wize words

your dad keeps saying he is worried about you, cause everytime u talk to us you seem to have a different thought as to your plans. i must say even i feel that you sound confused, like your minds jumping from idea to idea. i dont know if you ever considered this. all places have their own vibes from the collected consciousness of the people who live there. you seemed quite happy in annecy, frutrated in paris, bored in santiago, depressed in poland and downright hypomanic in london. its a relatively small place compared to other capitals (afterall its a small island). so london vibe must be concentrated. as vatas we are very susceptible to other peoples feelings (being naturally born intuitives) and unless we are very well grounded, (which we are very poor at) we get totally carried away...you need to slow down, forget what others are doing and what they suggest, and hangon to yourself. maybe you should do some meditation.

i may be a daddy's girl but mom knows best. she's perhaps the only one i really listen to.

indian state of mind

been reading Khushwant Singh's Delhi for the past few days, apprehensive about finishing it, the grit and spice of India lingering on the periphery of every moment. after months of deprivation, finally allowed myself to watch Devdas again, to feel the poetry of music and dance, the screaming colours and foreign (but overwhelming) symbolism, the ridiculous overacting that hearkens back to the legacy of story-based theatre dance and harikatha. looking through music files for something with depth and colour, everything seems flat so i resort to bollywood soundtracks - hum dil de chuke sanam and devdas - hitting repeat on aankhon ki gustakhiyan and silsila yeh chahat ka. nothing compares to indian love songs - they hit that perfect blend of beauty and masochistic longing.

figuring out topics for papers and the dreaded dissertation, an array of south asian authors beckons and it seems so natural why would i consider anything else? wishing i could spend the next 2 weeks doing nothing but reading mehta, mistry, rushdie, mishra, seth, jhabvala, kapur, naipaul, shamsie, chandra, desai, narayan...

v-day

one of my better valentine's day in recent memory - cider-glazed pork with star anise and garlic and buttered haricot verts coupled with an excellent bordeaux domaine saint julien, followed by wonderfully gooey german chocolate cake, enjoyed in the company of all my flatmates. topped off by an email and text hailing from the middle of the pacific. it couldn't have been better.

get off it already

Not that it didn't irritate me before but I'm starting to get seriously annoyed at theorists who are praised - maybe I should direct my annoyance at the accredited idiots staring up in awe - for 'revolutionising' their fields and cultural theory simply for applying ancient ideas to the newest social or cultural phenomena. yapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyap...

If I remain in the ivory tower much longer I'm going to throw a fit. Or spontaneously combust. Somedays I think I would have liked to been born an animal, living on instinct and survival alone. A lion. Hunt. Eat. Sleep. None of this pontificating crap.

my white whale

Your friends adore you [...] because they think you offer up your friendship and ask for nothing in return. But that's not true [...] You do ask something. You ask that we never expect you to need us.
- Kartography by Kamila Shamsie

a few years ago there was this guy who moved across the country to be in the same city as his best friend and with contempt i thought 'who the hell moves for his best friend? must be really dependent'. over the past few months i've nodded my head and grinned time and again, willingly eating these words, accepting that sometimes, it's harder to allow yourself to lean on others than fly solo.

between a wolf and a sheep, there are infinite options.

Rockin' Cocks!

You heard me WoB, I beat you to it :o

It's the year of the Rooster! This bad boy is mine.

Metal Rooster
Your self-confidence will prove to be your best ally. The stars will favor your professional success by allowing you to profit from superb opportunities. Heartwise, you'll have every reason to rejoice. Harmony will reign in your couple and, if you're free, you could very well meet your great love this year.

that niggling feeling

was up until 2 am reading Shamsie's Kartography and then spent another hour and a half thinking, staring up at the ceiling wondering occasionally if i should get up and write an email or write a journal to catch a thread in the stream of thoughts that wouldn't stop and didn't make sense and made sense at the same time. have you ever read a book and couldn't stop turning the page in disbelief saying oh my god oh my god oh my god and wonder what will happen next because you know the character you are the character and you laugh because the idiosyncrasies are spot on you cringe at the pained reaction to all the asinine things you do in real life? trying to live in the now, to be present to the present but the narrative intersperses the past with the present, the past is so present in the present and can you really shake it or is it just an illusion that the past is in the past? i mean in the whole freudian/lacanian sense not in the arbitrary linearity of time. the map of our existence constantly changes but i still go back sometimes and wonder what if this or what if that, how different would things be now, would they be different at all or is that map just an etch-a-sketch pic that disappears with the slightest of movements. and of course i realise i'm thinking all this, and why, because of a book and it's funny how books can do that to you (to me) and i'm wondering why the hell i'm thinking this and it's all so camus and sisyphian and circular and then of course, another brilliant question - do you ever feel like you're living someone else's life followed by would that feeling change if your life were radically different followed by an adamant no no no. can't shake that niggling feeling that we're all just jumping through the hoops of maya, one husk after another but whaddaya do when you're acutely aware of the husk? at this point i want to go to sleep, body is limp but mind is bouncing like a paint mixer. miraculously it happens, not by counting sheep but by setting into motion endless mental playback of radiohead's 'there there'.

so many faces

life in london be so schizoid that it's difficult to imagine life outside it. friday, sitting in claridge's bar with sarah, watching people sitting around as if they had been alexander techniqued since they could crawl. i tried my damnedest to not laugh at the italian suit hitting on her but this was hard as the free bubbly kept going to my head so i just sat back and watched as she subtly insulted him under the radar of his deaf arrogance. i was about to tell him to go away but then he said he was a sicilian and i backed off because, well, i don't cross sicilians. this followed by 2 polish guys soliciting us to enter a club with them because they couldn't get in alone. had to leave when one of them kept saying how much he loved palak paneer and KKKG as a way to hit on me. this AFTER he swears to me that poles aren't racist. twat.

and then yesterday, a chill dinner with soas classmates in brick lane, a neighbourhood bordering shoreditch and the city, extremely casual and young and loud but not too loud with things to do and people to see but where no one really gives a damn about being seen. the whole thing reminded me of those niche aiesec gatherings - an american-born indian, a paki from karachi, a bengali-raised norwegian, a brit-born indian, and a dublin girl, each one of us with our peculiar accents and not 2 minutes goes by without a 'huh?' or 'what?' entering the dialogue. we walk along the street, chatting about the last book we read for class, the coup in nepal, the differences in northern and southern dublin accents, the ways to say 'cheers' in norwegian and polish and spanish and bengali and irish, the south asian obsession with cricket, the shared refusal to support england in any national sporting event, the meaning of 'chav' and 'to be biscuits'. someone suggests we invite our prof the next time. the only moment of silence in 4 hours.

Mandela in London

mandela 3
Originally uploaded by sashi.

As I stepped outside this morning, I said to myself, 'this smells like a great day'. Indeed it was as I, along with 8000 other individuals, congregated in Trafalagar Square to see the illustrious Mandela, in the flesh. It was a hollow spectacle that could have been so much more - people shoving to get to the front, others casting them nasty grudging looks and grinding their teeth in exasperation, every other person waving her camera phone to get a photo (me included), people blabbering away on their phones as the man spoke. Are these, are we, are any of us really people of action? Is there anyone half as passionate and sincere as Mandela in that crowd? Perhaps these are the real questions. Inspiration is a strange little bugger.

My ears pricked when Geldof - the man who organised Live Aid 1985 - said he was 'sick' of everyone congregating in these squares to link arms in the name of poverty, that he was sick of pop concerts, that he was tired of this 'crap'. The boy's got sense. C'mon, anyone who makes mention of Mandela's shirt collection - 'the coolest in the world' - has got to be with it.

mandela 2
Originally uploaded by sashi.

So, I leave you with an interesting point Mandela made: that poverty is a choice.

Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.

And overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life.

Paid conscription

The Sydney Morning Herald, 02.02.05

Under pressure from Congress, the Pentagon has announced plans to increase by nearly $US250,000 ($320,000) death payments to families of American troops killed in combat zones.

Does anyone else have a problem with this or am I the only one who thinks this is shady? British media are now debating an increase in the current compensation, which is BPS 27,000 (USD 50,000) per soldier. Some argue that it is the individual's choice to become a soldier, that he/she is aware of the risk of death and compensation shouldn't be awarded or increased for an occupational hazard. But in the U.S., is it really a choice when gaps in the army are filled by individuals who cannot find a decent job or afford to pay for their own education and are lured by benefits of the G.I. bill. Increased compensation is good P.R., shows the U.S. takes care of its own (but only when he/she is ALREADY dead. And died in combat. In uniform. In the service of the U.S.A. I hope I die in uniform in a war. 320 grand tax-free!). More importantly, it stems a certain malaise among soldier families, keeps them from going 'overboard' with their tragedy, for surely, their voices would make others hesitate about joining ranks, and then who would fill the front line of pawns for the world's superpower? Sure, compensation increases the tax burden of future generations of people who already pay too many taxes but I guess it looks better than conscription for wars that have no raison d'etre. Because, it's all about appearances.

fluttering

drinking cheap red wine lacking any depth from marks and sparks as a reward for my hindi homework - converting 61 transliterated words into devanagari script. it took over an hour, a combined effort from a break at the SOAS library and the past hour here in the flat, the 2-character words are a breeze, only about 10 seconds if I am sure of the script sign, but add 15 seconds if there is a vowel other than the inherent 'a' and another 30 seconds if there is a conjunct, and another 30 seconds if it's a conjunct that bears no resemblance to the two consonants that form it. a perfectionist should never attempt to learn a new script this late in life. it's no good if it's not pretty... it's all about form!

brown professor lady didn't show for the 9am class today so 4 hours were whittled away talking to an Irish classmate about everything from possible dissertation topics to relationships to cultural mores to the ridiculous vanity of literary theory to concluding that someone should write a sociological study about the correlation between desire for a baby and order of birth (with the hypothesis that if you're the youngest sibling in your family, you are indifferent to having a child and don't understand why people go crazy over those freaky flesh water balloons called babies...)