i had the most fascinating dream last night. dino morea called me, and he’s talking to me about this and about that .. real, soft .. i wanna get to know you stuff. i live in this place i haven’t seen before. its a house whose doorway, covered by a light cotton curtain, opens to an alley kind of a place to the right, and the wall opposite is not high, its about waist-high. and i am talking on my mobile walking up and down the wall. my mom and a visitor are sitting in the living room, chatting. they both looked happy. there was a light, cool air to the dream. the time was evening, a bit late evening i think. though i remember talking about a lot of things very clearly, not at all dream-like, i am not able to remember any specific dialog now. but i remember this one time, towards the end, where i can hear the tap, and i know that he is sliding down in the water in a tub, and then he asks me if i can come over to his place, “right now”, with a kind of an urgency in his voice, and i very casually tell him that right now is not possible. and wonder of wonders, all the time when in my mind (in my dream) i was visualizing him talking into the fone, it was not dino morea. it was johnny depp. hmmm… i wonder what it can mean. my sub-C is trying to tell me that maybe what i want is not what i really need. what i really need is something different altogether. hmmm…

i was gorging on idli chatni on a road-side stall this morning and was thinking that you haven’t tasted a city unless and untill you have tasted its street food.

last evening i was thinking about how (positively) cy has changed me. i am a much better person now, all thanks to cy. if some people call me bad now, they should’ve met me some 5 years back .. :)

once when i was around 6, mom left as usual for work in the morning, leaving me behind to go to school (i can’t remember who used to take me to school, i think it was an older neighbourhood kid). it was a saturday i think and veer (he’s 6 years older than me) had saturdays off (or maybe there was some other reason he was home). i told him that i don’t wanna go to school. he said that i can pretend to have a tummy ache, which i did and didn’t go to school. when mom came back in the afternoon (she was a teacher), i was merrily playing with other kids, trying to get something off the huge neem tree with long sticks. when i saw my mom, i started crying and told her that veer had asked me to fake a tummy ache and take the day off. mom just picked me up lovingly and smiled .. my head was on her shoulder so i couldn’t see if she was laughing. i was thinking about this incident from another perspective. from veer’s. maybe he’d yearned me to take the day off cos he wanted me to spend time at home with him, and i just fluttered away, uncaring, unknowing …

… and now its his turn.

i mostly screw things up when i am trying my best not to screw things up.

i am never trying, is the reason things reach the point of getting screwed up in the first place i guess. *sigh*

i want to move to a place where its cool and breezy all the times. thickly green hills in the background, horizone mostly clouded in cool, moist, grey … and you can feel the sea in the air .. near enough ..

some time back i couldn’t decide what i liked more - the mountains or the sea. now i think i wouldn’t mind compromising on the mountains a bit and settle for huge, green hills by the sea.

a good tip for all those people who have li’l babies. at night, after your baby’s fed off the mama’s milk and is just about to doze off, shove a bottle of water into her/his mouth. the last sip of water will rinse the mouth off the milk that contains sugars that are harmful for the baby’s gums and future teeth. and when they have some teeth in there, to brush, stand behind the baby and brush the teeth like you would your own. this way its very convenient and most effective.

hehehe .. i just read the top line again and thought that i also mostly screw when i am trying not to .. hahahaha

my most favorite food is chicken curry and jeera rice. since i am off rice (almost), so the next favorite food in line takes the top position. its spaghetti. i love spaghetti. with anything, in any form..

S, P, you wanna start saving money to go for a small vaccation year-end? dubai? the tickets per-person, 2-way, i think can be arranged in around 15 k. hmm? accomodation is taken care of ..

today is a good day. i feel good .. not elated .. but good. :) little tired as usual, but good. i am looking forward to the 1st of the coming month .. something to look forward to. this weekend i will try and take my new non-functional cycle to our corner cycle repair guy and see if i can make it satisfy me. i so wanna return it to that stupid shop i got it from. but its so far, and its so damn hot, and i feel so terribly lazy. maybe it was a cursed moment i went to buy it …

i think i’ll start an agony aunt column here. come one come all .. tell me what pains you, i’ll soothe your ache .. if you’ll let me. let me.

but i won’t call myself agony aunt. what then? mother … :) .. yes, i like this .. name .. mother. ma .. i will try and not feel anger, frustration, irritation, or even pity. but i will make a conscious effort to feel only love. love for you, and understanding .. even though i don’t understand you, i will try and stand by you, support you, and offer a word of .. love. come one .. come all ..

funny .. long, long time back, i was sitting with the then boy-friend in this place called nirula’s (chanakya puri) in delhi. we were discussing what we wanted to do in life (at that time he was practicing medicine, which he considered to be a very “noble” profession), and i very genuinly said that i wanted to do something for mankind. he just smiled and said, you just want to ‘do’ all man-kind.

i didn’t .. i don’t.

i have very, very fond memories of the chanakya puri nirula’s. i had this very good friend then, N (she’s also a 2nd cousin), who was studying zoology in the maitrey college (i can’t remember the correct spelling. it is near, or i think in chanakya puri, very near the nirula’s place). i used to bunk my classes, go to her college and make her bunk her classes. and then we both used to go .. wherever .. nirula’s too. i remember, standing there by the door of her class, waiting for her to finish cutting up those poor little frogs, waving wildly to get her attention and tell her to come out quick. wow! i so not wanna go back there again.

no. i didn’t walk back home last evening. i got down the building and saw this auto standing there and succumbed to temptation.
________________________________________________________
come one, come all

i feel really stressed out today and hence gloomy. can’t figure out if its the physical stress that’s causing the mental stress, or the bored mind causing the body to slack. i have been seeing interesting dreams for the past couple of nights. night before last, i was in this school. it had a very cool, clean feel. and i was there for cy’s admission looking for the principal. i can’t remember last night’s dream, but that was very real too.

just last week someone told me about a company in mohali looking for people. my heart surged and soared. for a tiny moment, i was transported to mohali (i’ve never seen it, but have been to chandigarh a few times). it felt nice, seeing myself and cy enjoying the wide roads and that weekend to kasauli every other weekend. wow! won’t that be great. a nice dream! :)

the goa trip i feel has screwed up my body big time. before the trip i had almost forogtten my joint pains. i was so … fit. i used to go for long walks everyday. but now, i am always tired, my legs hurt, especially thighs. i wonder if its because i have stopped my pain-killers.

i know what’s wrong. its a boring day. weirdly enough, i miss shm. he’s .. nice to hold. very cushiony. his skin is soft and supple and the muscles underneath strong and firm .. really yummy!!! its nice to lean on his chest, rest the head there a while. *sigh* … and his forearms .. they’re huge .. he’s such a caveman. :) … i’ve always liked guys with strong, well filled-up forearms .. something one can bite into and bite off a huge chunk ..

6:03 pm

i feel much better now. much, much better. :) i look forward to walking back home (something i haven’t done in a long time) and see my baby. though i still feel the fatigue, i’ll see if i can force my body. its about 4 maybe 5 kilometers .. maybe less .. i am not sure at all. but till december i used to not have any problem walking the distance, and then going out again with cy.

in a way, life is difficult for guys (not in the remote villages and small towns obviously where a woman’s existence doesn’t count). they can’t just lay back and fake it.

there’s this woman .. damn cool .. i’d really like to ask her out, and yes .. please go ahead and ‘misunderstand’ me o girl. she’s damn cool .. and hot .. *sigh*

we had a yum dinner last night. cy had been insisting on having momos for some time now. so we decided to go to this nice little chinese place near our place, and ordered momos, and a dish of prawns. was really good. though the best prawns i have ever had were at this place in delhi, the def col market. its a place owned by the sagar people, i can’t remember the name though. shm knows. they serve south indian non-veg food .. lobsters and all. its Y-U-M!!! they have this prawns sauted with chunks of garlic dish. though almost all the stuff they serve is worth spending all your money on.

earlier in the evening i and cy were doing the rounds of this really nice shop near our place. it has a lot of old teak wood small furniture pieces and such like stuff. and then we stopped near this figure of a duck with colored stones all over its wings.

cy: who’s this?

me (correcting her): what’s this?

cy: i don’t know.

we both have a mole on the exact same place on our legs. everytime i look at the moles together, my heart gushes with emotion. this one time, we were just sitting around on the bed, talking, playing. and then she jumped on me and settled herself in my lap, and put her sweet, soft little leg over mine. my heart gushed again and i pointed at our moles and showed the similarity to her for the nth time.

me: see we both have the mole on the exact same place on our legs. you know what that means? (tears of happiness and love in my eyes and in my heart and in each pore of my body.) it means …

cy: …that we both have a mole on our legs.

here’s another of my all time favorite songs: ‘return of the mack’ by mark morrison. esp in the beginning when he sings “hooooooo………” … it takes me somewhere else .. :)

cy’s all time favorite song is ‘kung fu fighting’, the remix. you should see her when she takes that karate/kung fu stance on the “HU”, and then the “HA”. :) .. its the best sight ever … once with a friend, i asked cy to show her moves, and my friend (i think it was piti, tho i don’t remember now) sat looking on like she’d look on at anything i’d show that “my baby” had done, which i had been doing since the beginning of the day i guess. i sang (tried to), “everybody was kung-fu fighting…”, cy jumped, ran to the middle of the room with such force and shouted at the top of her voice “HU”, with her tiny hands in the air, one forward and the other behind bent at the elbow, and one foot forward, the leg bent at the knee, her face twisted with intense passion. we rolled off the diwan laughing …

time has been whizzing past at super speed, but this last month broke all records. it seems just like some days back that it was 19th (of feb) and i was fretting over cy’s picnic on the 20th as they were going to the zoo again .. it being so big and all. and yesterday when the date registered in my head (no wonder i have been feeling so low of late…PMS), i realized its been a month. wow!! time is travelling on the super-fast express, with a one-way ticket.

its been many many days since i have logged my dreams. at times i don’t remember, at other times i don’t choose to remember. but a couple of days back i had this nice dream that’s still there in my mind. i was on a beach, sitting with my back to the sea, along with a lot of other people scattered about randomly, looking at this tent-stage where cy and some kids were performing some song and dance sequence (she had her annual day last to last weekend).

i’m reading this book, brick lane, my monica ali. there’s an account of a single woman in dhaka, how she gets kicked around, becomes a prostitute, then a maid, all because she has no idea what to do, where to go. its so scary. i held cy for a long, long time in her sleep and loved her. she’s again stated eating less. though she is active and happy, i wish she’d eat more and look chubbier. :) .. i love to kiss her chubby cheeks. when i was 12-13, i got very chubby suddenly (huge cheese burgers and sponge cakes were to blame). my sister used to harass me all the time pinching my cheeks evertime she passed by me.

its getting hotter by the day .. and drier. i am deyhydrated all the time. that just goes to show how completely stupid most of us are. burning up our own planet in the name of progress. i wish there was a way, or a toggle switch somewhere, so that one could turn all polluting industries to off. i can’t help feel that we are going to meet our end much sooner than any of the scientists have predicted.

i just finished a really good book, alchemy of desire, by tarun tejpal. for a change, an indian guy (NRIs are not indians, god only knows what they are) with brains. such rarity.

i liked this line towards the end, which i read just this morning (and it’s as i remember it): the essence of all great relationships is the absence of disagreement. i agree.

the depression is still there .. since yesterday .. of not having any money. but i feel a bit better today. yesterday i felt all crumbly. today, the mood is that of brooding, but calm. the smile stays at the face, seeing people in the office, but doesn’t pass through the mouth, inwards, towards the heart. *sigh* i guess the presence of a child in your life does that … bring about the fear of not having any money. i have been in this state a zillion times in the past, pre-cy, but didn’t even think about it, forget fret, worry, wither… *sigh*

physically i know what’s wrong with me. i am dehydrated. and currently there is nothing to drink around. just water. i don’t like water. i love neera (or nira). its like coconut water, but much sweeter. its like you’ve added a lot of sugar to coconut water. and its a bit dirty white in color and not clear like coconut water. its my favoritest thirst quencher aaj-kal. i had some just now, on the way, but my throat seems parched again. nira turns into alcohol after 12-14 hours. they make tardi out of it, a local liqour. i’ve never had tardi, but would like to try some time. people in my office warn me against it as they believe that it needs to be distilled properly, which the local tardi-makers never do, and so it might be poisnous. but i am pretty satisfied with nira as of now. i love gulping it down. cy loves it too. we both finish the glass, together, in one go. the first time she did it, i felt so proud. my boobs went double their size.

if i had a nice person as a husband, who’s also very rich, then i’ll never work. i’ll stay home with my darling baby and watch her grow each molecule at a time. :) … or if someone died and left me a whole lot of money, then too. dear god …

this song from the movie bunty aur babli, ‘nach baliye’, never fails to lift my spirits, irrespective of how soundly they are sleeping. another option i would’ve liked to go for as a career is becoming a performer. i love to dance, and i love to dance on a stage. i like being on a stage. rather most of the times, in regular da-to-day life, i am giving a performance. an unpracticed, first-time performance, and hence the clumsyness. :)

when i was very little, on the rare ocassions that me, veer, and didi used to play together, didi used to teach me dance steps and i used to look at her in awe and then try and copy her, and veer used to sit and watch and smile all the time. there was this heavy wooden diwan that mom had got as part of her wedding dowry (its still in the delhi house somewhere, still in good shape). i think it was that diwan, which we used to make stand on its side, like a wall. and then didi used to put a bed sheet on its legs parallel to the ground. and we used to play house in it. didi being “didi” looking after and caring for us, the little babies. and us, me and veer, being us, the good little babies, listening to “didi”.

sometime back i had done it with this guy who happened to be married. his wife got to know of it (i know, pretty dumb of the guy) and said some unreasonably rude things about me, to me. i don’t understand why these women don’t understand that what their husbands do outside of the home is really a matter to be resolved between the two of them .. its their own ghar kee baat. nothing they say or do to a third person outside of their home is going to make things any better, or worse, between them and their life-partners. if it makes them so angry and obviously so sad then why do they keep living in conditions they don’t approve of. and if they do, at some weird level, then they need to make peace with it, and not bother good people who are just looking for sex. :)

of late i have seen so many married guys hitting on me .. in a pretty unbothered way. the general attitude being .. i have a right to my own private time. not considering that what they do in that “private” time is a matter of huge concern for their legal relationship with the wife. sadly, that’s what most of them take it as. a legal relationship. so are arranged marriages to be blamed? (not to say that infidelity doesn’t happen in a “love” match, my own broken marriage is a witness to that. this particular married guy i mentioned also married for love.) but in arranged marriages a person finds it even easier to say, “i am performing all duties of being a good husband, providing the wife and kids with a good home and money. beyond that, its entirely my prerogative what i do with my life.” what’s wrong in this picture is that wives take it … maybe many don’t even know it .. hmmm…

and maybe lots of wives do it too .. hmmm…

marriage should not be a rule, but an exception, for those who (truly) love.

last night after ages i did what was a regular feature of my life some 10-12 years back. i cooked noodles at 12:30 in the night and then had them in bed with a book in my hand. the desire was so intense that i even chopped myself an onion, to put in the noodles, which i almost never do as i hate the smell of onion juice on my fingers .. besides my long nails (less than half the size of what they were last year) come in the way of the knife. talking of long nails, veer once laughed that he was sure i am not able to wash my bum properly with such long nails. i did try and explain it to him how the flat of the fingers comes in contact with the bum hole horizontally and not vertically so as to cause any “inconvenience”. he kept laughing anyways.

anyways talking of last night, it was a good night. i had a strange new feeling of being home. the way i was in NN, tha place where i grew up. i cooked noodles, put onion in them and had them with fried potatoes that the maid (sul has gone for a 2 month vacation) had made earlier. it felt good. and the satiation i felt was awesome. so awesome that i had to end it with some milk and cookies, which i did … yet again thinking of my depression in the morning whe i, as usual, will not wake up in time to go for a walk. but it felt good .. really good .. the noodles (top ramen) with chopped onions and fried aloo. yum!

i have a hectic weekend ahead. and an even more hectic week. life has been hectic since the new years’. i haven’t spent one weekend doing nothing and just lazying around. i like to watch the moments go by …

and i haven’t done it in a long time. have been trying to get over the “urge”. but its there, here, lingering … i wish i could do dino morea.

i had a great day yesterday, a client praised and appreciated my efforts. and today another client was really upset. saari duniya ka bojh hum uthatey hein .. clients aatey hein clients jatein hein .. hum yahee pe pardey reh jatey hein …

i guess moksha (i don’t exactly know what nirvana means) is moving from ‘i don’t know’ to ‘i don’t care’.

why is it called universe? i feel it should be uniprose.

i have nothing to ‘write’ abhi. its 10:32 in the morning. me as usual deeply drowned in the depression of not having woken up at 6:30 am, yet again, and going for a walk. the coupla kilos i had lost in december is back with a bang and 2 more of their friends. *sigh* … and i have been feeling sleepy for a week now. i guess i am experiencing a burn-out.

my mother’s grandmother’s name was isri. i think it stands for ishwari. i had wanted to name cy isri. but people protested, so i didn’t .. and also at that time i hadn’t realized that it might stand for ishwari, so i thought its a name without a meaning, or a meaning i am not aware of, so i forgot about it. i then named her what she is called now, mistakenly thinking that it stands for what i had at that time thought it stands for. it was only after some time that i realized that i was mistaken about what it meant. but by that time it was a bit late. i had already gotten her birth cert made in that name and all, and it was in dilli, a place i visit once a year, so i thought .. well .. whateva. i like her current name. i think it suits her face ..

i never liked my name .. i hated it once really bad .. now i am just used to it. it was .. thoughtless of my parents to have named me thus. really thoughtless.

long, long time back, when i wasn’t what i am now (not completely), before i had met shm and taken the small turns that made me arrive on this highway i am on now, i had this … wish. to rent a studio apartment, turn half of it into a studio, and paint. i had taken up painting in my early twenties. before that i mostly used to sketch, and i wasn’t bad, keeping modesty aside. painting was then more of a fervor, a passionate let-out of a sudden creative surge that i used to feel at times. i hadn’t learnt how to control the brush. my strokes were bold and my fingers used to slash the sheets with the brush. then, when i was about 22-23, i decided to mould the fire. i started “practising”. and i did improve. a butter and knife i painted once, did look much like a butter and knife. i still remember paiting that. i just sat on the dining table, by the open latticed wall, where veer and i used to study, and started painting the butter and the knife that were kept there, and i finished it in one go. maybe that’s why i could never properly paint, or compose beautiful verse. i never took up anything again after my first flush. if its finished in the first go, well and good, if not, the effort was forgotten, and soon the hints of a start were lost, in the mountain of old, new papers and books that was our cupboard.

now i can’t. do anything. sketch, write poetry, or even just write … and paint? hahaha!! at times i think of that studio apartment i so wanted to rent, spartan, with just a floor-bedding, and a huge eisle .. and then i think of my (rented) ‘flat’ now, full of things, material things, and a small, angelic vision running through its veins … and i feel glad. :)

need
it is what
makes the world go round
not love
but need
just a greed
agreed?

so pay heed
its just a need
a small need
a wild weed
creates a creed
and we breed

just a need

its a beautiful day today. there’s so much love in the air. the flowers look beautiful. they’ve blossomed in all the colors of nature. and the breeze is nice and cool. and most of all my mind feel good .. all empty and good. :) *sigh* i hope i meet today’s deadline .. i am so not into it. :)

i saw dolphins in my dream last night. it was a beautiful beach, and i am hosting this party .. which suddenly turns to a huge success as people rush forward to see the dolhins playing in the water.

i wanna check if there is a global daily phenomenon of emotions. like today .. my head is hurting and i am feeling lethargic and generally not good, physically. a lot of people around me in office are not feeling too good either for various reasons, or maybe even no reason at all. like i have no reason of feeling how i am feeling today. i just got up with a heavy head, and the heavyness turned to lead by the time i had showered and started for work.

its 2 and i feel a bit better. but the slight hurting in the head is sitll there .. and i feel de-hydrated. maybe its just that … that the air is de-hydrated today. mayby moisture evaporated a bit from the pune air .. hmmm …

i tried sending my pic to dino morea, on his phone, but couldn’t. i don’t have that feature in my phone. i tried to yahoo it to him, but i don’t know if he knows how to receive chat messenger pics in the phone. so he didn’t, and it didn’t go. :/