the number of morons driving on the itanagar roads have doubled in the past 15 months.

i am wondering how come they haven't managed to mow down each one among them yet.

you know you are indian...

when you associate travel destinations with movie songs.

i have a loooong playlist looping in my head right now.

an affair to remember

actually i am glad i am leaving before my relationship with this town breaks down over the bitter cold.

better incomplete than broken. and eight frostbitten stumps.

done your years in a K.V.?

more simpoo

one of the rare celebrity endorsements for PETA that doesn't involve nudity.

once upon a time on a channel called V

dwelled a sardar, who multi-tasked in a Kendriya V.
button nose, scraggly mush, some squiggles for a beard,
simpoo was his name, but he claimed his fame as sondhi zee.

outside the window is a grey day over a grey church spire

हलकी सी धुंध है बाहर
तीखी सी ठंड है बाहर
धूप उगाने जाना था मुझे
पर बहुत दूर आज है सागर

i would be rather writing crap poetry than reading about theories on vulnerability.

wednesday

she woke up groggy and fumbled for her phone to check the time. it was late in the morning .

"you should have woken me up."

he said "it's okay," and held her close. he added after a pause, "staying awake in bed like this is called ausnopfazn in german."

awake for a moment, she replied, "in english, it's called lie-in."

here we go again

certain patterns in life just don't go away, even after we have uncovered them and would rather unravel them and knit a new story.

if you have fallen in love with a mirage before, chances are you will again.

the girl who loved spice

apart from my m.a. degree, this year has given me my love for cooking (and a non-defensive acceptance of domesticity but i am not ready to come out yet).

so, cooking... i will probably never be a great cook. but that's the other thing. i no longer care about greatness.

debriefing for re-entry

it strikes me only now when i am mentally preparing myself to get back home that northern europe is completely free of chootiyas and haraamis. unbelievable but my year here has been absolutely free of any sexual harassment bar a couple of exceptional encounters.

when i walk in the city, i don't have to shrink so that my boobs don't stick out too much into the public space. if i am returning home late at night and someone walks past me on the street, the hairs on my nape don't stand up in fear of an assault. on the streets, i don't fight everyday battles against non-physical violation of the male gaze.

i don't know whether the commonplace disrepsect for a woman's body and the swarms of depraved hormonal lunatics are a product of patriarchy or sexual repression or both, but the streets of delhi are a regular battlezone.

and i am already tired at the thought of the daily skirmishes.

on the record

coffee break is over. about time too as i was getting giddy with my own wholesome happiness.
not that i am a spawn of satan, but faking good cheer at all times is exhausting.
oh the things we do for our progenitors.

time to go home

60 days to departure.

in the aftermath

he winced 'you had a crush on me?'
she said, 'umm... yes.'
he asked reluctantly 'and now?'
she said with convincing confidence 'don't worry, it's under control.'

long time.

mike-testing mike testing. one-two-three. checking if i can still log on.

i haven't enjoyed logging on since the day blogger was tied up with gmail and i had to invent another id just to make sure that my breathing space remains sacred. is there anything that is not tied to google? i would rather abandon blogger, but at this point, i can't seem to export my posts to another service. and besides, i like my blog name too much to let it go easily. so, we shall give it another shot, what say?

but now that troubled times are here, it's going to be fun posting again. i have always known that happiness does not make for good writing.

when two theorists fall in love,




they have contextual intercourse.

once upon a time

so, i was in venice. and this is what i saw at a kiddie shop. quite a strong message that.

maybe the web is gender-neutral

sometimes, i wonder if my life would have been different if i had a more conventional feminine-sounding name. like rekha or rachel, ananya or anna. i wonder if other women also get as many solicitations for 'being the man your girl-friend fantasizes about' or trying out 'VIAGGRHA without the embarrassment of going to a doctor'.

the thing is...

laugh if you must, but i have just begun to plumb the depths of the internet (as the recent spate of youtube links would testify). many a time, i am just thrown back with the vastness and the range of things 'out there'.

whether you want to look up facts or to learn a language or be amused, or just surf voyeuristically - the amount of information is enough to keep one stuck to the chair for at least 4 lifetimes, not including the hours required for sleeping, eating and shitting.

is there something called internet addiction? even if there isn't one, i think i can offer myself for medical study into the field.

p.s. the internet also salves the ego battered by the daily act of living.

sad-ads

for me, the most pleasurable part of watching TV is the ads. my vacation is evenly split between my bed and in front of the TV watching ads. so i could probably tell you through an academic study of ads, when the indian IT went mainstream, how indian sexuality has evolved over the years etc etc. i adore indian ad-sense. the release of a new ad is always a time of great excitement for me, almost like the childhood games of hide-and-seek played from under beds and behind cupboard doors. my sister watches out for me, and my co-mediawatcher buddy calls me at odd times to inform me when a particular ad is on some channel.(my other TV obsessions are Simpoo Singh and Lola Kutty. but more about them another day).

of course i know admakers are the footsoldiers or rather the mataharis of hypercapitalism. they seduce us into salivating for objects we don't need and into spending money we don't have. creating illusions of hunger and want is what they are supposed to do and if they must manipulate our finer sensibilities, so be it. i am smart enough not to have any money to spend, and if some fool wants to consume, i am okay with that. as long as the ads make me chuckle/laugh/shed a quickie tear in 30 seconds, i say bring it on.

but i draw a line at their unimaginative attempts to coopt our sacred symbols for consumption. and i don't mean pop-icons like stars of bollywood and cricket.

as an example, some time back, Rediffusion-DY&R created an 'express yourself' campaign in a series of many. it uses the same distinctive A.R. score that has very much become a part of the urban aural landscape. the visuals however are unoriginal and offensive. as words like 'one dream can change the world'/'two (fingers) can win a world war' roll underneath, images of Mr. King's 'i have a dream' speech and Churchill's victory image appear on the screen. now wait a minute - Martin Luther King and Churchill pitching in for Airtel? i am not sure if they were the kind to have made money out of product endorsements, let alone lending their names to a telecom company.

one could say this ad went beyond narrow corporate image-building to the higher purpose of rousing people to speak up (for what is not clear). if the theft of images of 20th century history was to inspire people to greater participation in the public domain, that ad failed. the ad did not get the india with cellphones to call up the prime minister's office to ask why farmers were killing themselves in vidarbha and andhra pradesh and karnataka. no, urban india still continued fixing up appointments for a cup of coffee in the evening and not much else.

i think i am writing this because i am part of that impotent india with cellphones. all i can do is protest against being manipulated by a telecom company into believing that if i made my impotent calls on its network, then i would have done my bit. (dayymn. and i was thinking of posting something funny.)

here is
the ad.



as you must have figured by now, i have just discovered youtube and the 'blog video' function on the bottom. i can't even imagine what the world is going to be like in the next five years.