One day when my tongue will get loosened without wine, I’ll let you know whom should you love. Pillars-of-salt fact, never love someone with a dissimilar father. If you do, it will crumble you down and then you may never find your sediments. I’m sounded with the fact that your father is super skilled and above all a humane being. You’ve followed his outline and filled in some good colours of your own. Talk about me. I’m so like fluid-at its core lies some adamancy. Doesn’t matter how many pebbles you throw at, those ripples fade into nothingness.
A quote by Bergler has reaped a reasonable answer to the unknown, about why have I started writing. Writing to me wasn’t as coincidental as it seemed. People who love writing cannot be spared from the claim that they are masochists. And I’m aware it is innately present in me. (contd)-
A few things have flown down the bloodline, from my mother, which none of my forefathers had ever owned are the favourite stories and anecdotes. I found it out with a gasp that my mother had listened to The Kaziranga Trail on the radio. Not merely a listen but a 24-year-old earworm, stayed intact until it spilled over at a youthful pace. A 44-year-old lady turned into an 18-year-old teen. Her words were doing cannon balls. Gave way to some profound waves up to my shores. I shook the dust off the novel on someone’s ask. It shone under the sunlight on my mother’s words. She read its blurb so as to nudge me to read it on my own.
When I see or hear about reading a novel, I see Nicholson Baker saying it out loud that the question any novel is really trying to answer is whether life worth living. My mother still reads novels. Reading between the lines. With the same searching eyes.-
I guess CBSE students have looked at Gandhi no less in their textbooks than on notes. On the back of its front page once lay Gandhi’s talisman in bold. The words were simple; it looked simpler but living it is the toughest. Gandhi was one of a kind. You will often see his take on an idea with more humility than someone else’s. Flaubert’s live like a bourgeois, think like a demigod sounds to me more like Gandhi’s simple living, high thinking; with a tone of arrogance.
Nothing is as intimidating as humility. It is much preached but rarely lived. Those who’ve lived with it are now hero-worshipped. They are to be treated like demigods and it won’t cause turmoil. God doesn’t think Himself to be God.
We learn humility, by and large, at our last steps. We may learn it sooner if we’ve rolled down some good stairs. As for now, I don’t know which one will I prefer.-
The skeletal difference between my mother and me is she understands and I believe. The rest of our distinctions follow as muscles and skin. Whenever I try to seek how she has become so, she often repeats, everything is time-bound and so are our wounds and learnings. Such an answer annoys me. It pushes me to the verge of a blackout cliff, sipping away my sight of belief. A desperate 20-year-old, blind with no crutch to hold on to.
I had never known blindness could be so pervasive. Without a prior hint, who could’ve known it could take the form of psychosomatic blindness and, resurrect some Cambodian women in the 80s. Blindness as a blessing in disguise for them not to bear more of the truth. But what about Gandhari’s blindness to her sons? Ted’s blindness to Sylvia? Or my blindness to myself? Do doctors write prescriptions for preferred blindness?
"This blindness, so seamless, so bright
blind me with my halo
bravery dries up to say it sooner, a mirage"-
It is better to start something than to start nothing. So I am taking it off, without knowing what it is. Writing without reading seems unfathomable to me these days. Simply because I haven't read as much as others or for my lack of insight to shear in through myself. Those of my age are to be envied who have found their signature style of writing and living. They know where to place a hyperbole or their non-favourite antique. They are ascertained from day one on whom or which poem to place at first.
Reading Vegetarian induces an unknown current of depression, which perhaps blurred my inclination for meat. So poetic of it that it takes you up and down but never to something. It is an irritable itch to not get it down to something, but it certainly deals with man-controlled desires, their imposition which in turn leads to loss of self among women. After a few scoldings from my mother and some pill sized introspection, I put down the book for some days. I haven't lucidly started The Friend but rummaged through a few first pages. I loved the language. It impersonated someone you would like to listen to. One fact I missed is to regard my love for Deborah Smith's translation. (contd)-
Sun rays come through the pane
to be just some floating dust
Thank my good head at dreaming
I see more of them as some dancing quartz,
mimicking each of our twirls
How uncanny of this place
that it remembers us more than we do
-
May we live in each other's eyes
and never in minds
For I have no energy to be out for the pearl of thought
We are now just some dead stars
in need of apostles or jury every so often
May light guide us this time
to know where we truly lie-
Never falter
To choose a paint
Dip your fingers into scarlet or something bolder
Press them against my white walls
Look as far as you can lay your eyes on
I've become too generous and my walls are too cavernous
Do as many overlaps, colours or figures
So I can look back at it and recall who I am
-
One, gradually I have realised how true it is to proclaim that humans are social beings. I wish I had left behind my laziness and talked about my issues with someone. Sharing my vulnerabilities with someone would've precluded me from becoming a narcissist.
Two, in certain moments, succinctly, it feels amazing to let myself feel smaller than the One. It puts me in place, towards divinity.-