Opheliac London

2012

2012-01-01T19:40:00.003Z

quiet, reflective sunday evenings at home are essential. especially so on the first day of the year. time to take a breath after a whirl of parties and visits, fights and make-ups, cook-ins and clean-ins over the last 12 days(of christmas break). let the mind connect again with body parts that must soon move in a daily routine again. remind the nerves of several small and large unfinished things.
and to think of the year ahead. is it going to be another of those that fly by without much meaning, when in october you start saying - where HAS the year gone? or are all years like this now, because there is too much meaning in each and every year, globally and individually? is 2012 going to change my life? am i going to grow into something better, gentler, calmer. or am i going to stack up all the barrels against me again.
is it going to be a slow, rhythmic year, that celebrates the smaller joys. wish it.
or a rushed haze,with one or two be alls and end alls to live between. i don't like that type of year.
happy new year, everyone.

networking blows

2011-10-27T20:00:00.003+01:00

So I ran out on what could have been an AMAZING networking opportunity today. Um... somehow I don’t think so. It was basically a room full of geologists, geotechnical engineers, mining engineers and me. And as soon as I opened my mouth to explain my role in the extractives phantasmagoria (yes) their eyes would glaze over. Sustainabili... social responsibi....impac.....zzzzzzz.
Most of the men were there because an attractive young marketing pro sent the invite. The young women (all fugly) were there because they’d heard that these ‘sundowners’ are they way to get ahead in the industry. everyone seemed really desperate. More than me. And this young hot marketing pro ‘knows everyone’.
As I ran out of there with a smile stuck on my face, the nice young marketing professional looked bemused. I think she was just about to introduce me to two more pillars of the mining industry. But i knew better, I knew they’d want to hear about our CPR capability, our exploration techniques and our Datamine subscription. And all I wanted to talk about was how adroitly one of our clients had plonked a great big mine in the middle of a Wadi that Bedouins had used as a migration route for centuries, how another client had let a little cyanide seep into the watercourse that all the famished villagers used for their cultivation water, and what methods I would use to engage with the artisanal miners of Angola. Utter content audience mismatch.
Sigh. This is going to be difficult.

love is...

2011-10-23T19:31:00.003+01:00

when you're tearing your hair out about things, secretly blaming yourself for things, punishing yourself daily for things...and he stops a minute in the daily routine just to say - you're not that bad you know.

CSI

2011-10-05T23:29:00.002+01:00

CSI : NY is the latest craze, and i think this one's going to last. it's still on tv for one thing, new episodes come out every week.

i keep looking for dead bodies everywhere; in the subway, in the fire escape behind my office, in the large slanting wall cavities on the h'smith & city line platform at baker street station (what ARE those things?). i was flinching as i loaded the dishwasher in the office kitchen, subconsciously waiting for the hooded attacker to sneak up. i jumped at shadows as i locked up the office door, last out. on the tube a kid with a huge backpack seemed to be eyeing us carefully, deciding if he wanted to detonate his bomb just yet.

living inside tv shows is very dangerous; your boss can suddenly ask you a question about the proposal you should be working on, and the answer isn't written in the dimples of detective don flack.

Impressions of Sakartvelo

2011-08-18T10:32:00.003+01:00

Georgia in the Caucasus
Has expanses of green mounds, staked by the faithful
Here a stalwart white cross, there an ancient church.
Orthodoxy flows in the rivers, grows in the forests
But the Lutherans, Armenians and Islamists also thrive, somehow.
Countryside spinning away under wheel, field after field, village after village.
In cities, broken, softening, sagging, crumbling,
shells of buildings
With warm yellow lights within, a people living in ruins.
Personal property, real estate, no cash for repairs,
no buyer good enough, to cure the general malaise
– worklessness.

Give us a job, and we will follow it
Every mountain has its ore
Move and move again
Hamlet to hamlet, spreading industry, pits, reagents, plastics
Medical insurance ranks over cultural heritage
One day perhaps modernity will pass us by
But the vineyards in summer dachas will flourish forever
Orchards will provide, we will return to the land
if metals fail us.

In Tbilisi the TV tower
with flashing lights buzzing progress
pulls away from the fort and bridge and many twinkling windows
the bastions of an ancient culture, unique in language and form
stand sentinel in the night sky
As modern day kartvelebis scurry past, mobile phones stuck to one ear.

the problem

2011-06-28T20:42:00.001+01:00

the problem is that they think I know what I’m doing. And I totally don’t! am being given difficult difficult work, but am only producing bad poetry.

Hello world! I’m still here. in a great new job and a lovely settling down sort of marriage, all of which i can now complain about.

And don’t be frightened... that’s only thunder outside your window.

Sheffield fragment

2011-05-12T09:34:00.000+01:00

Deserted by 9 PM, South Yorkshire’s gone home

Leaving the city chatter-less

trams crossing over large roundabouts

and Vincent’s (?) face splashed across a 4 storey brick wall.

Next day at the UKBA

a man, polish, trying to be heard

by the English know-it-all but really-know-nothing he’s been allotted to.

whole families spending their day in sarkardom – the Indians feel much at home

their kids fling themselves with glee at a vast concrete column

It stands silently black and granite-clad, as they shrieked high pitched

and run madly around it.

The security guard, never having met a terrorist, smiles indulgently at them

and tells me sheepishly to take a swig out of my water bottle

just in case.

Case-workers at windows, alternatively sunny and dour

Luck’s fickle. This could take all day.

Among other things, I learn that children like my face, but I never know what to say to them.

after moving day

2011-04-11T13:11:00.000+01:00

Last night I went to sleep counting the stars. They twinkled through the leafy branches outside, quiet now against a deep blue London sky. The bedroom has a big window this time, pointed at greenery. I listened to the soft silence in the park behind the row of terraces. Once in a while, something on 4 (or eight) wheels would rumble by on the main street, but that's on the other side of the flat, public. It’s an airy apartment, all doors and windows. And a little patio on the quiet side where our helper army recuperated with beer and pizzas on a perfect summer Sunday afternoon.

4 years in hammersmith, and another move. I hope to be happy in this place for a while. Though a friend thinks I have gypsy blood in my veins, I hope to bide a wee this time, until the wind changes again.

pome

2011-02-14T18:43:00.002Z

Ode to an early spring
Blue sky through a delicate net
of fine dead branches.

Last year's leaves
mixed with mud
turning to lignite
underfoot on the river's banks.

Riding bicycles bumping along
over potholes still filled
with chilly rain.

We raise our heads
hopefully sniffing the breeze
under trees still drooping.

New life, new start, new feeling
on a clean, spring-like Valentine's day.

news

2011-02-11T15:07:00.005Z

I have a new job. I start in 2 weeks. I'm by turns terrified and thrilled.

Hubby dearest is in Turkey for a week. My new job is party so thrilling because it will involve me travelling abroad (and not just sitting at home being a wifey poo, waiting to hear the beloved footsteps on the stairs.) However, hubby has trumped me, and gone off to an on-my-list place (Istanbul), while I serve out my work notice period balefully and unproductively.

I've been house hunting with a vengeance. If I have to make conversation with another estate agent, or see another shockingly crap quality property, or try to reconcile myself to a horrible kitchen because the bedroom has storage space, I shall scream. It turns out there's a reason why I've lived on or just off Fulham Palace Road for the last three and a half years - it's bloody nice. Homes are liveable, the river side is walkable, and food is run-out-and-grab-able. However now it seems prices are no longer affordable. So I've expanded my area of search to Baron's Court and West Kensington in the north, to Upper Richmond Road in the south.

I've also realised I don't like carpeting.

And at the end of the day, even if I find the perfect property (actually did, yesterday, and can't have it), it won't be mine. I'll be paying someone through my nose for the privelege of calling it home for a little while. And that won't mean much. As soon as the owner feels like flogging it off, or the UK government decides it doesn't want to renew my residence permit, I'll be cast out of my cosy future flat, of Fulham, of London, of Britain. Because I never really belonged. Even as I search for the perfect rental property, there's a sense of impending displacement. It's as if I can never stop looking, stop moving, backpack on my back, bean bag dragging in the dust. I can never settle down, because even as I picture myself making dal and sipping red wine on the quaint balcony outside a green tiled kitchen in a pretty fulham first floor flat, there are other forces slowly loosening my hold on the life I've adopted, prising me off, one finger at a time, from this thing I prize so much - my South West London Lifestyle.

I have no idea who this post is addressed to. They all usually are, either to friends, people who know me, or sometimes deliberately to people who don't know me, and often to myself. This one, I dunno. I dedicate it to the sweet and flustered, clearly wet behind the ears Foxton's agent in Putney, who once wanted to be an economist.

30

2011-01-20T15:37:00.003Z

I turned thirty last week. Somehow the number makes me think of eggs, of cheerful, pale green eggs. Planning my birthday parties, I'm strangely detached. All I want is for everyone else to have a goodish time, and not to be inconvenienced much (not beyond the exorbitant prices of food and drink, and the entry fee anyway). Whether I have fun or not is immaterial. Or maybe it's a given. I'll be there, I'll have fun.
I had an interview this morning, and held my ground well. At work, people seem to look up to me, look to me for leadership. I pretent to lead, inserting a well placed one liner now and again, an all nighter once in a blue moon, just to keep myself in public memory. I play the game now.
I feel confident, and kind of, calm about myself. All the anger and confusion is directed at others, if you really think about it. Perhaps this is grown up, this is thirty.

work bit

2010-12-10T10:57:00.001Z

i signed up for an extra task next week, knowing full well how lethargic i'm feeling, and how that'll probably be even worse that much closer to the holidays. it's strange how we set up mountains in our own path, so that if we surmount them, we have that one fleeting moment of satisfaction.

photography without photoshop

2010-11-11T12:38:00.001Z

I just saw an online thread about photography with and without photoshop. The main point that stands out is that photos have probably always been post-processed, earlier in the dark room, and now on a computer. Apparently knowing how to take a good picture is only half the battle. You then need to know how to perfectly manipulate it to make a great image.
Grummpphh.
these are my recent efforts - http://www.flickr.com/photos/inertialweight/sets/72157624394782668/

any opinions?

jingle bells

2010-11-09T12:08:00.004Z

i am suffering from temporary euphoria. all sorts of silly thoughts are making me very happy and jiggly and bouncy. there isn't even a particular happy-making thing, just a vague sense of holidays or something in the air. Course, i did apply for my RSA visa this morning and it was relatively painless. then, there's a half-case of online shopped hand-picked vino waiting at the bear's office that we have to lug home tonight. and perhaps test drive. also, a colleague i'm very fond of sent me a nice email a while ago. among other things, he reminded me how delightful the south african vocabulary can be. 'cool bananas', another SA colleague once told me in joy, while today's email had a 'lucky fish' in it. at lunch time today i'm going to my favourtite little bookshop in westminster and single-handedly saving it from immediate bankruptcy, by shelling out 20 quid for Stephen Fry's latest autobiographical effort. Then, there are christmas party emails in my inbox, and my boss just accepted all my leave requests.
wheeee!
praps i'm coming down with something.

Evenings are exciting

2010-11-04T17:28:00.002Z

They offer possibilities. I associate them with the freshly showered and powdered smells of Durga Puja and Diwali in Delhi’s most sheltered government ‘colony’. Golden lamplights on metal trays, fried goodies, new clothes and autumnal flowers. Everything is pure, virginal and glowing with a million chances.
And yet I also associate evenings with youthful debauchery in London (at the core of the core of the core). Headily I slid sideways into a different culture, and was accepted with either amusement or indifference, I don’t know which. Anything could happen, many things did., usually at Christmas parties.
So many things signal this exciting evening-ness to me – mice pies, messages on facebook about Diwali, a pretty dress in a shop window. I’m not sure if this is a feeling that needs fulfilment. is it enough to tingle, or does one evening in a score of evenings (at least) have to deliver something awesome, for the delicious anticipation to endure?
I’ve had a lot of awesome evenings lately, but they’re different. They’re peaceful and glowy, more akin to the evenings of my childhood, with safety and contentment as headliners. Is it even possible to have evenings with zzzing after a certain stage in life? When some important things are a given (e.g. will I have sex tonight, does he love me, is the bar still open) what does excitement consist of?
Open question… (don’t say ‘having kids!’ or ‘buying a house’.. well maybe buying a house.. hmm.)

November

2010-11-02T16:47:00.002Z

There's something about winter evenings in London, when Summer Time is gone. The dark is familiar, it's been there since afternoon, and the insides of shops and cafes hold promise. Mince pies appear everywhere, spangly lights and wool; and fireplaces in public houses crackle with possibility. Parties are planned, holidays are booked, and you remember with a smile that silly boy you snogged, without any mistletoe. The evening deepens, and even as you think - well it's night now - you realise the air's still a dark, bewitching, luminous blue.

London skyline

2010-10-25T00:58:00.001+01:00

London skyline
Originally uploaded by artoo-detoo

oh dear

2010-10-21T16:53:00.002+01:00

with drooping eyes i stick it out, bum clenched 'gainst my seat
young lad nearby is unconcerned; he chomps at his apple
older lady on the right; she coughs into a kerchief
crunch he goes, and hack she goes, crunch hack crunch, repeat.
both disgusting, unhygenic
encroaching, now arrhythmic
stop already miserable world
please can't i leave?

the magic terrace-window nexus

2010-10-08T21:35:00.004+01:00

Our little second floor terrace is very rudimentary.

no railings, no fence, no privacy,

in fact it's quite giddy especially where wine is involved.

however when red gray clouds billow across west london skies

and airplanes fly low, gathering courage to plunge through them

when lights from this city create unearthly shapes high up

a simple poke of the head out the window does it -

transports you, to the realm of flying stormy winds

speedy urgent leaves, loose.

and if you raise the window up and stick yourself mostly out

you can make friends with cloud number 9.

...

2010-09-21T15:31:00.003+01:00

must... write... about... exotic trip... zambia.. copperbelt... strange trees, plants and animals... copper mines.. tailings dams...
nah. not happening. i want chocolate.

must... resist... lose.. weight... sugar ... bad.. rots teeth... mmmmf

list to keep blog ticking over

2010-09-06T18:45:00.002+01:00

Sam Miller is a good writer, very humble and so generous. His love for Delhi endears him to me greatly, even though a few Indian english jokes seep through his self-imposed embargo in 'Delhi: adventures in a megacity'. I remember loving 'City of Djinns' when I read it, years ago now, but Miller's take on Delhi seems much bigger in scope, more shrewd and delightfully unselfconscious, even though he keeps talking about his bad knee.
I've OD'ed on American TV again; I'm dreaming in Scrubs and Frasier. And this when I should be working on a bunch of questionnaires for my Zambia trip.
I'm going to Zambia. I've really been thrown in at the deep end. The boss of the international development team kept threatening to do so, but somehow I didn't believe they would leave me, a complete novice, to write a very important socio-economics chapter, compliant with international standards, and with no briefing or instruction. How can they risk their project and their relationship with their client this way? The Bear's take is more cheerful though - huge responsibility with no risk. He thinks I should grab the opportunity by the balls. And I would, if it wasn't for my old friend - crippling fear.
Frank Herbert's epic fiction 'Dune' (which then spawned an inferior series of sequels) had a phrase which has stuck in my head. 'Fear is the mind killer / Fear is the little death'. Really, the Bene Gesserit witches swear by it. When I remember the phrase in time, the crippling quality of the fear lessens.
We went cycling in Richmond Park twice, at the last two weekends. It's pure joy. The park is of course, beautiful and varied. But the fact that I was cycling was very liberating. I fear and therefore avoid almost all physical activities. Cycling, though, I always loved as a child and as a teenager. That rush came back to me recently. Yesterday we tried our hand at controlling the bikes on road, inside the park. The speed was thrilling; park cycle paths are always bumpy and I had forgotten the feel of a smooth metal road sailing by beneath my narrow tyres. I raced some deer for a bit, before losing my nerve at a busy roundabout and pulling abruptly over onto the grass. The bear managed it smoothly then came back to watch sympathetically from the sidelines as I, terror clearly writ on my face, attempted to navigate the traffic again.
The bear is absolutely wonderful. Among many other things, early this morning he stood in a visa queue for me, while I belatedly ran about in trademark headless chicken manner trying to find a passport photo booth that worked.

That was my update. Don't think I haven't realised that blogging is another way to keep actual work at bay!

the 1st of September

2010-09-01T11:24:00.003+01:00

We went to Edinburgh for the Fringe festival about a week ago. About 10 years ago, when I was in an amateur theatre group, I thought it was the Place to Be for young stage performers, where cutting edge acting and directing would converge, and become famous. That impression stuck with me until I actually saw the theatre on offer. No, it wasn't terrible, but it didn't shine. The comedy was much better really. There are so many forms of comedy these days - classic stand up comics, sketch performances where comedians literally and figuratively bounce off each other, and then musical comedy, where the singer makes her buck by making people laugh at her antics, in between applauding her vocal strengths. It's as if no one's allowed to take their talent seriously at the Fringe. For serious, you need to make it to the International Theatre Festival, on at the same time in the same city.
Edinburgh remains my favourite going-away city though. Standing in the queue for 'Pappy's - all business' (hilarious), I composed one of my serious ditties to the city on my mobile phone. It started with something like - 'simply beauty, turreted silhouettes in an indigo sky...'. thank god I erased it by mistake later.
The oldish digital SLR my dad has donated to me got plenty of practice in auld reekie. I figured out aperture and shutter speed and even ISO. I captured the castle, Arthur's Seat, Lewis and the Bear, many many beer gartens and yellowish stone buildings in near but not qite Nat-Geo standard photographs.
Rum te tum...
Oh I might be going to Zambia next week. I hope they let me know in time to pack, and possibly to buy malaria pills.

weekend in Kent

2010-08-02T11:38:00.002+01:00

Kent is agricultural. Every time we passed through one of its towns, I would ask 'What's the economy based on?' and my friend Kiran would reply 'tourism, fishing and farming'. And occasionally, 'education'. Makes sense, Canterbury itself has about 5 colleges and universities. The rest of the Kent we saw consisted of gently rolling farmland ripe (?) with something golden, lush thickets and distant glimpses of the estuary and the sea. Distant until we came to Whitstable, where everywhere smells like a Jumbo Mussels platter, and a children's clothes shop is named 'Arsenic and Old Lace'. I don't know, maybe the propreitor just likes the play. No need to wonder why sweet old lady murderers should be linked to little blue booties and rainbow diapers. No really, I love Kent. I'll take a holiday there anytime, no problem.
Bear and I went with another married couple to stay with a third married couple in canterbury, who are expecting a baby. This was probably the most couply thing i've ever done, and man was it comfortable! PDA was a given, while no one judged each others' relationship styles. Also, much Wii was played and food eaten. This, apparently, is what married couples do on holiday. I don't mind it at all.
It was a very welcome break from the city, and the bear recovered fully from his traumatic work trip to Bangalore, where he'd had to stay up 3 nights in a row to do monkey work for mean bosses. As for me, I felt safe enough in couply wonderland to mentally dissociate my terror of commitophobes from my sweet darling husband.
On our way home from hammersmith station, we were discussing my friend's recent breakup, me abusing the guy and bear trying to say that maybe there were two sides to the story - when the said guy appeared through a people gap on the bus. He'd been there all along. We are neighbours, this has often happened before, but this time i actually froze. Bear said something cordial as we got off, but I drew a blank. Didn't help that soon afterwards, my friend made a distress call from her empty hotel room in Portugal. She still lives with the bastard so she tried to escape by going solo on a holiady she had planned for him. Turns out this is not a good idea.
So here we are on Monday, still 70% calm from the mini-break, loving our husband, not hating our job, and still resisting our annoying boss's annoyingness. Have a good week!

prickly bear update

2010-08-02T11:37:00.001+01:00

for the two or so lovely ladies who care - it's all better now. the bear has been separated in my mind from my ex and from my friend's ex.

friday without zzzing

2010-07-30T11:30:00.004+01:00

One of my best friends got dumped by the guy she had convinced herself was 'the one'. Sharp sudden deja vu to 2004 when I was in that exact position - having been dumped by someone I considered to be my family and my future... the start of a long and often painful journey to find my soul again... so that I could find a mate for it. I slipped up so many times! I fooled myself over and over again. Accorded heavy meaning to things that probably didn't have any (I'm still not sure, see). Came to a point where deep emotional compatibility was an impossible thing, and every evening had to be marked by a conquest - or I didn't deserve sleep.
She was with me in those years, this friend. She and Amy, our other flatmate, helped create this wonderful circle of strength that I became part of. Found my own strength and learnt to forgive my own weaknesses, and to have so much fun. To understand and love yourself is the most beautiful thing I've ever known. They were both with me, on the same journey, and I thought their, her, confidence could never be shaken.
All it took was a selfish boy. It's not fair. And I want to kill him.
The annoying part is, this has shaken my trust in the bear. He came back home yesterday, but everything feels prickly between us. Everything he says seems designed to reject me or mock me. I can’t tell how much of this is real and how much a reaction to the last few days. He fell ill on the trip too, which feels like a testament to how terribly I look after him. Bad wife complex. Think we just need an evening of quiet togetherness perhaps.
It's 2010, but I'm back in a six year old nightmare.

i want to keep writing

2010-07-27T17:29:00.003+01:00

i really do, but words don't seem to want to come out of me of late. it's not just the blog either. it took me 3 months to finally write to my best friend anne after she moved to Canada for good. there's a good chance she doesn't consider me to be her bff anymore.

the last few days have been strangely good. a kind of throw back to my single days in hammersmith and london. i've spent loads of time with my friends and some good peaceful times by myself at work and by myself at home. i recognise this me, but can't quite tell where she turns into the married devoted wifey me either. are they mutually exclusive? wow maybe not and i can have everything i want and santa claus actually exists!

i've been in demand at work, which always feels good. the big boss notices me and comes over to share random anecdotes about stupid fieldworkers who get their fingers bitten off by dogs through letterboxes. kitchen talk doesn't make me want to hide anymore, because i can contribute to it more. i feel 'useful', ya know. god, unemployment must be horrible, if disguised paid unemployment sent me under for the better part of two years. oh and it might easily come back anyday.

i've started seeing a career counsellor though. i have high hopes. perhaps he and i'll figure out that i'm meant to be a mountain climber!

there, i said some words. in summary - life is strange. i am good. touch wood.

p.s.: i realise this totally contradicts my last post. the latest word on the street is that the letter is coming, but not yet. which gives a kind of pleasant transience to everything.

drat

2010-07-19T17:36:00.000+01:00

which makes it really ironic that i heard from the office secret finder outer that i am probably among a number who are to receive a certain 'letter' next week. ah well, it's been coming for a long long while.

glimmer

2010-07-15T11:28:00.001+01:00

it could be delirium induced by sleep deprivation, but i feel a little bit useful at work again. i've been busy for the last two weeks, on actual work, not farting about, and people are sending me to places to do things.

silly

2010-07-14T11:26:00.003+01:00

when he said he was going to boston for two days, i didn't really feel too bad. we are quite old brooms now, so there was none of that sharp breathy pain in my throat which meant i would miss him very much. i did throw a tantrum about moving day, but that was different, and as recorded here, it brought results. when we were awake together since 4 am this morning, i was generally happy to be with him, early in the morning, enjoying the newness of our new flat. when he stepped out the door, i hugged him tight but still thought oh c'mon.. don't be a ninny. you don't really feel.. well.. anything. I got to work, started writing something, pretty much forgot to call and see if he'd boarded the flight etc, and was a tad annoyed when he called in the middle of a lively discussion with my team-mates. after the brief bye bye, i got back to work. sent him a text a few minutes later, just, off hand.
then i realised he hasn't replied because he's taken off. suddenly i feel a flood of tears welling up inside and can't wait for the 72 hours to pass before he shows up and annoys me with a calllous comment about my hair again. uff yeh mohabbat!

bluwg?

2010-07-13T16:10:00.002+01:00

All the people i used to talk to in english, really talk to, heart to heart, express feelings and ideas, have left. or are nearly gone. in any case, i never seem to have time to meet them anymore. i speak to myself in bonglish, the bear in hinglish, my parents (over skype) in teenage-lish, my mum-in-law in bengali much purer than mine and to dad-in-law in indian english (different from hinglish in that it involves only english words, but with indian intonations). as a result, what comes out of my mouth is complete gibberish - ESPECIALLY at work.
i've been listening to Stephen Fry read Harry Potter pretty much 24/7 (at work, on the tube, at home, in the shower..). obsessive you might say, but it hasn't helped any. think my tongue won't take to his upper class english inflection that easily.
another reason to miss anne, amy, my singlehood, lara's singlehood, andy, eva, patricia, priyanca.. the list is endless :-(
friends are such riches, but lately they've been fickle.

guilty

2010-07-11T00:24:00.002+01:00

We moved today, a week early. All of last night, while I finished an essential work thing, he packed and prepped. When we got to the place, he turned out to be loads better at carrying heavy things up the many flights of stairs and did 80% of the work. I suppose I wasted a lot of breath cursing fluently at the steep steps and the narrow landings. Later we went back to light my lantern and put books on the shelves (y'know, start making it home) and he rested a bit on the couch. In between putting away plates and dishes on slightly sticky shelves, I would come and pet him a little, completely unashamed of my wifely dewotion.

Pics of new place coming up! It has an (illegal) patio! But shh, I'll show you later.

I dream it, they paint it

2010-07-09T11:59:00.001+01:00

song for now

2010-07-08T13:44:00.000+01:00

i feel better. this song helped. scrubs soundtrack, season 6 i think...

raw at 0014 hours

2010-07-08T00:13:00.002+01:00

I feel like doing something drastic. Like deleting my facebook account. Or tearing all my clothes, or something.

This is moderately unusual. Usually I vent this kind of hot, breathy agitation by taking long walks by the river. This is not possible in zone 2 after midnight. More so since they've fenced off my favourite part of the riverside walk (by Rogers + Stirkharbour studios). Even more so because suddenly I FIND MYSELF TO BE A WUSS. Afraid of knife crime, or something. Like a dumpy little suburban fishwife. (I'm going to look up fishwife after this.)

My other half is breathing angstily in the bedroom. I can hear him. Such indignation and world-weariness he puts into each puff of wind; it's impressive. Tonight is an example of how marriage can put you in very silly positions. No one wins, everyone cries, and tomorrow you have to find a way to start again. Bloody hell.

We are moving house over the next two weekends. Over last year, we've accumulated the junk of what seems to be centuries. No, correction, He has collected junk over centuries, and brought it to live with me, to fester in my cupboards and squeeze space for my books and shoes. However, now that we're moving to a smaller (but more bohemian) place for reasons of thrift, we decided to get together and throw much of it out. We've talked about this for weeks, months really. But 2 sleeps away from the new place, he hasn't done a stick of throwing or packing, or even, it seems, thinking. What's more, now he's going on a work trip Right in the middle of moving week.

I am very capable of moving house myself, thank you. I have done it several times. But it has always involved My junk. My issues, My memories. That I decide how to stack up and in what colour. But don't expect me to bust my ass lugging boxes up and down 5 and a half flights of stairs, and still care what your opinion is! Yesterday I packed my shoes and my books. He comes home and looks at the mess of cables he left on the floor and says - ohh you didn't pack those? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? is that supposed to be a joke? funny? After telling me he's going on this trip, he tries to tell me what colour beanbag we should getr because red and yellow are easy to stain.

This is not what I bought. This is betrayal. When you get married, you compromise on your independence, often your standards (e.g. cleanliness) and sometimes your judgement. But you expect them to be there when you need to cancel 50 subscriptions, and open 50 new ones. And you definitely don't expect to spend your first night in your new love nest all alone.

'Sorry babe, this is work' is just not good enough. This is not your story and it's not all about you.

packing list

2010-07-05T16:11:00.002+01:00

clothes go in suitcases and travel bags.
shoes go in plastic or paper bags.
crockery is already in boxes.
bed and bathroom linen go in other travel bags. most of this i will throw away, starting with the tattered blue clothes hamper.
perishables and consumables (a Bear word) go in the transparent white bucket.
books go in 1 or 2 backpacks; CDs and DVDs in another; a mess of mobile phones, cameras, video cameras, chargers, car chargers, mice and a keyboard split over 2-3 satchel bags.
electronic things!!! @@@X##;££%*)) ftt crrr nnngggg! - NO IDEA. we're talking a TV, an iron, 4 laptops, a speaker system, a microwave oven. and more that i can't remember.
and then there's two lamps, an ironing board, a couple of mops and a beanbag.

whew

it's not me, it's the system

2010-07-04T17:35:00.005+01:00

England is known for its beautiful countryside. The best way to experience it is apparently by walking miles in rural bliss. Thatched sheds and ancient hedgerows take on a different meaning when viewed in golden sunsets un-obscured by city smokes. Abandoned mills and the heather laden banks of country brooks are infused with a mysterious, wholesome joy . Dogs yelp gladly in the middle distance and cars on the motorway look tiny and inconsequential; you can't hear them.

Obviously, I wanted to do this country walk thing as the next step in my slow journey of cultural assimilation. A little research told me however, that the best walks don't start near rail stations; you need to drive to the starting points, and usually, pack a tent. All right, I know how to drive; done it for a couple of years in Gaborone, Botswana. Yet, I'm not legally allowed to drive in the UK. The two countries drive on the same side of the road, have the same speed limits (though in different units) and even have the same 'yield' sign; but the DVLA doesn't want to miss this opportunity to take all my money.

Fine, I'll take the test. Of course I can't get a test date until 4 months into the future. (god knows where I'll be then with my job situation and everything.) And anyway I need a theory test before the practical and before I can pay an instructor twice a week to teach me not how to drive, but how to pass the test. so I went to the library to get me a theory book. Course, I'm not a member, so I asked them to register me. How was I to know they needed my passport, an electric bill and my entire DNA sequence to give me a plastic library card, which doesn't even have my name or photo on it. I was only a little daunted however, because I decided to go home and register for my theory test. That's when I found you need to have a provisional licence before they even let you register. It took half an hour of Scrubs watching to convince me that it was still worth it, that I should book the provisional licence, and curse the stupid bureaucratic system later.

However, the website threatens to run all sorts of checks on you, so I'm a little uncertain about putting the address of our new place in, especially as we haven't signed the contract yet. and why haven't we signed it? Because the new agent needs our old agent to write us a reference. I talk myself into it after an hour, reason sensibly, it's probably a common situation, and so on.

I'm on the website, I have my passport number, I have my last 3 addresses at my fingertips - but the damn thing can't find the postcode to our new place.

I give up, my spirit is broken, I don't need to walk in the countryside. I'll go and gas myself instead.

bedtime story

2010-07-02T12:46:00.005+01:00

The bed is out of action. It finally broke. It's been threatening to ever since we moved in, but we've been buttressing the bed frame with cardboard, tape, even clothes for 11 months now. Finally a couple of nights ago, my most esteemed husband rolled over to go the bathroom and there was a sickening crunch. The plank had finally given out, broken clean in two.

This is a much bigger deal in London than in Delhi because you have to book a 'handyman' through an agency and then pay him by the half-hour whether or not he fixes the thing, needs more material, takes hours to go out and get material, etc.

So I booked the handyman and moved the mattress out into the living room. Which is a much nicer room on the whole, because it has two large windows facing a park just across the road. When we went to sleep on it the next night there was a pleasant summer evening breeze coming in through the open window, along with the wheeze of London buses stopping at the bus stop below, and the wailing ambulance sirens making their way to Charing Cross Hospital just up the road.

We're moving out of this flat in a week's time, so we'll probably continue to sleep this way even after the bed is fixed. (Don't want to jinx it before the homeowner comes back anyway.)

I don't mind the noise. I told the bear to imagine we were sleeping out of doors near a dhaba under a tree by some national highway in an indian autumn. If he were only to open his eyes, he would see the reddish night sky above through the branches of the tree, whose leaves were dancing merrily. A recent rain had settled the dust and made the night air fresh. Trucks carrying steel and carts carrying hay would keep passing us by on the slightly elevated highway, but this particular dhaba, nestled into a mud bank below, was closed for business tonight, and all was well in wonderland.

Crisis

2010-06-30T22:22:00.003+01:00

Anxious, smelling smells, strange because I have trouble breathing,

skin slick and sweaty, face hot, feet numb.

No reason, no thought, no incident, no pain.

No trigger, (or is it being on London underground that does this?)

Eyes closing so they can't see me, those workers, tennis players, writers, actors and dancers - productive people all.

It's a sign of being really low when you can't even jeer at the tourists. They must have worked hard to deserve their holiday, and their accents are no thicker than mine.

Calm down, I tell myself. One baby step at a time. But it's terrifying! I'm scared to try anything new, anything creative active or intellectual, because if I give it up in two days, if I fail (and I will fail), then I'll never go back to it. And the pile of things I cannot do will grow even higher, an almost perfect pyramid now. With the bits of dry skin, nail, hobbies, interests and career paths I have discarded over thirty years.

Deep breath. Baby steps.

I used to like writing at one time...

my Bear

2010-06-28T16:39:00.003+01:00

Some musings on my bear (we've been together for a year and a month) are to follow. You may need to avert your eyes at certain points.

He is full of surprises. I never know when to expect an evil joke about someone else, a nasty leg-pulling for me, or wide eyed geeky engineer innocence.
He has very soft cheeks, hands and lips.
He is very good at all sorts of games, even those he has never played before. A natural at tennis on the one hand and croquet on the other.
He is very bad at dancing. He has a horrible ganwar bhaiyya style of dancing and singing bollywood songs, but I have the sole privelege of witnessing this.
He has way too much hair, even on his head. I suppose bears do.
He imposes a film tax on anyone who stays at our place overnight. He makes them watch a film, usually 99, plus any other film of (his) choice, never mind if they have to stay up all night for it and miss their plans for the next day. Til date, Anne is the only one who has outfilmed him at this.
He drinks a lot about once in two months, and always wakes up feeling guilty. He nuzzles into my face or neck or whatever part is nearest and says 'sorry baby', whether I'm awake or not.
He is a bhukkad, and when he chomps up pizza, mangoes, sandwiches or cheese with much relish, he often gets food on his face. Much like a bear.

another monday

2010-06-28T12:09:00.003+01:00

Today is turning out quite different from the day I'd painstakingly planned from the vantage point of my shower. We are being acquired by a huge american company. Or another huge american company, depending on whose offer the shareholders find more attractive. We were briefed very briefly a moment ago; senior management is about as clueless as we are. All except the managers leading the deal, because they would at least have worked out the details of their annual bonus. 'Business as Usual', the grey-faced briefer parroted.
Colleagues are looking at big company #1's vacancy page for any jobs in California. Humans adapt, I suppose. It'll be scary if this brings horrid competitive American workplace culture to our lives though. It's been seeping in anyway through the string of annoying american and americanised employees who have joined us over the last two years, but making Americanism official will totally suck. Mad Men!
[The weekend was good though. Met old friends and went to old friendly places, and it was very hot - all 2 days of it.]
Now, back to career hunt. Again. I have to rethink my ideal job role and tweak it into something clients are actually willing to pay for.

Meanwhile, Inky is pottering around in the Netherlands.

Raavan review / spoiler

2010-06-26T00:27:00.005+01:00

Here's the breakdown -

Good things:

The subverted myth of Raavan and Ram. The story plays to an extent with the idea that mythology portrays one as a god and the other as a demon. There's a brave attempt to bring in shades of grey. Raavan respects women and is a poet and Ram isn't above a bit of sniper shooting. Incidents associated with Ram start happening with Raavan, or maybe just the one incident - I was honestly impressed with how the Lanka burning was replaced by Dev's camp burning. Another charming trick was to make Surpanakha a sweetie. Overall, I am all for the attempt to tell the story from Raavan's POV.
The film looked great, albeit somewhat damp. Was it shot in.. Pandora?!? (Kinda makes sense, as Ram was an 'Avatar' of Vishnu no? HA. HA.) Seriously, the scene in the forest clearing under the tall white skinned trees where Dev / Ram decides he isn't actually ready to swap Beera's amnesty for poor dear Sita's life and honour, jerks you back to the IMAX.
the music is excellent. Rehman, expectedly, delivers. Kata Kata is my personal favourite. The heavy beats get into my flesh, and I wobble in rhythm.
The general psycho look and mannerisms of Small B are cool. This is done through face paint, him making faces, in silhouette, in close-ups, and of course through the Lakme Kaajal he never leaves the make up room without.

Bad things:

Aishwarya Rai. Always Aishwarya. Priyamani was a stunning actor by comparison.
there are several anachronisms, several slow periods, and generally bad sound editing during speech.
The weakest point is the very naive portrayal of good-hearted bandits, blech! That seems to have been the only way to overturn the good versus evil polarisation. gah!
Like Roja and Dil Se, Rehman seems to have been commissioned to write 15 songs before the plot was written, as a result of which the film builds itself around the songs and dance bits. The bits were fun, but very against the grain most of the time.
The entire Aishwarya Rai flumping-into-the-water sequence, and Raavan becoming obsessed with it and falling for her more or less as a result of it. C'mon, gangster king, pull yourself together!

On the whole, someone (Mani Ratnam?) had a cool generic idea. Lets reinterpret the Ramayan. In fact lets switch it around halfway through the tale. Then they got a brilliant graphics team who did wonders with various face shots of Small B. They bought tickets to Ooty, some awesome falls in Kerela, a gorgeous forest in Kartanaka, (and to the land of Pandora). And then probably spent the rest of their creative energies in trying to get the Bacchans to show up for work, do their lines, look just like they always do, etc.

Too harsh? I don't think so. Think what Vishal would have done with it... Sigh.

another one!

2010-06-25T16:10:00.004+01:00

Today I feel like doing a Swades - like going back home to India to light a bulb there. however i doubt that Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre will employ me to do a socio-economic assessment of their next project. Will they?
It seems all my core skills, everything I can do, everything I want to do - is contained within the horribly concise phrase of 'Project Value Addition'. I have become Unemployable because the sort of work my heart lies in is no longer the sort of thing the all-pervasive Client is ready to pay for. In a resource constrained world, apparently, no one cares to invest resources in making development work for people in the long run. To be honest, this was never really a top priority for anyone. Now evidently it's OK to openly admit that you don't care for it. (Even if you're the Government).
No no, I haven't been fired (although it really is about time), but a company I've had two interviews with, finally called back with very honeyed regrets. grrrr.
So India. Can someone please kill off all the corrupt politicians and reduce the average temperature of Delhi by 20 degrees Celcius so I can immigrate back?

dare i hope it?

2010-06-18T09:56:00.004+01:00

i think i feel a blog coming on. i know i know, few but me are holding their breath and watching this page for updates. i can't help it though, i've been completely word-frozen for months and months. there hasn't been the time, or i haven't been inclined to reflect on anything. and that's what a blog is for, isn't it, reflection. and the occasional pun or limerick, with which to tickle self and reader.

for one thing, facebook absorbs a lot of my wit, so there's nothing fresh to put up here. then, married life has been very interesting, and neccessary to live first hand, without a narrating voice in the background. but now, dare i say it? all the changes are slowly distilling into writable shapes at last.

these are the things it'll probly be worth blogging about - new flat, old job, new season, dirty desk, clean kitchen.

um. i wrote that a week ago, then stopped. came back today to post it. all i can say at this point is -
Bhooli hoon main jaise, apni dagariya, jabse hai dekhi maine prem nagariya...

well, this counts as a comeback. i'm still hopeful. i WILL write again, one day!

happily married

2010-04-22T21:10:00.001+01:00

Dammit - i miss being melancholic!

In other news, i don't think more marriage saga stories will come, because for the rest of it, i have photo essays :-/

- intermission -

2010-04-09T18:06:00.003+01:00

How weird is it that hearing strains of the Indian national anthem somehow always makes tears start up in my eyes? Whether I'm sitting in my poorly ventilated London office with headphones in my head, in a Gaborone cinema hall, or in autorickshaw somewhere and a snatch of 'bharat bhagya vidhata' wafts out to me - my breath comes in a big gulp and in my mind i seem to see a thin old bald man walking determinedly at the head of a crowd somewhere, I can feel the touch of my mother's sari, and I smell sweet dust.

Seriously maudlin patriotism, what!

This should be a photo essay - 2

2010-03-30T18:10:00.005+01:00

Jaya and Lagle are putting the pressure on - they want to see photos - THE official wedding album. I have all the pictures now, but I'm not that keen on sharing them in one go. Mibi agrees with me; we think rationing them out over a longer period will be like a balm for our acute shadi withdrawal symptoms.

Today though, I feel like I've forgotten already. I haven't looked at the photographs even once! I selected a few to upload yesterday, but today, I can't be bothered. London cold has begun to freeze my heart again. The climate is very different between London and delhi, even in March.

For the engagement party, which was the Beginning of the Official Parties, I'd planned to curl my hair with my straighteners, like i always do in London. I was feeling lackadaisical. The crash diet I'd been relying on had lasted just about until the bachelorette party, and i was hormonally swelling anyway. My father would give away a blob in marriage, but what the hey. So why bother doing my hair? It was 6 pm and the processional vehicles were about to arrive. we were in the bathroom of the control room, Nimeran, Mibi and I. I'd just realised that Delhi climate wasn't conducive to lazily twisting my hair with straighteners and letting them be. I should have gone to the parlour, and crimped or straightened them or somethign. As of now, my hair was looking amazingly limp for things that had just been subjected to hot tongs and torsion and my ends looked fried (and split). Nimeran said I told you so a few times, then took pity and began to do my make up in a resolute kind of way, perhaps thinking that if i bloomed and blossomed enough facially, people wouldn't notice my head. Mibi on the other hand, took an experimental turn. She had a vision and began, gingerly to unfurl it. Twisting a strand here, knotting a ringlet there, she slowly began to create a 'look'. I was strangely detached, even cheering her on when she got hot and bothered and almost lost her nerve halfway there. Somehow i didn't believe i would look terrible on my engagement day. clearly i had had heat-stroke. At the end of a gruelling half hour (for them, not me) i had fifty hairpins and nineteen joora pins stuck straight into my head, a glowing and healthy look that completely belied my many years of hard drinking, and two very pleased gal pals. There were a few cloudy moments when nimeran strove to bind my hair with industrial strength hairspray. then another round - spritzzzzzzzzzzz! my head felt like a nest, hollow and feathery, but it looked nice. The girls then struggled into their outfits hurriedly, and we set off. My mum had foolishly permitted us to come in Nim's car, so of course we had a few errands on the way. There was a memorable minute when mibi leapt across Prithviraj Road to pick up an essential work thing from a colleague, in full wedding party gear. Her boob tube held and she flashed no one, and we went on.

Things were going well. I was the queen of the moment, my hair had worked out, my sari was gorgeous and i wasn't nervous in the least! we got to IHC, the girls went to park the car, i went to Jacaranda, our venue for the night, .... and nearly swooned. Everyone was there. In laws, Brother and sister in law that i hadn't met physically yet, a host of relatives i haven't seen since i wore big loose woollen chuddies in public, so many friends, my parents, 50 photographers (or so it seemed..)

It may have beent he chuddy thought, but the first thing i did after my elegant entrance was to exit hurriedly to the restrooms. A good dump.

Anyhoo, the night floated past me. people blessed us with rice, grass, and thankfully cash presents. Babi didi and Jiju kept the dance floor gyrating - Mibi helped too. Oh she was everywhere, a blue blur, now changing the music, now getting drinks, now taking photographs, and then suddenly minxy in my Jiju's arms on the dance floor! That heroine. Our other heroine did her sizzling dance bit, gushed drunkenly to me (i wuv you, i haven't danced this much at any wedding, you are sooo cute etc) and then whooshed off home with her hubby, happy woman.

My hubby (-to-be at the time) was always by my side and in the corner of my mind, grinning handsomely and being sweet to the elders, a feat he excels in. The night was mostly a blur to be honest. I remember only a few frames - dinner and a make-out in the lift on the way down. We'd been apart for days, and it's always fun to get almost caught by parents.

We then went home to the bungalow and slept.

This should be a photo essay - 1

2010-03-24T17:10:00.006Z

The constant sound of ceiling fans is what you miss the most, and its absence is a little peaceless. London is silent and there's a chill in the air, but in my mind i hear a jamboree. It was like a Durga Puja, and best of all, i was playing Durga, outwardly. This fits with what a uni friend, Partho, used to say about my face - maa durga ki shakal. He made sure and told me on my wedding day, when i had just taken off mukut and veil - aaj tu aur bhi maa durga jaisi lag rahi hai. had he planned it?

It would all have been completely different had Pa not hired the bungalow at Number 5 Ashok Road. The original plan was to do all the gharelu things, like Mehendi, Ai Buro Bhaat (my last official meal as a bachelorette) and Gaye Holud (an ancient form of giving the bride a facial with turmeric paste the morning of her wedding), at Vasundhara Enclave. East Delhi's premiere retirement / co-op housing destination, which is our present address in Delhi and the permanent one on my passport. But Delhi to me has always meant the generous and graceful capital built by Edwin Lutyens in the 1920s. I grew up in the shade of a wide Champa tree, had little adventures in the crop beds in our back garden, and hid any number of barbie dolls in the knots of the amrut tree. Delhi meant clean air, peaceful roads and wide pavements on which to ride my bicycle, Chanakyapuri's somewhat spoilt playmates, and later, momos at Chanakya. I never really dwelt elsewhere in is city. So when dad hired this amazing palatial bungalow (designed by Inigo Jones?) it raised the tone a great deal. We drove to it past national monuments and the Homes of Personages, and it became a Big Fat Delhi wedding.

Think of a sprawling but elegant one storey building, with a round porch and round columns (actually the design is more french colonial, come to think of it). A sizeable front garden, with a banyan tree in the middle. A massive back garden with three banyan trees and a rectangular covered verandah (plinth) between the house and the garden. This set the stage. Columns eventually became wrapped in garlands of fresh flowers and impromptu dance parties broke out on the back verandah. My little genius cousin was coached by his mum under the shade of the Banyan tree, while my happy little helpers put diyas in picturesque roots to set the mood for events of an evening. I would escape to the back garden when my bear would call me on the mobile i borrowed from my dad. I put a very annoying baby elephant type tune on the phone for some reason, and it raised many smiles and many more exasperated looks, when the bear, kept away from me by force (for 3 whole days!) would call. I would run away to the back garden when my mother's obsessive regret cycle would begin every once in while - if we had known about this bungalow we needn't have booked the Club. If we hadn't bought this silver plate last month, we could have saved 20 rupees today. If you hadn't switched the lights off, i wouldn't have forgotten to wake up.....

The house had lots of rooms, and only rooms. No corridors. This is similar to the bungalow i spent the first 23 years of my life in. At 5 Ashok Road there were beds everywhere, and assorted relatives sat in heaps, wrapping the totto (nuptial gifts) or bitching about the food, drinks and each other. Somehow i was overlooked in the counting; i had no bed. I ended up sleeping on the 'control room bench' in my parents' room. The control room was an insitution. My dad kept his three laptop computers and million cameras and memory sticks there, and constantly made phone calls. Most of these were for wedding purposes, to be fair. Sleeping in the control room gave me access to the inner workings of the wedding machine, which any bride should strictly avoid. My job was only to show up and look good, but insensibly, i got involved in discussions about menus, drivers and once, mosquitoes. I am sure my comments were very useful.

to be continued. (let's hope)

back

2010-03-23T10:02:00.002Z

on my way in to work today, i found a metaphor. I trotted through the back streets and graveyards of Hammersmith-Fulham, looking for signs of spring. There were buds in the trees and shoots in the grasses, and every once in a while, other feet would pass by. I smelt the air and admired the composition the sunlit terrace walls made with the grim hospital building. Everyone had overtaken me now, slowly or quickly. I'd enjoyed the walk very much, but had i missed my train?

RTPI planning consultancy of the year

2010-02-12T14:51:00.001Z

shoulda heard of 'right to light'

The return of the Flaneuse

2010-02-09T08:56:00.013Z

I just booked a room, 2 pax, in a servced studio in Paris, for one of the official honeymoonal trips. we're not really suposed to have one, because we already live together, and all the parents think that this is 'enough'. But as a friend in Stockholm's getting married in May, and france is the smoothest way into the Schengen space, we seem to be going on a few, that too, european ones.

I'm quite pleased to have found a decenly affordable studio rental in Paris' 6th Arrondissemont, a quick walk from the river, Notre Dame and any number of rive gauche cafes. AND we get to make dinner in the mini-kitchen (although some reviewers found this to be an exaggerated term for the kettle-less, saucepan-less reality they found) - thereby saving bunches of euros. The bear and I went to Paris for a real honeymoon type trip last summer, when we were discovering each other, still mostly polite, still afraid to fart in bed. It's a pretty cool city.

And it's a City. A place made of geneous urban gestures that go with the spirit of baroque and the vast boulevards. The public realm gives you a heightened sense of aesthetics. It's where flanerie was invented, so it makes sense that the 'experience' of walking around is seriously special. Everything's a panorama and has been put in place for you to see; the clipped trees planted in straight rows, the wrought iron street furniture placed just so, the sand box at an angle and the beautiful people with big shades; this scene has been designed for you. I felt in Paris that art is a matter of life, very matter of fact. You don't go seeking art, it's everywhere and you're in it. Culture isn't sperfluous to the everyday motions of living, but an essential function. Bars and things stay open until late, and everything seems poised for a great party and a fun evening. We ended up one evening in a beautiful courtyard restaurant in mouffetard's mosque, a picture in marble and green tiles, with trellises over our tables. Moroccan lamb tagine out of doors under a deepening blue sky - Delicious!

Parisians must have a great relationship wth the river Seine. Pont des arts, a wide wooden pedestrian bridge between the 1st Arr and the 6th is quite naturally used to sit on and picnic on. Parisians can be seen to work on it, like type into their macbooks, have meetings on it or sit a meter apart from someone else on a mat, or on the bridge surface, quite unselfconsciously enjoying a moment's peace, an afternoon's productivity or just the views to east and west. The boldly sculpted and paved river banks pose no barriers to the populace either, which must be considered able to decide for itself not to take a tumble into the river. Signs of an obsession with health and safety regulations, similar to London or Edinburgh's high walls and safety parapets, are conspicuously absent. On a Friday night, groups of people swayed to drum beats all along the northern riverbank in (very) central Paris; some made bonfires, others stood mesmerised by the rhythm, a little like us. if this was an ipromptu event it was magical, almost pagan with the coming together of earthy drum rolls, freshwater and flames. On the Staurday, we saw groups of people dancing on the left bank, east of the green slimy looking new Bibliotheque in 6th (i forget its name?). There were no parapet walls to keep the dancers from falling in, but the landscape had clever pockets at different heights, so everyone looked fairly secure, even in motion, and they looked very cool. We saw this party, if that's what it was, from the night time river cruise - the one cheesy tourist thing you absolutely shouldn't miss.

No good review can be completely one sided though. Plus my loyalty to London is starting to act up. So i'll say that the Parisian summer has dry, white sands and a hard hot sun. In parts, it may even be 'too' designed. I missed the freedom and looseness of grassy parks, in which to lie and snooze. Paris dosn't do grass very well at all. My other complaint was to do with the Eiffel Tower being closed when we finally got there. I've been up it once, but that was with my mum, and i'm sure we had been fighting. But that's all the negatives i've got right now. So, we're going back to the city of light in April.

On the whole, Parisians clearly enjoy the city and really appreciate urban life. We saw our friends cross arrondisemonts to meet out of towners late on a sunday night, to drink cheerfully into the night on schoolnights, and not to have that unnamed dark fear - what if i miss the last tube?! The people of the city were a huge contrast to our essentialy bucolic Brits, who suffer cities, even ones with as much potential as lovely London. Paris is an urban designers city, and all urban designers should go honeymooning there.

envisioning an institution

2010-01-21T14:03:00.003Z

There was a strange rumour on the south wind; a new movement stirs on the ridge, a new vision uncurls, runs away with itself, is captured, is edited, is snuffed out, is copied, is transferred, is corrupted, is subverted, and is made and remade and morphed and transmogrified, and an institution is instituted. On the skirts of a suburb in south Delhi, where the villages meet a city meets an ancient forest, a new movement in an old institution makes for an Open Source Urbanism.

New legends rise here from the corridor and fall to the canyon; new heroes and villains play frisbee on the bridge, the baoli and the balcony. The monsoons change the shape of the land every season, a reminder of the might of nature, always present, like mythology. Here new stories are scripted, acted out, scratched out, dug up and rewritten, first term, second term, next term and next year. New memories are dreamed. An SPA where every student, every visitor, every teacher and every peon, can write a new scene into a colourful panorama.
Where brats from a slum instruct on tensile structures, where engineers go to tap dance, and just yesterday some first years claimed a studio by painting it red.

The institutional source code multiplies, is borrowed, and appropriated, and returned to the pool of knowledge. Soon an IIT feels a little like SPA, a NIFT organises theatre spaces like SPA, TVB’s library circulation reflects SPA’s, but works even better! The NIDs admire SPA’s arts strategy and adapt it to their own use. Slowly the source code of the SPA is instituted into the fabric of the city, the statute of the country and the roster of schools of built environment studies in the 21st century world.

This school operates in the open, producing knowledge for public consumption, public goods all. With creative commons licenses for thought or craft or bits of space.a place where hackers have dignity and information is free - a new SPA, with no copyright.

I wrote this for a design competition for a new campus for my old architecture school in Delhi. The deeply secret competition blog has now been declassified, so i thought i'd share some excerpts.

tra la la

2010-01-14T15:13:00.000Z

i have a headache and my feet are frozen inside the boots i wear. i haven't done a stick of work all day except the cold and dreary site visit which has probably implanted the seeds of pneumonia in my body. my phone keeps dying and then blips up saying i have yet another voicemail.

but -
my new boots are sexy, and i can walk in them. someone foolishly entrusted me with a job number earlier today - come friday, hours will move around on my timesheet. there are sooo many voicemail messages on my phone from all the corners of the globe and there are soooo many sachets of camomile tea in the kitchen. in a few hours it's play-time with the bear (an actual play, like theatre, not something dirty).

so - happy birthday to me!

happy new year

2010-01-06T17:14:00.001Z

When you can’t think of a word or phrase that doesn’t make you smirk cynically
When you know you desperately need to write 500, ok 300 words a day, training yourself to write on demand
Because most famous authors have one thing in common – they’re prolific.

(and don’t take my word for this – if you know of an R K Narayanan or V S Naipaul or a Goscinny or an Uderzo whose genius came out in little drips – tell me now!)
When you stave off the inevitable for weeks
Promising NOT to write about your sorry plight
In a hundred and forty words of blank verse -

Looking for other things – it’s Snowing! My wedding! My work sucks! Oh London! there’s Rocketsingh! The tories, Immigration!
And they all merge palely with the weak street lamp light
When you can’t light a bulb, that’s writer’s block.

sick

2009-12-21T16:45:00.007Z

it's snowing again. it's different though, somehow. the snow seems heavier and wetter; it's falling straight down. there are no merry flurries at corners were two draughts meet, no driving powdered snow. Just mulch, falling out of the sky. I suppose it's monday in heaven, too.

the company won't give me a few extra days off for wedding festivities. it has to be unpaid leave. they don't care about the perfect bong-marathi union and don't grasp how much effort and time that needs. i made yet another job hunt matrix. there are three jobs on it. all three are 20% over my real and on-CV skills ceiling. is there such a thing as a career hunt?

i received my prettiest christmas card yet this year, this morning from Lucy, at my desk. it has santa standing on present boxes on the front, talking to a red bird in the deep blue night with a crescent moon while snow makes an appearance as silver dots everywhere. i've just thanked her by email, though i should have gone to her desk and spoken.

Starbucks today didn't feel right. i bought a coffee even though i didn't want one, and wanted to ask for a size smaller than the tall. the cinammon roll was large and gummy and jammed my mouth, and the lukewarm coffee did nothing to help.

the southeast is at a standstill of sorts, with french tourists and commuters caught on the dull side of the channel. friends in kent are snowed in, and friends in barnsbury are taking advantage of the weather reports on BBC. still, there's a goodnumber of people at work. why do they all come in? why do they care? why don't they just stay curled up at home and read a trashy book? or gamble online, or something.

maybe they feel like work is a part of them! work isn't the enemy, and work gives them a semblance of self, or of responsibility, of a life. who said 'work is worship'? were they KIDDING?

i feel a little off-key today.

Friday 18th December

2009-12-18T11:05:00.004Z

On my way in to work, there was a strange glow in the white sky, and snowflakes showered down. Snowflakes are not round and soft and heavy, like they appear in archie comics, but sharp and fractalised, very light, they move sideways and even upwards in the flurries. Last night we slept in the living room (because the bedroom is airless and depressing), and i watched big snow flurries around the orange street lamp outside. The bear was in a hopeful sort of mood - maybe all transport would be down in the morning, and he could stay at home to study for his driving theory test tomorrow. he's left it to the last minute and isn't sure of the difference between puffin crossings and pelican ones. alas, in the morning, the last vestiges of the night's shower were fading off the park in front of our row. But, as i've mentioned, on my way into work, the magical snow came back, drifting down like a screen onto the tube tracks at south kensington, while i stood safe on the platform within.

I tried to impress Nim and mum with stories about going into work in a snowstorm, but global news media has diluted these simple joys. They know what the weather's like in London, they're not very bovvered. Then i tried to impress them with the bear-taking-me-on-secret-destination minibreak story, but mum just said hmm. Nim preteneded to be excited, but i think she gets taken to New York on mini breaks, so she must be a bit blase. sigh.

i think i discovered the mini-break destination though - completely by accident! One of the recently visited weather pages on the bear's computer gave it away. i'm trying very hard not to look up the place on google maps with pictures. oooog.

Mary left a christmas card at my desk, gushily american as expected. but still, it's warm, and i won't complain. i think i've got some christmas spirit in me or something. speaking of which, we have secret santa gifts at work today. i like the person i was santa for and got him a gift that was 3 times the 'guideline' price for the office. hope he likes it. also, i hope the person who was my santa is not stingy or callous or forgetful. my warm gooey feelings about christmas will disappear very quickly if so.

Possible courses of study

2009-12-15T00:25:00.001Z

I believe human geography is the study of why people live where they do, or are found where they are found, on a large sort of scale. As in, not why they go to a particular nightclub in London, but why they settle in London and the South East. In this particular example, economics comes into it. (Economic Development? Political Economy? Economic Migration? Perhaps I’ll follow this errant strand of thought in a different essay.)

The question of why people live where they do is also one of cultural study, especially when the way they live their life comes into it. There’s a certain set of basic questions around the things that influence the way in which we live, which start to define means of living, quality of life, choices – together forming a study of lifestyle and of lifestyle aspirations.

Pursuing human geography (and cultural study) is one way of looking at civilisation from a distance. Is the aim to establish patterns? Are there patterns? Modern life, as in life right now in the 2000s, is seriously complex, and to my mind there’s no way of comparing it to human life in earlier millennia. (Maybe it can be compared to when Neanderthal man turned into Homo Sapiens, but that’s getting into Palaeontology now.) The study of civilisation probably aims to make sense of the world we are in, to find recognisable shapes and colours in the howling wilderness of knowledge about the modern condition. (I always love saying the modern condition, because it makes modernity sound like a disease.)

Human Geography is a particular way of studying civilisation; rather than starting with trends in income, or health, or population, it focuses first on the spatiality of civilisation – the place people are in, and what their actions do to it. As if people were little ants, marching in columns and scattering anthills all over the landscape. Humans are somewhat robbed of their individual properties and abilities, and lumped together, classified by virtue of where they are, or whence they came.

You could look at features of the land as causes of settlement patterns – rivers for example. London’s three early cities were all by the river, but all with different personalities. You could look at man-made structures as causes of subsequent human action, slowly solidified into urban form – the Regent’s Canal for instance. A navigation channel for trade, which led to a second waterfront in London, different from the father Thames experience. The Regent’s Canal spatial story is one of soft whispers and wind in the hushed trees above the quiet waters, bobbing in and out of brick and stone tunnels. Warehouses, most logically, were the dominant land use near it to start with. Once rail took over the trades, dereliction and despair threatened the waterway, but early gentrification saved the day. Someone decided they’d like to live in a tall attic with visible beams and rafters, with great views on to the Canal. Boom – ground rents exploded. But I digress. Now, neighbourhoods bordering the canal are spatially as various as imaginable, from the western stretch to Limehouse Basin in the east. A walk along the canal is like watching a film about the city.

This spatial dimension of an essentially social science is really wonderful; a truly sexy form of framing the human subject in her environment. The study has unending depths - What the human then does or what the environment then becomes or what then happens to the human… und so weiter.

On my way in to work

2009-12-10T11:14:00.004Z

I saw crazy guy at Little Ben, near Victoria station. He was shrieking jubilantly at intervals, and doing a sort of jig around a black electric meter box. I wondered if he was doing a theatre exercise, practicing for a play, or something.
A busker strumming a guitar near the entrance to Peter Jones offices. He had red watery eyes and sang a laidback sort of song without much hope. He could be a druggie.
I saw starbucks looking warm and festive and fought the urge to go in and further propagate the coffee chain culture explosion. Bar-stucks, I anagrammed cleverly, trying to distract myself from the smell of toffee nut latte.
I saw how blue the sky looked and broke into a trot, swerving deftly between a couple of toursists and a mum with pushchair approaching from the other direction.
I saw the O2 shop and thought ruefully about how crap my phone is, and how helplessly i'm tied into my 18 month contract.
The trot somehow made me decide that i would go to the national gallery / portrait gallery tomorrow. Checked the weather forecast quickly on said phone - it's clear and 8 degrees.

I need to be inspired please, London. Looking to the masters of the art movement to start with.

work bits

2009-11-10T17:29:00.002Z

Never get too comfortable in your relationship with your boss, or with only one boss. spread the love, or you'll never be able to share your woes later. if you're counting totally on the shelter and protection of the one boss you've conned into thinking you're wonderful and indispensable, the day he turns on you, you're fucked. and he could do so - if his job is threatened for example, or if he tires of your particular approach to things, or if he's figures out you've got itchy feet, or if he's simply in a bad mood.

remember this, to survive at work, you gotta be able to lick simultaneous ass.

job search / soul search

2009-11-09T15:18:00.004Z

i've spent the last two saturdays attending community events, which haven't helped any authorities make any decisions, allowed any agencies to meet any targets, made any residents feel empowered. words like 'tick box exercise', 'backroom decisions', 'eyewash' and 'sham' have been hurled across rooms and at presentations.

do they think I like going to godforsaken Council-run shitholes on sunny weekend days when I could be at home snuggling with a bear or outside talking to the river or best of all, snuggling a bear, by the river, near a bookmarket, with a hot alcoholic delicious drink, in the further company of good friends, to whom also weekends are precious? what assholes communities are!

this is it. it's pretty clear to me at last that sadly, community engagement is not my thing.

epilogue: obviously the planning system is very flawed, when the regeneration you're discussing with a resident and the pretty pictures you're trying to explain to the bored layperson may (or may not) happen (depending on funding, government change, policy shifts or weather) in the next twelve years or so. I would do better building mud huts in Latur, even though i'm a crap architect.

The blog turned four surreptitiously

2009-10-26T13:29:00.002Z

On your birthday, dear blog, I was at a friend's house-warming party, showing off my bear. Afterwards we spent a comfy weekend in, mainly doing dome remote wedding planning. Therefore I missed your birthday, blog. Forgive me for being such a terrible predictabke stereotype singleton turned suddenly smug (almost) married.

happy 4!

post Diwali

2009-10-19T12:30:00.005+01:00

The forearm of my right arm hurts. It could be from chopping, stirring heavy curries or carrying heavy shopping bags. We pulled off a double bonanza Diwali weekend; had two bunches of friends over consecutively on saturday night and sunday afternoon. Not only did the food come out great, but we cleaned the flat (it took me 2.5 months, but I finally got him to unpack his last 2 bags), and did proper Diwali decorations, with tealights floating in glass bowls with flowers, and incense sticks to amuse our lone Ganesh idol. It was all very grown up.

The weekend established that the bear and I are a good team. Although we did have a happy little helper in the form of my cousin whom I still think of as a kid, but who is doing a masters in London. We are like her LG's - local guardians! How's that for ancient?

Mishaps did happen of course, the dal tasted like egg curry and the lamb curry had chicken in it because Tesco opens at noon on a sunday and our 2nd batch of guests was arriving at one. I didn't manage to look as fantastic as planned and only wore a kurta with jeans rather than the full blown lehenga thing I'd planned.

Afterwards, when the kitchen sink was smoking from the vigorous relays of washing up and the leftovers were packed away in tupperware, we blew out the candles and went for a walk by the river. I didn't say the very gooey things that kept welling up in my heart to the bear. I didn't say I had never expected to be this happy, and that it was very strange how he somehow mostly always manages to do exactly what I consider to be the best case scenario (like lighting the same candles I was thinking of lighting, or coming out and telling me I had been right about something I was inwardly gloating about, or like asking me to marry him a second time just when I was secretly thinking that the first proposal hadn't been perfect). I didn't tell him that he was exactly what I have been looking for and whining for and writing bad poetry about, for all these years. It's like soulmates, and it's very weird.

desktop

2009-10-02T13:15:00.004+01:00

right now, my work email has a string of messages from the bear, about the weekend, his colleagues, my colleagues, my parents, and food. Interspersed with a few messages from anne about our plans tonight. A reminder email about downtime on something called 'projectspace', which i've never learned how to use. And one acknowledgement email for the one piece of work work i've done in 4 hours.

My gmail inbox is full of facebook notifications and useless recruitment ads. Atkins global thinks i'd make a good signalling engineer one day and a great FM technician another. Among these lurks a single response to one of the many feeler emails i've been sending out, because this week i decided again to be a proper 'writer'. let's wait and see if it comes to anything.

So obviously, my sent messages folder is full of various emails with attachments or links to kinda well known websites and obscure architectural journals. I'm not aiming for the Guardians or the ADs yet. First i have to finish reading the weekly Economist and then see if its realistic to subscribe to the Guardian or the Telegraph again. And then i can identify gaps in their entertainment provision, and attempt to fill it. I realise this is isn't logical, not directly. It has something to do with discipline and humility and also general knowledge. I'm not very ambitious.

the rest of my desktop is covered with excel sheets that i'm looking at once every 20 minutes. a tab trying to hide behind the system tray says 'harry potter audio book 2 - chamber of secrets - mudbloods and murmurs'. Yes, i've found a new way to celebrate my potter monomania and get work done at the same time. Credit for this brilliant idea goes to an ex neighbour, who suggested i should plug potter into my headphones and use my fingers and eyes for work instead. brilliant.

what's on your desktop?

laundi in london (anniversary post)

2009-09-18T18:15:00.002+01:00

It's been 4 rollicking years of riverside walking and Britishness learning.

From graduate school at Aldwych and Bankside to a short hibernation in Stoke Newington and then 27 months of celebrating freedom and girlieness and the late twenties in fulham. Through the brainwaves and the exasperation, the determined adventure-seeking and grim duvet-burrowing, the cultivated cynicism and the sudden innocence, London is steadfast in each memory. Friends and lovers and hated rivals have been and gone, but this city has made even my bitterst heartache delicious. Deep blue skies, old buildings, fresh winds and well planned night-time lighting in public spaces can do that.

I could walk here forever, stride on, scale the tallest buildings in zone 1 and clear the wildest heaths of zone 3 with a few springy skips. I could walk until my shoes fall off, until my hair sticks fearfully close to my sweating skin, until I run out of people and bus stops and sandwich shops. In London I could keep going.

Life peacefully ambles now through a bend in the road. With the future a nebulous cloud which hasn't completely formed into shapes and objects, it's lovely to know that London is forever. I may not be here one day, but London will always be.

realisation

2009-09-11T11:45:00.002+01:00

I am jaded.

My annoying american colleague has been doing what I do for ten years longer than I have, but she still has the energy to take every new piece of work thrown our way by the planners as a challenge, and to try and save the world through it, bit by bit. She can still rehearse the arguments of the good and the true, every time, about how our specialist contribution will make such and such project better for its context. and she explains it tirelessly to the bosses and the clients in terms that they understand - long term benefit, social cohesion, 5 year plan, all rounder, farsighted, bla bla bla.

whereas to me, uttering these words feels like eating them, chewing them and spitting them out, because they are now indigestible.

i'm going to stop blaming my job, colleagues, bosses and pay for my current state of extreme unrest at work. i am simply jaded, and cannot find the slightest motivation for anything i do. i am to speak at a conference next month, alongside ol' boris johnson, but i can't muster the spirit to open the report and make the presentation.

i am enthu no longer, am not a force to be reckoned with, have no power or inclination to intervene in the set courses of mundane or big things. no bright eyes.

humdrum

2009-09-02T16:23:00.005+01:00

the title of this post can also be read as 'we are a drum' in hinglish, which would express how i feel about my physique right now. don't look that terrible in the paris photos though, which atre going up on facebook as i type. went to paris for an extended bank holiday weekend, and am still a little dazed by how perfect it was. will probably be able to remember little details out of the glorious haze later, and then i may or may not blog them.

In other news, I got in touch with 2 recruitment consultants today, one more bitchy than the other. I've been chasing them for weeks, and apparently all it neeed was a bit of pushy phone callling, once every half hour. Will send CV's tonight, and meet the unbitchy one next week. it helps to say 'i have plenty of experience, but just need to pitch it right', by the way.

Bought a present for Lara in Paris - a nice spicy red wine. this is to clear the gift backlog. anne's has now been cleared i think, because i fed her dal rice last week, and have also agreed (somewhat nervously) to provide food for her football + charity event next weekend.

once i get home, empty the washing machine, put the next load in, and decide what to make for dinner, i should feel satisfied enough to curl up on the couch with 'The Count of Monte Cristo' and wait for the Bear of St Clements Mansions to come home.

1631 and all's well in South West London.

list of itches

2009-08-26T14:39:00.002+01:00

work - the poo hole project, reams and reams of meaningless words. revisions and re-draggled
work - the workmate i don't trust. i would throw her, but i wouldn't trust her.
home - his mom thinks that lecturing me on the phone will preserve her son's (long lost) virginity.
home - my mum's never ending neuroses.
blah.. i'm too irked to blog properly.

Kaminey (spoiler alert)

2009-08-16T23:47:00.002+01:00

I think the bit in the end of the film was like an alternative ending, an epilogue covering What If. Unlike the harry potter book 7 epilogue that left no room for doubt and nothing to the imagination. The ending of the Scrubs series was an antithesis to J K Rowling's format, showing us a beautiful picture of how it may be, but not promising anything, and leaving it at that. Tasteful. As for the Kaminey ending, i think it answered the question - What if Charlie had taken the morally wrong path, as he would normally have done, if sanctimonious Guddu’s annoying speech hadn’t rung out in his ears among the apocalyptic battle sounds? If he had picked up the diamonds and run, if he had found Guddu and girlie, if they had all made up and become a heppy family, if he had pawned one diamond for his bookie stall / racecourse (surely that rock was worth more than 10lakh?)… He would have kept the other diamond for the dreamy type girl to put on her finger. More conclusive evidence that the ending wasn’t ‘real’ lies in the fact that Charlie was with this jauntily hatted woman at the races, when his relationship with Mikhail was so charmingly homo-erotic. (How very bong of the Bengali gangster brothers to name him after a Russian president! Or of their bong parents, whatever…)
So, the ending was a clip showing the Path He Didn’t Take, since according to their dad, it’s the path you don’t take that fucks you, rather than the one you do take. Perhaps this was obvious to everyone else? Perhaps not, because the bear still thinks Charlie picked up the diamonds before he got shot….
A feel good explanation would be that Charlie didn’t die from the gun wound, but survived to pick up the diamonds after the battle, having once tried the path of morality and received a bullet in his butt for his pains.
In any case, paisa vasool. Even without the brilliance of Maqbool or the adroitness of Omkara. Vishal doesn’t disappoint, and after all, we can’t expect all storytellers to be Shakespeare.

Just made and ate paneer bhurji in the new flat. We are now sitting at the dinner table with respective laptops, trying to finish much delayed office work because, alas, Monday is at hand.

Smoky day memories

2009-08-12T16:59:00.002+01:00

At Maharani Bagh Hostel, outside the gate through which we entered (the one next to Khizrabad), there used to be a chai-coffee wala, who specialised in Anda-Pakoras. He did other things as well, strange fried things out of jars, and a very mirchi chana thing that came in newspaper cones. But the anda-pakora, created from a boiled egg, a lathering of pre-prepared masala, and deep fried before our eyes, was the masterpiece for me. It somehow fulfilled all my cravings in one – the egg was protein, like meat; the masala was delicious and tickled all the right savoury tastebuds; there were even small pieces of carrot in the outer coating, which served as sweet. Over and above all this, the entire thing had a texture to die for. crunchy out the outside, smooth ehrn you hit the egg, and ah such pure joy!

Sometimes the anda pakora was a perfect thing in a world of imperfection, when I found my mind wandering while studying for pointless exams, doing a thesis I didn’t care for, patching together a dress for a party that gave me a queer anticipatory feeling in my belly – ironic because the party was very likely to turn into a drunken, possibly tearful and exhausting night, from some glitch or another in my pathetic relationship dynamic. Sometimes the anda pakora was all I had for company, waiting for people to come back from class, having bunked all of mine. Waking from a listless daze I would put on semi-decent clothes and leave the dark musty and comfortable hostel room, make my way up the driveway, marvelling at how grey the sky looked, grey like smoke and humid thoughts, as if a monsoon would pour any second. But not a single leaf poking through a brick crack or steel grille stirred in a cool breeze. I would find others at the vendor, as dull as me, and drinking hot tea out of thick glass tumblers. There was usually no need to talk. Food and drinks purchased, we would retreat a few metres into the driveway and sit companionably on a water tank until the pakoras were done, and then silently disappear into our own troubled minds again.

The London sky outside my boss’s window is smoky today. I feel listless at my desk, and want an anda pakora. Luckily, I have the happy instance of the upcoming drinky with a co-inmate of the said hostel coming up in an hour. And after that, there’s dinner and more with the bear. Life’s pretty okay.

when i work from home and send attention-seeking emails

2009-08-10T17:40:00.005+01:00

there was a little boy

who had very many bosses

one day they all showed up

and began the process

of rubbing his nose against the grindstone.

but our clever boy, he had

a plan up his sleeve

as soon as they turned their heads

in his mind he would leave

portman square, and think fondly of his missus.

(so keeeyute)

Zidd (PG rating)

2009-08-04T17:52:00.001+01:00

When suddenly something rages and you bite my shoulder
A moment ago we were placid and looking at a definition on Wikipedia
Debating whether pont neuf refers to a new bridge or the ninth bridge
Spent in fact, from exertions a little while ago
When suddenly you flip around and your green eyes really mean business.

where i draw the line

2009-08-01T09:04:00.001+01:00

while phone sex is borderline, answering the phone while you're taking a dump is simply indecent. ugh, boys!!!

love is...

2009-07-30T12:22:00.001+01:00

Waking, running, showering, fucking, taking the bus, together.

tweet tweet

2009-07-24T13:59:00.000+01:00

i have 50 million deadlines, a proven track record of low work levels on fridays, more exciting stuff than work on my mind anyway, and harry potter 5 as a pdf on my desktop. as if this were not enough, i went and devoured a huge full english brekkie with the workmates at the Regency Cafe at 12.

yawwwwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnn

digging my own grave dreamily in a londonny summer

summer saturday :D

2009-07-18T06:42:00.001+01:00

today i'm gonna:

clean the room so lara can take pictures
meet sadia
show sadia, deblina and deblina's parents around town
see anne at 5
... poke the bear!

wottalottahappysaturday

blue thursday

2009-07-16T10:54:00.000+01:00

So I finally got a credit card. They’ve sent me reams of literature alongside, which I attempted to read on the bus. But I’m quite certain there are a million hidden ways of the bank fleecing me out of money that I don’t even have yet. The letters and pamphlets have limited use.
In other news, I feel a little blue. Also kind of blah. I haven’t seen any of my friends for weeks and was hoping to, this week. They’re all busy / disinclined / out of touch. Coupled with the fact that the bad idea bear is out of town, this has meant me going home every night, eating healthy and watching Scrubs / Frasier / Friends. Youtube too, has its limitations.
I need some cheering up, but Priyanca won’t pick up the phone :(

other things

2009-07-13T11:48:00.003+01:00

when life becomes normal again.. and everyday humdrum things begin to lose the glowing edges that they currently have, other needs will become felt. such as the need for more money (more money = more trips to paris / nguma island / ladakh / trondheim.. whatever). i'll probably want to read books again. and also want intellectual fodder of the public realm public space discourse dialogue type again. to lay the groundwork for the forseeable future, i should:

start posting again on urban blog
take city city urban space pictures, not only you and me mushy chweeeeeet ones
explore part time project management courses in london that are cheap. alternatively, convince the bloodsucking consultancy that employs me to pay for it. ha.

rum te tum...

:D

2009-07-09T10:53:00.001+01:00

:D
:D :D :D
:D:D
:D:D:D
:D

I'm happy. how are you?

tuesday at marble arch

2009-07-07T20:24:00.000+01:00

The roof is made of tin I think. Or I am high up enough in the building to hear unadulterated roof sound bytes, as it hails on a little w2 street. His room is a friggin mess, and I’ve added to it with a million computer cables drawn over the bed, and now two pizza boxes are sitting on the chair, feeling cheesy and bloated.

I caught up with some old friends today, and we made plans for Richmond instead of Brick Lane. I hope we keep them.

Inky is online, scolding away darkly, and talking about ice cream. I told her how my ear still aches from the long conference call I took on my mobile this morning, with a bunch of old Englishmen, where I made two peeps in total, of which the last one made it very clear that I had actually fallen asleep between them while my boss was talking. I have a zillion reports to do until Thursday, and not very much patience with the project at all, which is why I’m ‘working from (his) home’, to escape distractions. In the meantime the boy is intermittently emailing abut the same hailstorm, because his office is 5 minutes away. Which must mean the workday is over, mustn’t it? But no, he’s just a tease. Pleasant day, on the whole.

p.s.: even pleasanter evening... heeee

leap of faith

2009-07-06T07:56:00.002+01:00

this weekend we skyped with both sets of parents, booked tickets for a couply trip to india for someone else's wedding, and finally started that excel sheet for flat-hunting purposes. hammersmith and putney bridge have been agreed on, phew!

the die is cast...

sudden craving at 3.56 pm

2009-06-30T15:56:00.001+01:00

MEAT. sausage, frankfurter, pastrami, pepperoni? fried chicken! fish... no chips. it isn't meat, but it's flesh. oooh lamb kebab! kofte, shammi, seekh, raan, tikka. Ghalib's beef tikka. oh my god

instead

2009-06-29T14:52:00.004+01:00

i could be in Delhi at my grandad's place where my mum's turning 53 over home-made posto and maacher jhaal. true, she is quite teary eyed on her first birthday without her mum to bless her. true, delhi is at 46 degrees and has dust devils blowing on the steel roads. but i'd rather be there right now, and give her the orchids myself, instead of making my cousin write out my cheeky message to her on a card.

i could be daydreaming and reading-writing sitting on the riverside parapet at rogers-stirkharbour studio, or further upstream, near riverside studios, where you rarely get disturbed by passers by. i could be drinking a mango fruit slush from plum, and producing gems, probably never to be published, but still.

i could be walking hand in hand in regents park with the sweetest boy in the world, planning little trips and big expenses, teasing him until the green grey eyes widen in shock and exasperation, and then i could give in and be the sweet little woman again. in fact, i could be cooking and cleaning at home waiting for him to finish work (even though i didn't go to LSE and SPA and a bunch of expensive conferences to turn into a plump and happy houseywife, sigh). I could be doing this for some of the time though, no?

I'm sitting in an overcooled office, which is no doubt adding to the general climate change quotient, while the streets of london are baked by an uncharacteristic, unlatitudinal heatwave. I'm trying to document a day's worth of site visits, details of which are already slipping from memory thanks to the delicious weekend that went in between. I'm doing work for work's sake, commissioned by silly nitwitted clients who have no clue. I could be doing all those other things, and i'm in an office doing work that's mostly pointless and very tedious, instead.

this week

2009-06-22T11:59:00.001+01:00

i should ideally repair my social networks, regain a little of my former work ethic, exercise regularly, and save money so i can do justice to my lunch party, 2 pub crawls, and a nightclub birthday event next weekend. i need to look fabulous on sat afty, as the boy will see me after a week of not seeing me. first time apart etc. who knows what miraculous fantasies he'll invent at a distance? damn. new dress? he will hopefully be a little jet lagged, so it may not matter as much. hmm..

i should also stay busy. always a good idea for overfrantic minds and hearts.

good summer, this :)

cloud number 9

2009-06-17T00:16:00.002+01:00

i dunno how or when or wtf, but it seems to have happened, and big time.

to faithful readers who check the blog for updates

2009-06-12T08:43:00.004+01:00

I've been working from home all week. this has been the line for work - 'suspected case of pig flu. i honestly don't think i have it, because after some sniffling on monday and tuesday, i've been fit as a fiddle. test results out today.' it's been a good week and i've gotten things done, given how much i hate stepping into the work environment these days. working from home rocks. while working from home, i managed to see pedro for brunch on wednesday and jaya on thursday, walked from west brompton to marble arch (3.4 miles!) and then baker street, saw a film and had a few dinners... and generally saw a lot of the Bad Idea Bear.

Now this is something new. We'll discuss it when it's time. Suffice it to say, I'm rather happy-like. Shhhh.

if you rely solely on bloglines or other rss feeds, what can i say. you're not as faithful.

:-)

2009-06-06T03:45:00.002+01:00

tonight we gave the Ledaig a fond and fitting farewell. it rained steadily, but 9 year old single malt ain't nothing if it doesn't warm the cockles of your heart...

a little phrase to move the blog along...

2009-06-04T08:40:00.004+01:00

'small talk peppered with smileys'.

putting my house in order

2009-06-01T15:50:00.002+01:00

i've cleaned out the link list on the right. regretfully removed two misanthropes who refuse to update their blogs. added a girlie after my own heart, who also has a great rate of fire. although, by the rate of fire argument, i could easily delink my own urban blog. lucky i'm so partial to me then.

in the same spirit, i'm going to sainsbury's today after work. haven't done a decent whole-week shop since march (competition disruption blah blah). pork chops, salmon, yogurt, cereal, bread and egges never seemed so exciting. i will also attempt to find chilli oil in the asian grocery on f pal road. that is unless the damn thing has been recession bit and closed down. haven't passed it in daylight for a while.

ok, dilly dallied enough for this hour. should probably go and populate my ms word tables again. ooh which reminds me, started an online application for a job. not the dream job, but a possibly gettable one. we want big changes.. c'mon now... roll forward, life.

dwunk

2009-05-30T01:03:00.003+01:00

hee hee. i''m finding all manner of things FUNNY. tattoos for instance... so bored you'd make holses in your skin? people on the tube. silly eejits. probably getting off a stop after they need to, because they're clueless. unlike me.

met the boys today. the friend who wanted me was very sweet and solicitous. his new lady is doing wonders for him and i am very glad. the friend i want but can't have... hmm. well i dunno. somehow i didn't feel the thing today. could be the unshaven-ness? or the fact that i'm a bit over it.

:D

gurgle.

(btw i wuv inky)

:-(

2009-05-29T12:52:00.001+01:00

nobody loves me

the future

2009-05-28T15:46:00.002+01:00

I mean to create things as beautiful as music, things that burst with goodness and sometimes madness. I mean to have millions of moments of peace and as many others of delicious heady recklessness. I mean to write things in a way that other people will understand, one day. In the future.

In that direction, so far, yesterday I worked on my CV. and went for a brisk exercisey walk by the river. baby steps...

(back to excel sheets now)

ho hum. back to humdrum

2009-05-27T11:07:00.002+01:00

hm. saw the winning entry for comeptition. it isn't great. it isn't a huge idea, but i suppose it is a good design. 'blueprint' 'spine' 'central green'…. next time I'm gonna spend lots more time on design communication. praps a little less on poetry :-/

so. I have some peaty 9 year old Ledaig out of a barrel, in the cutest 20 cl bottle you can imagine. just a plain thing with a label saying when it was stoppered. we drank some of it in the Meadows on monday, and some more still back at the tenement. but most of it awaits an occasion. Think i'll bring it along to Jaya's on sat. She's as good a whisky buddy as any.

dysfunctional in Scotland

2009-05-26T23:20:00.003+01:00

My buddy isn't doing that great. Bored of manual labour, bewildered at rebuttals from more intellectual occupations, shut out of his profession, he clings to the comfort of the vast kitchen in his tenement, with the people he somewhat knows, and in the city and country that has somewhat let him down. Always a slow processor, my dear buddy nevertheless always had the right instincts. Joblessness doesn't take away from his gentlemanliness. Complacency was always his flaw though.
I'm afraid for him. Brave as he is, his current situation must be hard to bear, with friends and lovers leaving his town, and no financial or professional security materialising on the horizon. and he is proud, always proud. He hasn't tried to use any contacts, or been terribly aggressive with the sluggish job market. he is infuriating! but his strange innocence and even stranger native wisdom tugs at my heart and i want to move the earth to help him.
i told him to come to london and be taken care of, and he laughed at my attempt to be a mummy-figure. i told him to go home now, just for a breather, but he refused, coming up with some obscure metaphor about climbing cliffs and the next peak, and the next base camp.
he is a dysfunctional charming wee laddie, and i want it all to work out for him.

the song that will play in my head if you and i, y'know...

2009-05-21T23:12:00.002+01:00

link

(फिजूल का sentiyapa..)

on consideration, it'll be the audio stream only. the video is a bit annoying.

straight hair, but aching feet

2009-05-20T08:13:00.007+01:00

It was a windy day in central London, but i took every opportunity to be outdoors. Work helped, by sending me to City Hall for a meeting in the morning. From there it wasn't hard to compound excuses and win myself a walk along the southern Bank opposite the City, over London Bridge, and up to Moorgate, where i have a bank. Broke all sorts of frugality rules and borrowed three hundred quid back for myself from daddy's (admittedly lean) coffers. the overarching sentiment was - what the fuck. as i said to my boss in my appraisal on monday, it's shameful to think that i'm nearly 30, handling huge projects of London wide importance, and yet have to borrow money from friends for travelling. Don't know if the point went home to him, but it sure did to me. The plan now is to line my bank account first with any surplus funds, and once i have a safety net, send the rest home. shouldn't take more than 2 months, let's see. It's just that i can't cope with perpetual heartbreak, back-break and penny pinching all at the same time.
So it was a nice walk. The jabbering of tourists and wailing of sirens were on the air, which blew every which way in the high wind. Near the bank, I read the plaque outside Bunhill Fields, the burial ground on City road, and immediately decided to include it the 'burial grounds of the City' walkabout that i'm planning for the weekend after edinburgh. Then i reluctantly got back to the office. Had a strange windfall when my team's impossible workload for the week was cut by a fifth. It may have made me reckless, as i left work in the evening hours before i meant to.
Ever attempting to dereeve, i set myself the goal of walking from Victoria to Kings Cross, where i had to pick up edinburgh tickets (pretty sure i won't have time on friday, and wan't to minimise panic). Made it to Euston, before my feet absolutely refused to cooperate. Wore normal boots with heels you see, not conducive to that much action. still - 4 miles! Through as many back alleys and quiet streets as possible. no stops, no drink, just put one foot after another. it was a pretty evening too, views of buildings with late afternoon sun, framed by trees were aplenty. soho was quieter than usual, but smelt delicious. Bloomsbury, immediately east of Totty Cotty road had sudden curves and fragments of bright colour, which left me amazed. I hadn't discovered it beyond the Brunswick before, and the Brunswick after all is grey. UOL put up a good show. Remembered old friends who went to different bits of the Barlett 2 years ago, and marvelled at how plugged into the london student scene their uni year must have been. Mine, at LSE, was pretty exclusive and isolated. I was plugged into London and the river, but not so much the wider student consciousness of the city. Just before I crossed Euston road and gave the feet some respite, i wondered at the variety of student experiences that could have been possible. Very fit drama students sat confidently on the steps of RADA. Maybe they'll be famous one day. They'll probably be more satisfied than say, consultants, as their line of work would probably fulfil their passionate artistic stirrings. The school of Tropical Hygiene looked sourly upon the street, probably full of students who were raring to leave england and do real time battle with the microbes of the tropics.

Once at Euston, Kings Cross wasn't far by bus. Then to Jaya's for a late dinner and a sip of the leftover competition Whisky. A comforting night with one of my urban families. Then home, in a hammersmith and City Line train with smelly stumbling drunks. No point judging them.

I've been distilling the reasons for my present way of life lately. i find that I live in london mostly because its very accessible aesthetic beauty makes me warm to it. Strangely, i feel more beautiful here as well. Walking past the city's reflective surfaces yesterday, with my straightened hair tied up in a ponytail and strategic locks falling across my face, i was the heroine of a thousand stories, the key to a thousand romances. My neck even looked delicate and slender. i hope that this isn't shallow.

scotland coming up

2009-05-15T07:41:00.005+01:00

so what are the pentland hills? the english people in the pub last night hadn't heard of it. this could simply be a reflection on english insularity. or it could mean the pentlands are twee insignificant mounds. totally not as desolate and blowy a moorish landscape as i want to see on my forthcoming edinburgh trip. this is to be a wild scotland trip, over and above lovely auld reekie basking. however, i still hope that my bruntsfield buddy's refurbishment works are still on, because this means we can sit on the scaffolding outside his massive kitchen's massive window and gaze upon the castle by whisky-light.

mundane weekend list

2009-05-15T00:42:00.003+01:00

walking to river in hammersmith
meeting visiting from sweden buddy at quaint guest house in hammersmith
having a full english at the cafe half moon in hammersmith
buying tea tree balm mint shampoo at the big boots in hammersmith
so exciting! can't wait! fucked up weather forecast though....

blip

2009-05-14T23:57:00.002+01:00

ok so appraisal postponed to next week. meanwhile, waking up to the london office party scene a bit. where have i been? india? went for a work social after a long time. people don't remember hanging out with me since halloween. praps i wasn't all here. maybe between the 2 india trips i was in delhi only. coming back now. kind of like wake up and smell the workplace camraderie.

oooof

2009-05-10T17:03:00.002+01:00

we are such a sucker for punishment. talked myself into calling him to meet up. because that's what friends do. we used to meet before it all also. so i called. but he's in the 'burbs for the day. another bloody non-sequitir. and yeah, he made sure to ask me if the others were about. silly bugger. i'm not about to feel guilty or embarassed for asking an (erstwhile?) good guy friend out to a quick drink all by ourselves. that kind of teenage angst is best left to him.

ok. now nothing until 1st june.

oooooofff

dimma

2009-05-06T23:36:00.005+01:00

In the mean streets of west Delhi, a tiny woman from Bengal steers a heavy black ambassador painstakingly through Patel Nagar traffic. She seems very capable, even though you can barely see her head above the wheel. What you don’t see is that sometimes she keeps the hefty gear lock close to hand. No inconsequential hooligan has the right to come between her and her labours of love for her family. Later the same day, she holds her oldest grand daughter by the hand an takes her to gaaner class, where she raises her voice in the songs of Robi Thakur, singing of love and loss, God and nature.

This is my Didima. She of the loud funny sneezes, the deep spiritual faith, the pragmatic modern outlook, the sweet smelling pujo rituals and the warm sweaters she knitted at home. A woman from a different era - old school and old forms and old fashioned courage. We, her offspring had the freedom to be modern and liberal, because in her was preserved all the goodness and purity of an old fashioned way of thinking. If our experiments with life went wrong, she would be there, like a rock in her faith.

There was old school romance too. When her young strapping fiance was on the run from the police because he didn't believe in the British, she would dress in a Burkha and carry tiffin to him under cover of the dark. We've seen them together, Dimma and Dadu, and they are the type of married couple who make you remember that marriage is about blissful lifelong partnerships. No question of individual victory or compromise. The occasional friction yes, but always the unquestionable unity.

Our Dimma is an institution. I don't think we've ever ascertained the number of people who call her by this name, because her home was always open to friends and acquaintances. It would be an adda, staying at dimma's place, and endless riot of great food, ludo, taash, some gossip and major storytelling sessions.

You had an interesting life Dimma, didn't you? There was love and family, daughters and grand-children and a great grandchild, pets, weddings, funerals, civil unrest, war and even climate change! I'm sorry Dimma, that sometimes near the end you had to bear the inignity of feeling that the world was passing you by, that your body was failing you, and that you didn't have a use in the world anymore, sitting in your seat in the corner. You had a place though, and you will always have it. Without you, we would be rudderless, faithless, bland and culture-less. Because you tied so many of us to our roots and traditions, in a fast changing scary world, just by being there. In your white sari with a simple paar, your reading glasses carefully folded in a maroon box next to you, a diary and a medicine box by your side, a simple chain, a ring and a little sindoor to denote your status as the lady of the house.

I have missed your gentle care ever since I moved away after my short stint of living with you Dimma. I have missed you standing by the dinner table, making sure Sitaram has cooked my favourite alu bhaatey, bhindi, musur daal, and the strange nutri-nuggets that you can't understand my liking for. (Your daughter has tried to replicate your recipes, but sadly, it isn't the same.) I have missed the way you just sat near me those few times when I refused to tell you why I was crying (It was the end of my silly teenage romance). I miss you playing mum to me, when I lived away from her, and had small illnesses and small worries, and no one to tell. I miss you explaining to me why this series of Krishno is better than BR Chopra's Mahabharat. Most of all I will miss your guilty giggle when someone makes a slightly indecent joke, and the loud snort of laughter that you never quite managed to conceal. It's nearly 2 weeks now, and I still can't quite comprehend that you're gone.

old 'un

2009-05-06T21:26:00.005+01:00

do you ever think
that if you and i kissed
the world would stop being
atoms would implode
birds would fly into the sun, burn and vapourise
and somewhere several penguins would tap their chins knowingly with their fins.