asked the Girl, as they walked amidst the throng, if she thought that it was Them who had to believe blindly or whether the belief itself was blind? She could never comprehend the question. The only absolute she could conceive of was 'feeling'. There was simply no alternative to feeling. They always approached the Blind Belief as they would a jigsaw puzzle, gathering a trinket piece every few decades.
They never solved it.

VII

The Man always kept himself at a distance. He always felt that mingling with Them might somehow corrupt his purpose. Over the years he had begun to forget much of what his purpose was, although he knew for certain that if he kept them on course he would succeed in it. One thing he did remember was that part of his instructions was to make every last one of them follow the Words. Sometimes he felt uneasy about the Boy and the Girl he had lost in the crowd so many years ago. He constantly chided himself for having overlooked them, for not coaxing them into compliance as He should have done.

Over the years he had begin to notice how They would all occasionally lose sight at a moments notice and break rank. They had even begun to ask some of the old ‘why’s’ again. Whenever it happened he always thought about the two young one's he had lost. While it was true that the Boy and Girl were hardly any kind of tangible threat, he found himself unable to shake the Voice’s apprehension and rage about leaving anyone behind. He vaguely recalled something about how all of this could unravel at the slightest demonstration of disobedience.
But nothing had happened yet.

And he had to admit, if only to himself, that he could no longer see them. Over the years the Boy and the Girl had become invisible and neither he nor any of Them had been able to locate the two in their midst. Still, he was positive about their presence. He knew without doubt that they were still there, skulking silently among the legions. Their presumptuousness was a perpetual pressure choking his heart, silently mocking everything he said, did and would come to do.

VIII

A minute, a millennia: it had gone on too long now, to be traceable. The path was carved in concrete, deep and consecrated by the footprints of the following. Its legitimacy was its length. Its longevity- a testimony to its strength. They had always been susceptible to the notion that if something was old enough it ought to be kept that way, just because someone else had at sometime kept it that way. The Man became a legend of insurmountable proportions. They still followed in his tracks and left a place for him at mealtimes. Many would argue that he was more powerful as a Phantom than he had ever been alive.

They had never really been a species conducive to Change. And whenever Change came it hated having to deal with Them, because They were immune to all its beautiful intricacies. They sat and slumbered nearly oblivious to Change as it enacted its subtle dance in the backdrop of their days, always longing in vain for a rapt audience. It was nearly imperceptible through the fog of absolutes. Yet every hundred years it wafted through the land without fail because there were two who welcomed it. Two, who waited for it. The Boy and the Girl were the only ones who recognised that Change was the only thing that didn’t. And so every hundred years they were reborn in silence to counteract Change into that generation. Every hundred years they were allowed to utter one sentence of their Truth. Some listened, most turned away, others pelted them with rocks but the Boy and the Girl had only this one privilege. That every hundred years, they were granted a moment where they would speak and be heard.

They always resisted. Some were broken by that resistance but most of them were frightened by it and broke others. ‘Don’ts’ and ‘Cant’s’ were by now a habit of face, of skin and of mind. The predictability of the pattern was infallible. Even though the Boy and Girl no longer hid in the shadows they were still not openly mutinous. They waited. Waited for their sentences to collect in the well of consciousness and inimitable Time, until there were pages. And someday there would be a Book to counteract the Words.

This Book would map the span of thought...free thought.

IX

Every hundred years He would tally the numbers and there was a birth of a smile which never carried to full term. It never prospered long. Every hundred years there were those Two; always staring up at Him, blatantly defying His inevitability. Every hundred years they refused to adapt and bow their heads. Their fruitless revolt often seemed as permanent and intractable as His own assault. He felt that the Boy and Girl saw Him clearly from their pitiful position and this always made Him uncomfortable. None of Them ever saw Him or dared to even want to.
Those Two, however, stared up at Him unblinking. They always rejected Him. It usually made Him more apprehensive than angry because He had no idea how they did it. He could never spot them from his pulpit. It never made any sense. It also made Him feel somehow incomplete, cosmically lacking. And so every hundred years there was a thunderstorm and a flood and many of Them would die. As They perished, They would cling tightly to their chains and implore for His grace but those Two would rather drown than grasp the chains for support.
And yet they never drowned.

Sometimes He found himself feeling jealous of their odd brand of belief. What else were they searching for when they could actually see Him? They were not Blind. Why then did they not Believe?
Every hundred years He would ask them “What makes you think you can possibly win?” and the Boy and the Girl would smile and echo in unison “You do.”

And every hundred years He felt a terrifying twinge of Doubt.

Loser's Rhapsody

I,
The winner who always loses;
Crushed beneath virulent praise
Filled to the brim with promise
As the pariah whispers lullabies in my ear so that I may breathe in my sleep

I live the winner
So that I may love the loser

Crouching quietly in an idle corner of some rapists rhapsody
I calmly compose my desolate canvas with spectral tears
I am complete without reason
Taking my time with my image as it tangles with my ideas

And yet the glamour of loneliness remains too potent to pass up for this perfunctory permanence of genuine emotion.
Why must I quiver and quake at the Altar of Answers?
Why must I long for the salvation of a Smile?
What laughter is worth the cost of this Lie?

Loneliness is Truth;
is the flavour,
is the fragrance,
is the music,
is the solitary pinch of rain,
is the perfunctory peck on the cheek,
is the idle bounce of step on a bad day,
is the lost glance met by a stranger and dropped with a smirk,
is the sound of your stilettos clicking on the asphalt,
is the cruel lover,
is the smell of spring riding the April wind,
is the person sitting next to you on the bus,
is the mirror as you wipe away water stains,
is the mob that sees you and the crowd that doesn’t.

In Alone-ness lies the mythology, theology, cosmology and chronology of the Human condition.
And in Aloneness lies the dream of something else without the hope of it.
Alone-ness is the Big Dipper,
Alone-ness is the All

And the Loser who still wins is All Alone.

The Traitor

“…I told my mother ‘Mother I must leave you

preserve my room but do not shed a tear

Should rumour of a shabby ending reach you

it was half my fault and half the atmosphere’”

It is rather amusing really, the consistency with which life manages to revise your assumptions.

I suppose it ought to be amusing…

But it isn’t.

All you really know anymore is that this is more than you wanted. It is more but in its own way it is too different from what you ever expected to be any easier. Then again no one ever said it was supposed to be easier. It’s the beginning of a new year, a time that follows all the old clichés of beginnings and endings at their most omnipotent. There is nostalgia and melancholy and if you’re really unlucky the element of old illusions shattered. It’s a bit of all of that and a bit more, there is still that lingering unease at the back of your mind of something you haven’t done yet, because you no longer know what it is. People are wrong when they say it’s hard to find what you’re looking for, the hard part is figuring out what to do with yourself once you’ve found it. There is no security in losing all your smokescreens.

It is a nakedness that would put even the most promiscuous to shame.

That is why the notion of having a body and mind at the same time always troubles you. While you may love having a mind, you have always loathed having a body. Even as you relish having a ‘different’ mind, you can never take pride in having a ‘different’ body. It has something to do with that pathetic propensity to still want to be perceived as beautiful more than feeling it. That’s cosmopolitan culture for you, no matter how far you evolve as a person or try to, you still root yourself with the one appreciative glance cast in your direction by a complete stranger. The fact that the ‘right’ body type or hair type or skin type or clothe type can still somehow trump who you are terrifies you and so you make sure never to put yourself in that equation. You convince yourself that the only one worthy of you will look straight at what you feel you are and not what you look like you are. And you know that doesn’t happen so it gives you a good, legitimate excuse to scoff at ‘The Game’ for most of your life. Your story and ‘your’ version of it have all allowed you to avoid this mess. But now you are re-thinking it all... you have been spotted scoping out the rules and the right technique to consider to help you succeed.

You filthy little hypocrite!

It is the reason why you have problems with words like “Love” when there are people attached at the end of the sentence. You have always been inherently uncomfortable with writing about romance in tangible terms. You never wrote love poems. You have also been altogether too comfortable making everything else romantic to overcompensate for this all-too-obvious deficiency. One can trace it down to anything really…most standard clichés apply all too well for you. You have your pick of daddy issues, broken mirrors and cracked crowns, the naïve girl falling for the childhood love who chose otherwise …but it all boils down to pride at the end.

Romance requires the relinquishing of pride. The pride that is connected to admitting you crave it, the pride that links in with asking for it or looking like you want to be asked, the pride that plays with a fear of rejection and the “He should go first” syndromes but most of all it is the pride of admitting you can’t do it alone, that you with all your smoked mirrors and all your art and all your poems and all your jokes and all your colours and all your dreams and all your songs and all your sarcasm are not enough.

You could never admit that. Not after having survived everything you did and that too by retaining the ability to laugh and sing and dance. How could you admit that something as trite, hackneyed and … ‘commercial’ as “Love” was enough to make you give in to needing someone besides yourself. You couldn’t do it, you didn’t do it and now you want me to help you admit to yourself that the only way to begin is by letting go of the one thing you base yourself on keeping in check? You want me to convince you to admit you need to give up your pride?

I cannot.

But I can ask it of you, for both our sakes.

I think even you will admit that the thought of being alone forever terrifies you as much as it does me. All you need to do is admit that it terrifies you more than being with someone else.

So admit it, damn you!

Get over your pride and admit it.

Get hurt.

Get willing to finally get hurt by the one thing that hurts either way.

You say you have found your answer with Arthur Rimbaud and are caught by his words “Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life” in the Song of the Highest Tower,1872. That this is the sentence you waited for a life time to come across. That it tells you why you read, why words matter to you more. That it is the sentence that explains you completely and by virtue of not being your own makes you feel less alone than you usually do. You feel privileged to have found it at just 25 and now you can finally move forward in a line instead of a circle. That this year is hopeful today because these words offer the vindication you needed to finally be able to continue with all your unfinished projects and half-assed dreams because you no longer need them to fit some illusion that could explain all the subtext.

Today was the right day to find this sentence, slow and over-sensitized from the moment you opened your eyes at 11 in the morning, you lay in for ten minutes listening to Dylan crooning “Love minus Zero”; you took a shower and ended up writing random poems on the steamed glass and feeling a lot more excited about Papaya shampoo than one should; you took your bike down to city centre and sat listening to a street musician play ‘Amazing Grace’ on his bagpipes and you cried a little for some reason; you decided to watch a movie…alone…and it ended up being “The Reader” which struck those silent chords that some movies manage to strum idly in the background of the rest of your day; you did your groceries and decided not to buy any cheese and started the new year with strawberries and iceberg lettuce for lunch; you walked the rest of the way home listening to Martha Wainwright’s Cohen cover of “The Traitor” and you felt the overwhelming urge to write something, anything, everything.

I suppose that’s what this is: you’re little something, you’re little anything and you’re little everything.

Don’t let it be for nothing.

The judges said you missed it by a fraction

rise up and brace your troops for the attack

Ah the dreamers ride against the men of action

Oh see the men of action falling back…

A Dance of Desperation

“O how often she wants to get close to him with seductive words, and call him with soft entreaties! Her nature denies it, and will not let her begin, but she is ready for what it will allow her to do, to wait for sounds, to which she can return words”
-Ovid’s Metamorphosis

So this is what ‘they’ went on and on about. Rather anticlimactic, one would think…no “I”! Rather anticlimactic ‘I’ think and we already know that ‘I is someone else’.

Such is my present place, this space that I am forced to sit in and pretend to breathe from. It is a regurgitating well of disappointment, lingering nostalgia and that desperate urge to get back to that pretty pedestal of perennial optimism that I used to command so well. I miss that girl, with her positively Panglossian window to the world or whatever passes for the direct opposite of nihilism these days.
It still lingers in some forgotten cracks I suppose, that romance in betrayed beauty. That somewhat desperate need to see, hear, smell and touch some purpose in everything is not completely dead. But it is desperate now.
Desperation is distinctly unbecoming.

So this is what it feels like to lose your heart, your head, your surface and whatever passes for the thing that lies beneath. Why do people glamorise broken hearts so damn much? They are not glamorous, they are pathetic and the illusion one grows up with is trite and stupid when it shatters. I find that the cruelest fate for the perennial optimist is to discover that she only ever falls in love with the perennial nihilist. I have spent my past term reading altogether too much into the philosophical and literary undertones of ‘the Other”. I wish I could treat it in the general feminist vein of De Beauvoir or Freidan and debate semantics, but trust me to have to recognise it in my being as that elusive ‘truth’ I was so set on stumbling upon for so long. That no matter where I go or how far I get, I will always seek in opposition to my self. What I want and what I want to be will never inhabit the same space and so I continue to stare at him from a distance (there’s that word again)… desperately.

By chance, the boy, separated from his faithful band of followers, had called out ‘Is anyone here?’ and ‘Here’ Echo replied. He is astonished, and glances everywhere, and shouts in a loud voice ‘Come to me!’

She calls as he calls.

I chalk out my library schedule and my meal times in accordance with optimizing my chances to set sight on him and while doing so I work actively at remaining as inconspicuous as I possibly can. I have gauged from my observation of “active social behaviour” that the modus operandi when one “has a crush” is to dress up and not down. Generally I have been acknowledged as the girl who arms herself well with her apparel, I coordinate colours and costume jewellery like camouflage, they are put together just right to balance out being noticeable but not ‘noticed’. My face beneath its subtle coat of paint is too naked for me to tolerate but lately I have taken to exposing it. I wear myself and choke on myself in a corner as I hear him speak about the non-ness of existence while I so dearly covet its “other”. Sadly, I realise more than ever that this is what draws me to him so, the fact that he does not see anything or need to and I do see everything and need to. I envy him his nonchalance.

I never thought I could envy that in anyone.

I find that even in my fantasies of him, I do not covet sex. This surprises me, because I thought that leaving my former self and finally being able to openly acknowledge my Ignostic affiliations would allow me to pursue physical pleasure sans guilt. I am a tad deflated to recognise that it was never guilt that stopped me in the first place and that it was that notion of “closeness”…of sharing that I desperately needed to precede the act. This proves to be a bit of an oxymoron considering that one needs to be “open” to allow oneself to be “close” to someone: to let them kiss your neck, hold your hand, smell your hair and share your sheets. You need to trust that they will not curtly nod the 'morning after' and tear to bits that shy web you are weaving of ‘wanting to be with them’. That they will not laugh in the face of your lilting ministrations to get them into your mind, hoping they will like it there. So my mind has an issue with sex.

My body and virtue are waiting …desperately…for my mind to get over it.

He looks back, and no one appearing behind, asks ‘Why do you run from me?’ and receives the same words as he speaks. He stands still, and deceived by the likeness to an answering voice, says ‘Here, let us meet together’. And, never answering to another sound more gladly, Echo replies ‘Together’, and to assist her words comes out of the woods to put her arms around his neck, in longing.

In the past few months I have deliberated myself into oblivion. I have tried to find a sense of ‘certainty’ in attraction and lust. I have used, reused and discarded everything from ‘Fallibilism’ to ‘Determinism’ to ‘Fatalism’ to ‘Solipsism’ to ‘Agathism’ and have stumbled back upon Nihilism, a position I have major qualms starting from in the first place. It is unpleasant recognising that one is a ultimately a masochist.
It leads to…desperation.

Much of my state is exacerbated by the fact that I have been reading Leonard Cohen, Simone De Beauvoir, Ovid and Jorge Louis Borges in tandem. I particularly enjoy the latter in ‘The House of Asterion’ opening with “I know they accuse me of arrogance and perhaps of misanthropy, and perhaps of madness. Such accusations (for which I shall exact punishment in due time) are derisory. It is true that I never leave my house but it is also true that its doors (whose number is infinite) are open day and night…” But each offers only a corner of caprice, nothing concrete for me to define this need or take charge of my deepening affections. I suppose it was a tad naïve of me to think I could finally find the convenient corner of philosophy to dump ‘unrequited love’ in and be done with it.

That’s probably the Echo in me.

He runs from her, and running cries ‘Away with these encircling hands! May I die before what’s mine is yours.'
She answers, only ‘What’s mine is yours’

Stand-up Tragedy

“It’s a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your mind of what your about …will come true. That kind of a thing, you kinda have to keep to your own self, because it’s a fragile feeling and you put it out there and somebody will kill it. So its best to keep that all inside.”
-Bob Dylan, Interview for Rolling Stone Magazine

“People are people wherever you go”, I cant really recall who said it, but the past few days all I have been thinking about is how its not really the fact that people don’t change, but that we don’t. I suppose a more trite spin on the existing epithet would be to say that I am the same, wherever I go. Ordinarily this ought to provide some consolation, constancy of character and all that… it doesn’t. I find that in my mind, too much rested on my changing along with my time zone and one transition without the other leaves something to be desired. It’s a lot like finding yourself lost in a music store, standing in front of a copy of the brand new Dylan album and missing your wallet. It’s being able to see and absorb a new life, but still being too scared to seize it and live it as you thought you would be able to if you were removed from the you, you were once bound to.

I’ve been going through quite a few of those “Tangled up in Blue” days, listening to way too much Dylan and Cohen for my own good, even reading both in my sparse spare moments and I find that there is a lingering loneliness that accompanies taking flight. Sure, it is seldom perceived under the sheer volume of new experiences and new insights, but it is there…the not having a sounding board part. I suppose it would be natural to say I miss home, while still being very clear that I don’t want to go back, but its much weirder the things that I do miss: things like Abbot road ke Channay and waiting for the light to turn green at Kalma Chowk while I’m heading to tell mom about something new I discovered, or read, or wrote, or thought or want. I miss the sense of security that comes with knowing there is no pressure to succeed or ‘be’ anything right now, that all that will come later. That, more than anything has changed. Later is now, Here is come and I find that the words are actually flooding my skin. Every day, while I wade my way through my endless readings I can feel them buzzing under my hairline and I know that if ever there was a time for me to write, or find what it was I wanted to write about in depth…it is now and it is here and that scares the shit out of me. That accompanied by the sheer, overwhelming sense of inadequacy that this city has the potential to hit you with all the time.

“Am I good enough?”
Probably not.

“Can I?”
Can you?.

“Cant I?
Cant you?.

“Will I fail?”
Do you want to fail?

“Will I succeed?”
Do you want to succeed?

“Will I be a roaring success?”
Whyever would you want to be a roaring success?

“Will I be labelled the Town Clown?”
Haven’t you always been the Town Clown?

“Does it matter?”
I don’t know, does it?

“Of course it matters!”

“Does it matter enough to stop me?”
Will you let it?

I suppose it is mostly the fact that I still don’t know how to talk to people. Sure I can babble – hopefully endearingly – to no end but I can’t confidently seek company. I am one of those quintessentially accidental, social junkies. I will mesh with backgrounds, contrive to place myself in situations where I can be alone with a book, while still remaining in a room which allows opportunity for company should I seek it. This allows me to keep my options open and bail at any given moment. Actual, no-nonsense dinner’s and parties still petrify me to no end, so I always pretend I have extra readings or laundry to do.
Besides numbing one’s senses a notch via inebriation, what else does one do at these things?

Although if I am remotely honest with myself it isn’t that - I have met and continue to meet and converse with more people now than I have ever done in my locked up life, it is the connection I miss: of choosing the company, of seeking out someone with similar interests to actually ‘talk to’ rather than just ‘talk with’. I have never really been great at juggling loads of people in my life, ironically I tend to be rather monogamous in my friendships. One real connection is more than enough for my over sensitized being, I can relish it and rest in it with ease.

Mostly it is the fact that I still can’t seem to shun my fucking rose-tinted glasses. I still cannot perceive steel grey hues and stark realities, I still need to paint the edges of every morning with lilacs and nutmeg. I still need to romanticise absolutely everything: cups of coffee, my bicycle, the weather, old bookstores and conversations with strangers on street corners. I cannot possibly conceive casual hook-ups and late night bar binges. I still need to be at the receiving end of ‘intellectual conversations’ rather than initiating them, and when I do happen upon one of those I still need to be the one laughing at myself. I suppose that is something I can still be grateful for, because not many people are prone to laughing at themselves here, most tend to consider themselves the Indent and Full stop to every possible sentence they utter.
This scares me like it never did before. Some part of me always relished the idea of being the naïve, romantic, sarcastic, whimsical idealist I was. It thrived on being the wordsmith carving in a language no one was interested in listening to anymore because it was so far removed from the granite reality of tomorrow. I shall admit that I quite liked being the perennial poet. I fancied myself this last, lost Balladeer forever trumpeting Beautitudes that were reminiscent of all the great poets that drove me to write: Dylan, Barrie, Cohen, Ginsberg, Tennyson. Some part of me, actually enjoyed the impracticality that came with being that lost cause, that odd little sprite that few could understand.

But it is nothing short of terrifying today.

The underlying denial is so palpable it has been driving me to tears –literally- at the weirdest of junctures, in coffee shops and while waiting in line for the ATM machine. The fluttering tension behind my eyelids is so ripe it ought to be sliced with a machete.

See, it is an actual choice that needs to be made now.
It is no longer a far off ideal.

Crunch time, if you will.

I must either choose to continue as myself - as Beentherella, who apparently is real and not a manufactured figment of my need for attention or I can change tack and be what I need to be to be something more. Even as I write this I can hear Mohammad Ali roaring in my head “I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be. I'm free to be what I want to be.”

You see the dichotomy arises in the simple fact that those who can stick to that sense of individuality, that notion of freedom and autonomy are special. They are it, and they know it. I am unsure on both counts. Wavering and completely low on ‘faith, trust and pixie dust’. Exactly how much of a narcissist does one have to be, to believe that they are exempt from ordinariness, that they can push beyond it because –for some reason- they deserve better and shall get it?

Is it really only about believing it enough and letting that carry you, sustain you and challenge you to face the alone-ness that comes with being a troubadour of any sort? Because no matter how much of an idealist I am on my better and badder days

…that is a tall order.

Stranger in a Strange Land

It’s a funny place to start from, really…a Beginning. It’s almost as if one needs to shed skins and begin from scratch. Life is different now, as is she and this is disconcerting. It begs the question: so what happened to the old Maria? Did she just dump her in her overzealous quest to start over and trade her in for ‘Maria’ ala Espaneol. Or is she just waiting to see where the other one fits in?
Then again, that one was never much good at ‘fitting in’.

That is the problem with beginnings, they presume that nothing ever existed prior to the present precipice and it is hard to put pictures to things she can hardly remember or re-construct in her head or heart anymore. Perhaps this is the reason why she has found it so hard to venture out of her self-imposed sabbatical. Writing about oneself must be a much harder exercise when one is supremely conscious of the fact that they cannot recognise a thing about themselves.
Oxford, in a nutshell is a bashful beginning, but a beginning nonetheless.

She might recognise the purely tourist-ical overtones of the following notion, but there really is ‘something’ about this city that has the ability to make her seem bigger than she is, even to herself. On one hand this may prove to be counter-intuitive, as she was pretty much everything to herself from the get go, alone and all too comfortable with her alone-ness. But it is doing wonders for her self esteem. Her face shimmers every time a random check-out counter clerk, asks if she is a student and she can claim a discount and a smile from a complete stranger all in one nod.
Somewhere over the past month she has learned to get over her fear of counters and the people behind them… she is by no means confident, but she can ask an actual question now without hyper-ventilating or subsequently melting. She has also learned that washing one’s clothes takes less time than drying them, even though both exercises are mechanically accomplished. Above all she has learned that somehow paying for a crate of coke in pounds makes it taste like an elixir… an unbidden luxury, a taste of the familiar, of home, of past, present and future. Coca Cola, remains her only constant somehow bridging all her September ‘Me’s’ to the ‘I’s’ of her October.
Its rather amusing how one day on a plane can reverse the social order of an entire being.

This month has taught her a few things that she probably didn’t know about Maria.

Maria enjoys sitting in crowds and getting lost, specifically the steps on the mural in City centre. All it takes to completely fade into the architecture is a cup of coffee, a sketchbook and charcoal and Dylan crooning in the Basement Tapes through her head phones.

Maria cannot survive without scarves and woollen caps.

Maria adores riding a bicycle in the morning, periodically locking and unlocking it to various posts around the city and waiting to see it waiting for her, it is currently her only companion constant.

Maria inherently disapproves of beer being the staple British social conduit.

Maria still thinks that libraries are magical and she hasn’t managed to tire of them, despite taking up temporary residence in the Bodelian.

Maria still collects key chains. They are now the only thing she can afford, asides from Primark half-off’s -which is not something to boast about- she is told.

Maria is capable of making friends, she even tries to. She also appears to enjoy company for longer than 2 hours if need be. This is supremely surprising.

Maria can dance, she is taking salsa lessons and has not tripped all over herself despite her devastatingly attractive, and proportionally homosexual instructor.

Maria is trying very hard to feel like a feminist without acting like one.

Maria enjoys studying, her long walks and her even longer procrastinating pauses over bridges, at street corners, on random benches and in museums.

Maria no longer feels lost. Ironic, considering her rapidly flailing sense of direction and the fact that ‘getting lost’ is an exercise she is pedalling to a martial art.

Maria no longer feels ugly, or stupid. This is particularly pressing, considering she is in a city where almost everyone is smarter than she is.

Maria is learning to appreciate the true value of a hot shower and comfortable shoes completely lacking in any aesthetic appeal.

Maria loves the theatre and the Ballet. Apparently she does not mind grown men dancing in tights half as much as most grown men do.

Maria is learning to appreciate the occasional cup of a Mocha Latte on a cold day. She is also beginning to appreciate the fact that cookies can easily constitute a basic food group when basic food groups no longer retain -what ought to be - their inherent personality: flavour.

Maria has taken to collecting socks and writing long letters to people in her head rather than on paper.

Maria still appreciates the majesty of freshly sharpened pencils, blank pages and funny hats.

Maria still loves the rain, she has even learned to appreciate umbrella’s.

Maria is not missing the other one… too much.

She is still silly, sentimental, hopelessly hopeful and hoping to accidentally fall into a random handsome stranger’s unsuspecting arms. She still misses new cartoon releases and she is desperately searching for pizza that actually tastes like pizza in this city.

All in all, I am beginning to think that she might be worth getting to know better.

Tartarus

"He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home” - The Pilgrim (Kris Kristofferson)

I believe in the typical life of a mammal they call this intermission of self ‘hibernation’. Those winters where the Great Mountain Grizzly skulks into its solitary cave to wait out a season it has little care for until it can stumble again upon the one it does. Only it is summer, and my cave consists of mostly memories; severe bouts of nostalgia; words of others than myself; packing boxes and strains of folk music. I have been boxing up my past and recent present quite literally and soaking up both the heat and inertia that the experience offers in full, till my time comes.

The past months have been spent avoiding the sweltering heat outside, reading The Beats – Ginsberg and Kerouac, mostly – and listening to far too much of the old folk blue banter. I have observed something about American literature (the good kind), it always talks of the illusion of movement, but it never does. Sure, there is a lot of hitchhiking and old Harley’s to be found on roads to self discovery but no movement in motivation or character. One is deluded into movement by remaining perfectly still. It is beautiful. It is slow and sticky, this soul cruising... and I am living it.
I am still.
Kerouac makes mention of the list of 30 essentials to composing prose honestly and for once I feel that I need to listen to someone other than myself to be mindful of the metamorphosis taking place beneath the surface of my skin. I shall use his principles randomly and without care for their ramifications, as the man would have wished. I have missed communing with myself far too much these past months, and the following is purely an exercise in self-gratification.

Nothing more, nothing less…in short, everything.

2. Submissive to everything, open, listening

It is a hard task counting down ones own life in the dial of a wristwatch, but it is altogether too easy when one tries to. This is disappointing, clocks tend to move much slower in the summer, especially when one’s anima is bursting with the anticipation for…anticipation.
I can hear Old songs. I hear Old rights and I hear Old wrongs. I hear them far too clearly to counteract my upchuck reflex as I skate over memories that ought to expire from sheer re-cyclability. I see an old clock maker sitting on a desk in a tiny room twiddling idly with a dial that is to decide all my moments: my pasts, my presents and my futures and all the probabilities in between. He appears to me simultaneously careless and careful; careless of the consequences of his actions and careful of the mundane pride of perfection he sets store to his task.

Four o’ clock in the evening: Somewhere, somehow there is push and a pull, the birth of a flight for freedom… for inspiration.
Seven o’ clock in the morning: There is a fall, a voyage down a birth canal.
Eleven o’ clock in the morning: There is a struggle and a beginnings of a beginner’s smile.
Nine o’ clock in the evening: There is a bond with tears and terror’s.

Midnight: Somewhere else
Twilight: Someone else

Dawn: Back again

The freshly soldered clock ticks away its idle ode to a life never lived for the fear of perfection and the absence of it, paid for in micro-chasms.

10. No time for poetry but exactly what is

F.u.c.k.

I do not know when it happened, but somewhere along my route to emancipation I developed a dastardly double standard. Five years ago a friend coerced me out of my inhibitions and asked me to try alcohol and I did. Another one convinced me to try dancing on a party table and I did. Yet another one thought smoking weed for an asthmatic might be fun and I tried that too before I almost gave up.

It has always been the words that are the problem, they have also always been the solution.

I find that I have severe qualms about writing ugly things. Ugly words, ugly images…the crass, depraved honesty that I find all too apparent in my existence must always be kept absent from my words because that would spoil … ‘it’. I have never be-fouled the world within my world, my Neverland’s and utopia’s must remain pretty if they are to prosper at all. I have never really told the truth in its element.

So…FUCK!

19. Accept loss forever

Here is what I know: I know that it bothers me how badly I need to feel important. I know that I miss chances just so I can begrudge someone, anyone…something, anything. I know that I am longing for something that I will -in all probability-deny myself if it ever finds me. I know that loneliness is a fragrance one finds neatly folded in the bedsheets after they wake up tossing in the middle of a bed without ever needing to choose a side to sleep in. I know that the past can never come back, but it doesn’t really need to because it lives in your skin. I know that I hate the fact that I can see people’s thoughts and I never like what I see. I know that I want more and will probably get more, but it will still never be ‘more’ enough.

4. Be in love with your life

Little Mermaid Diary , November 29, 1992
Late Night Time
Dear Diary,
I am reading the Peter Pan book and it is much harder than watching the cartoon. I always have to look inside the dictionary and there is a word that is not even in the dictionary: it is “Hoop La!”. It is the only word Tinkerbell says in the book. I think the reason it is missing from the dictionary is because Tinkerbell is a fairy and does not speak English.
In the book by Mr J.M Barrie, Peter is very childish, which is why Wendy pretends to be his mother. But Peter also wants to kiss Wendy! I think Peter is stupid.

But I really like Neverland and the Lost boys.

They get found in the end.
Maria

8. Write what you want bottomless from the bottom of the mind

It is odd how the moment you dread most creeps up on you at the most unexpected time. I have spent six years now, dreading the day I might run into you, but in retrospect I am relieved I did. I am even a little happy. A very little.

People have told me that time heals wounds and ego’s. My mother and I always listen to them patiently and we seriously pretend to absorb their words as we look into each others faces to see the sheer ‘knowing otherwise’ that rests there. We never speak of you, you know. It is rather odd, because we speak about you far too much… but never of you. You are an easy person to caricaturize, demonise but a hard one to absorb, especially in memory. And we share far too many memories to acknowledge you any longer.

I never really expected to look up from my menu that day and see you staring at me from across the room. I didn’t anticipate the distant sound of a gun shot still echoing in my ears either. It is still as loud as I thought it was. I am proud though, that I did not look down and hide under my table. I am ashamed though that I hoped your face would soften slightly.

It didn’t.

You didn’t.

And I no longer need you to.

I walked away once, I'm doing it again and this time I wont be looking over my shoulder.

17. Write in recollection and amazement of yourself

A prison guard stands calmly outside an Iron cage door. His smirk speaks all too loudly of lofty opinions bought from nothing more than a higher vantage point.
“I am proud of myself.”
His smirk deepens as he seats himself on the rickety stool perched against the wall.

I have never really known what it was like to feel pride in one's self. I have only ever, been a spectator to the accomplishments of others, the hired help on most occasions, the court jester to cheer on their victories.
And I feel that I have played my part well, I was never blatantly jealous or resentful. I took in stride the entire childhood spent being told I was ugly and stupid. I believe I bore it well, exhibiting only the faintest traces of reactionary wry wit and sarcastic humor. I read my books and kept my head down.
So now, as I take this one step that opens a door to a future I never saw myself seeing, yes I am proud. Am I overbearing? I am not sure…but were I to be, who would be witness to it anyway, so where lies the harm? And now, I absolutely refuse to ‘be told’ how to feel anything about anything.

“You may leave. I shall not be needing your services any longer.
I never hope to again.”

His smirk fades slowly, making its way carefully into his dark eyes. But it is not alone in there, it shares uncomfortably close quarters with something he had not anticipated…
A sallow, begrudging glimmer of pride.

9. The unspeakable visions of the individual

And even as I know that they make me the way I am, I know that it is not their fault. They were never meant to be Him, and my attempts to make them such were not only futile they were full of spite.My fears are my fault and their favours. I wanted them to fail as much as they wanted to, but you know what they say about the best laid plans.
I have not really ever tried to give away my heart. I am not much good with hearts. And yet I find it odd how one can still manage to collect so many sticks and stones without ever going in for the gamble.

“It’s all your fault, you try too hard to be good for everyone, but you're not. You will never be because of all your bloody trying”

It is funny, how this one never seems to collapse on itself. As it turns out when you try to be good for yourself, it still is your fault.

“You will never get what your looking for, there is no such thing as a happily ever after, and if that’s what your looking for or working for, you should be prepared to remain alone for a very long time.”
Needless to say I am prepared, a tad whimsical…but most certainly prepared.

“Learn to settle! Life is all about settling, nobody’s that special”.
Settling is all I know. I refuse to settle this one time, trust it to be the one where I'm expected to!

“You are nothing but a brainless cunt.”
Silence.
I have dealt with bruised ego’s before.
This is the only way I know how.

18. Work from the pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea

Our perpetual confusion rests in the not knowing of whether it is our words that give birth to our thoughts or our thoughts that beget our words. There is a someone I am writing this for, a somebody too busy being nobody, anybody, everybody just to escape being who I need them to be.
So I sit sipping currents of forgotten kisses in tiny plastic spoons, recalling their jaded reprisals of rank afternoons spent knowing things I know absolutely nothing about. Lazy evenings spent drowning in conversations we would both never dare put to action, lest they expose us. A variety of subjects: the number zero, the volume of frequent flyer miles to their credit, cough medicine, whether they think I am in love with them. They don’t, they won't…and so I don’t and I won't.

It is a pretty pattern.
My sorry excuse for tales of talent ripe and bold, are only introduced so that they can be battered down by their need to criticize everything... but with a smile. A polite smile, no less. There are promises to be plumbed, dreams to be framed on pink walls. But I shall not dream them here, now. I refuse to swim in these savage waters any longer.

Luscious lies dressed in ball gowns dance a kiss we will never manage
Terrible truths clad in pin stripe guard the doors, half open… for me to run out of
And I shall leave now

For I am a turquoise sprite, riding a unicorn, eating a bowl of chili and dancing in delusions of daisies and sugar candy and they are a charcoal grey Armani suit inside out.
It is time to shatter my friend
It is time to scatter.

29. You’re a Genius all the time
& 13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition

It is now time to decide who we are to be. Not who we want, mind you…wants are misleading. Are’s are attainable. So, dear sprite…who ‘are’ we to be? A choice must eventually come from limitless potential. And all potential is limitless.
So where are we to guide this flood of potential and genius? Kerouac himself said that writers are made, but genius’s are born. But they do not discover their genius in their life time, that is for others to do so. And if indeed it is for others to discover and for you to do then you needn’t worry about your reception.There are no rules, only resolutions. Everything, that has not been done before, in this manner before… is genius, he said.
So pick your poison.
Choose a path and act it.
There is to be no hiding, skulking, waiting, wading and marauding now. There are only to be now’s and be’s. If the choice is to write…
Then by all means…
WRITE.

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild type written pages, for yr’ own joy

It is the end that must come at the beginning: for my own joy. There is an all too fragile notion that must be shattered here, now on this precarious juncture of this particular sixth page and second last paragraph: that life must be lived for others. It mustn’t. It is mine and those that wish me well want me to embrace it, those that don’t must be left behind.
For all the scribbles that my seven-year-old self began in her bound Little Mermaid Diary, that have led my twenty five-year-old madness wrapped in her boundless notebooks and paper scraps to this place…here is my gift to that girl.
To be given the gift of birth, of life, of possibility
To wait till one is ready to receive it…

To receive it.

20. Believe in the holy contour of life

I find it surprising that I have somehow managed to escape the loss of grandeur that one anticipates when disposing with ‘holiness’. If anything withdrawing from the ‘need’ to believe in something has made it much easier to believe in what is. And there is so much. There is a world to be seen, words to be written and wonders to be wished for. There is an open road and all one needs is the spirit to travel it and the naivete' to keep one going even when it gets ugly.

I am reminded of the Greek custom of commemorating a eulogy for the fallen, they asked only one thing, “ Did he have passion?”.

That was all it took to make or break a person then.

That is all that ever should.

You couldn’t spell ‘DIFFICULTY’ if you’re life depended on it!!!

‘Mrs D, Mrs I, Mrs F, F, I…Mrs C, Mrs U, Mrs L, T, Y.’
Yes, why are all these women – in fact and fiction – married?

It has been a long month, and mommy tells me that she finally has the answers to the riddle that am I.
“You’re difficult.”
As in, I don’t listen?
“No, no…you’re just complicated and …difficult”.
Gee thanks mom that really clears up everything.
“That’s what confuses people about you, you don’t want normal things and normal people want normal things. It’s not that bad to want normalcy. What is so bad about being just regular for once! You spend too much bloody time with yourself!”

My mother, poor soul, has worked herself into a healthy rant worrying about what is to become of me. Apparently now that I really AM leaving, my future, my choices, my lack of choices and my general person requires some drastic revamping. This exorcism gives my mother something to do and prevents her from focusing on the looming broken nest syndrome that constantly covets her waking attention. I admit that I am a little flattered but I am a lot more flustered.

Come again? And who are these people I am confusing so much?
“Men!”

*sigh*

It appears that I have somehow completely managed to overlook the fact that I received the good fortune of being accepted to Oxford in order that I may find and ‘hook’ a suitable mate. It also appears that 1100 years ago the city of dreaming spires was born to later be the international hub of learning, so that one fine day in the oh-so-distant future it could hope to provide for the Malang, Maria Amir, an ideal breeding ground of class, intellect and let us not forget wealth to solicit. Or with luck to be solicited by, but I am told that one is a long shot and it is these very ‘impractical’ notions that have now propelled me into the ‘desperate measures need to be taken’ sub-category of shemale. Like I said …it has been a long couple of months.

A few days back I was reading ‘Matilda’ again, my attempt to take a break from Dawkins’ ‘Selfish Gene’, and I got to reminiscing about the Trunchbull in depth. That mean, middle-aged spinster that hung little boys from fans by their shoelaces for being ‘difficult’. The song these children were taught to help spell the word ‘Difficulty’ is especially telling, apparently nothing explains ‘difficult’ better than a string of married women. I find this amusing, seeing as I am being pegged by the same title for being precisely the opposite.
But it did get me thinking about whether or not my ‘me-ness’ was ‘difficult’. If so, how does one even begin to fix something like that? If the ‘you’ in ‘You’ is confusing, essentially flawed, odd, eccentric, impractical, maniacal or ‘difficult’…what then is the remedy? I can foresee nothing short of amnesia or a lobotomy, and I sincerely doubt that either of those have ever been considered cures for anything.

Some of my more noticeable ‘me’s’ include the fact that I cannot seem to enjoy company for very long, people inevitably tire me but I complain about being lonely far too much in my writing, my ranting and some of my more eloquent ravings.

I have tiny hand writing, miniscule really. I usually end up cramping twenty five to thirty five words (depending upon the size of the page) in one line and I write one, three-letter word, to the typed text size of a single alphabet. Apparently my writing has shrunk over the years and anyone who reads it looks at me strangely. At which point I promptly point out that regardless of its size, my hand writing is very tidy. I do not know what this last statement is meant to prove, but I never leave a conversation without it.

I cannot sleep unless I am dreaming. This is why I generally need to lie down for fifteen minutes contemplating something, anything that I can turn into a series of events to last me till morning. Yesterday, I believe I was thinking about roses falling out of people’s brains and power trucks. I do not know what I made of it but I am sure it was suitably difficult.

I am unable to drive without music. I become very nervous if I listen to traffic, and ironically the louder the music, the more confident I am driving anywhere. I also seem to have an unquenchable thirst for ‘roaming’. Luckily my job covers fuel cost, because I drive for no other reason than to listen to my play lists in a confined space, amidst constant motion. It provides the illusion that my going somewhere is actually Going Somewhere.

I love the Oxford English Dictionary, it is probably my favourite book of all time, and that is saying something. My pride purchase of late is the electronic version of said dictionary and I am ferociously looking up words that I had underlined in my tiny ‘word book’, but had never got around to searching. I like the fact that no matter how many new words I can collect, there will always be others. It is a continuity I am comfortable with.

I cannot get through a day without coke. I have tried. I can NOT.

I collect key chains for no reason and for all reasons. I have often claimed to my writing wall, that I will marry the man that can find me the perfect key chain. I do not know what a perfect key chain looks like. But I will. I currently have a single rung with 18 key chains woven in, it is heavy but it goes wherever I go. There are only 5 keys.

I buy irrational amounts of DVD’s and television series. Perhaps this compulsion of mine exists, because I avoid company and prefer the screen- big and small. The conversation is better and the faces are prettier. And I don’t have to change my clothes.

The contents of my purse are unending and I judge women with tiny purses harshly. They manage an elegance with this particular prospect that I cannot fathom. My hand bags are always large, lumpy and tattered. This could be because they always contain: a book I read, a book I write in, my word book / now an electronic dictionary, a piece of charcoal, a pencil, wallet, Key rung (with rings attached), tiny nail clipper, turquoise mirror, a case with my crystal pendulum (which I have stopped using, but like to think I could if I relinquish my cynicism…when), mint strips, kaajal, solid perfume, lip gloss, inhaler, vanilla/mint lotion, cell phone, iPod, some form of candy, Press pass and occasionally something to post to someone or the other. Which is why, I resent people who can ‘travel light’ it makes me feel neurotic. This is not something I need to actively be pressed upon with by complete strangers.

I am phobic about clean teeth, I brush mine four times a day and my recent attempt to try smoking because it hypothetically kills the appetite, has proven that I was meant to favour food over cigarettes. A love for cholesterol is the only passion I am comfortable sharing with my father. I ended up giving my full box of ‘More’s’ (sic) to the Baba Ji who I pick up key chains from at Ferozpur Road.

I am unable to write characters. I cannot willingly lend my emotions or impressions to something other than myself. Even though I realise that essentially a character would merely be an extension of my emotions, I can never give my critters names. I fear that they might become too independent. I am terrified I might lose my mind if they developed their own lives outside of it.

I find that I take comfort in chores, if they are my own. I like doing my laundry, cleaning my room, making my bed and sorting my shelves. It nurtures a notion of normalcy. Which is funny, since I apparently avoid normalcy.

I dislike diamonds. They are by far my least favourite stone, probably because they aren’t one. I collect semi-precious stones and pretend that they actually effect my mood, diamonds only mood-ify money. I loathe money. I do, however, relish the act of ‘buying’. I agree that this is oxymoronic…or maybe just Oxy.

I prefer the company of men to women but I am terrified of being a woman in their company.

I repeatedly make the mistake of choosing healthy skin, bright eyes and well nourished hair over a depleting waistline, via the consumption ratio of select edibles high in almost everything. Apparently in this particular equation three odds are not better than one.

I am haunted by the notion that matrimony could very likely be the ‘End of all that I am’ and relish the idea of leaving a world where it is the only solution to being female. However, I cannot for the life of me explain why I already know- in excruciating detail- what my wedding dress and shoes will look like.

I apparently have the power to make babies laugh. No matter where I see them, in street corners hanging by the arms of beggars or staring up at me in restaurants. If I smile, they smile. It has never ‘not’ happened. I do not know what this means.

I am incomplete without the presence of the colour ‘Turquoise’ in my life.

I can cook, when I choose. I find watching BBC Food one of the most therapeutic exercises known to woman, apart from reading Austen perhaps. I actually enjoy cooking. I conceal it well.

I believe altogether too much in Love at first sight, I do not however believe in Love that lasts.

I take intense, irrational pleasure in defying religious thought, ritual and belief. I have written in my will, that I want to be cremated when I die. I find the notion of flowing with the wind far more preferable to being buried in the earth. I think I shall be ignored when the time comes.

I judge people by their voice. Always. I either trust their voice or I don’t. Sometimes, if I cannot make out the tone I am looking for I look at their hands, but I usually get what I need from the voice.

I am impressed by people that are completely unimpressed by me. This is depressing.

I hate being ignored. I pretend, quite convincingly, that I prefer it. I do not know why I do this.

I miss having pets more than I miss my parents, my sisters or my lives. I miss horse riding at night, clad in bulky sweaters and talking to my dogs. I miss the sympathy that only animals can give and that I can take without feeling like a hypocrite.

I dislike ‘big’ things. Houses, cars, boats, egos. I have lived a life where ‘bigness’ was the only thing that mattered and I was always the shortest person in my class since kindergarten. I like Volkswagen’s and cottages.

I can talk a mile a minute and stay silent for days. My audience has nothing to do with it.

I take comfort in collecting, framing, taking and compiling collages and albums of old photographs, letters and mementos. I save candy wrappers of my favourite chocolates, ticket stubs, flowers and bottle caps.

I write for the sake of hearing a pencil scrape on paper. I cannot abide pen's. I only use them to fill out forms. If I can’t think, I write notes to my television, prayers to my hand lotion and odes to my bathroom sink.

I am unable to appreciate the allure of tea. I do not relish its taste and I cannot fathom the brand of ‘eastern chai’ writing that has spawned a generation of ‘exotic’ eastern authors. I shall say it ‘I do not like tea’…in anything but lotions and bath products.

I sometimes pretend to read books I haven’t to sound smart. Then I always go back and read them, so as not to feel dumb for needing to sound smart.

I hope – desperately- for a life that is unpredictable; filled with toe-tingling kisses; travel; mistakes; rainy days; spicy flavours; words; yellow flowers; camping trips; guitar twangs; poems; lingering promises; post-its on bathroom mirrors; road trips; bear hugs; sarcasm; coffee mugs; theatre tickets; running; bicycle rides; salsa dancing; useless reveries; mood swings, photographs; crest toothpaste; pizza; children’s laughter; old books; new shoes; falling out of skies; library cards; coloured glass; baby powder; flowing skirts; long letters; jukeboxes; paint brushes; grape candy; straw hats; horses; side walks; tip toes; sharpened pencils; blue pillows; flip flops; airport escalators; silver charms; song dedications; balloons; animated movies; swords; fairies; stars; old leather couches; big TV’s; grand parents hands; thunder storms; black and white movies; post cards; burritos and enchiladas; Green tea shampoo; old spectacles; coca cola; fire places; key chains; silly phone calls; cold nights in blankets with cups of coffee; back packs, concert T-shirts; lamp light; gardens; involuntary smiles and persisting madness.

I don’t mind it being Difficult.