Digging for Meaning

In any relationship, there are only every two possible operating conditions - Trust/ Love Or Power. You need to have either of these two things in a relationship for your own good. If you have neither, its best to walk away if you can. If not, the second best thing is to gather strength to fight for respect.   Ophelia: "incapable of her own distress" Any relationship is either based on trust based cooperation or competition for power. If you are lucky, your life will get entangled with a person who respects you and has your best interest in mind. The second possibility is that the  relationships turn into a game of power - where there are daily skirmishes to gain a leverage between the parties. But both these types of relationships have some sort of balance between the partners. The first is where the presence of love/ trust creates a nurturing atmosphere for both the parties. The second is where there might not be love, but at least there is give and take - some sor...

1. Food as love "Jevan zala?  Kay khallas? " (Did you eat? What did you eat for dinner?) Phone lines across the world are clogged with concerns of lovely people. In absence of real intimacy,  families and lovers resort to questionnaire of food intake and bowel movements. In absence of touch they want to ensure the mortal vessels of the their loved ones are well taken care of.  The questions are  not an exercise in inanity. They are expressions of love.  2. Food fetish Idle chat at office lunch tables,  conversations with acquaintances... Across the world, (perhaps the upper middle class world that is not currently being destroyed by wars and proxy wars) people are filling the space between burps and bites with conversations of food and restaurants.  Incessantly.  The virus of foodieitis is spreading faster than Ebola. Everybody see themselves as foodies. A virus that hollows out the brain of thoughts about anything but indulgen...

when the lights go out and the city's TVs and chat windows are left lifeless the lonely legs bring the living souls to the windows and balconies of the lonely city. and in that honest dark time, the city sighs. empty heavy gazes converge in the heat of the city. hearts on window sill breath for life in the hot mist.

Ah. I so wish to walk the midnight streets of Paris. Woody Allen keeps on making these lovely films filled with so much 'romance' of life, and no matter what you do, you can't escape. you will fall shamelessly in love with his movies. I just saw his 'Midnight in Paris' and feel like booking a ticket to Paris and walk those streets. Well, it happened to me earlier with 'Before Sunrise' as well. anyways. If I were in Nasik or even Mumbai, I would have stepped out and went for a walk now. its 11 pm now. it won't have been a big deal. But unfortunately I am in Gurgaon now. and its foolish to be not inside home/ car  at this hour in the national capital region.Anyways.. (ya, its annoying i can imagine to keep on reading 'anyways' again and again, but ... anyways) ___ 'Dali!' , 'Bunuel.'. Ah, how i would love to meet them. and Gil does. lucky bugger. :P ___ and hands of men so easily rest on women's back, it was magical. :) _...

To travel is to escape.... My mind was completely empty and my body was cold. It was an early summer afternoon in Leh and i was sitting by the steps of a monastery. I was an empty shell with big eyes, simply intent on taking in all that was there; and there was so much beauty and peace there to take in: Colorful fluttering flags, old women chatting conspiratorially at the other end, monks gesticulating to each other furiously, an India soldier checking out his camera pics, two young women talking to someone else on their cell phone and laughing secret laughs... A monk passed by and suggested me to come see the monastery from inside. I had a bag with me and needed to keep it somewhere safe before i enter. That's when i noticed the person sitting just 2 steps below me, with the intention of keeping my stuff there under his watch. I thought it was a young white boy. I tapped his back. a little too forcefully perhaps, because it was actually a french girl. i did an 'excuse ...

Tonight while walking on the street out of my place for dinner, I saw a guy at a distance standing in the middle of the road. He seemed weird, standing like there, staring at some place. Nodding head at times. Walking and stopping. Looking back. Staring again. Hesitation personified. Gathering faith in his fists. My brain is like an ajax-less 1990's browser. I have to refresh my conscience to join the dots.I was left confused by his behavior. I tried to ignore it and went ahead and put my earphones on to 'the dangling conversations'. A little ahead, while crossing him I saw him a little more clearly. Apprehension was written all over him. His eyes were wide open; mouth half open, as if he wanted to say things but words were not yet ready to come out. I followed his gaze to find they were squarely trained on a window in an apartment nearby. The window framed a silhouette of a girl. she was holding the bars on the window, quite dramatic really. A silent persuasi...

A friendship is of the moment. Its envelops in togetherness different souls in that one moment with the shade of joy; that anchors the individuals outside of them, to a person and to a moment. It exists in creating such moments and more importantly imagining and remembering such moments. A friendship has no concern of the past, of the future or of the world outside of the moment of togetherness. Love is something else. The lovers need to anchor each other in their entirety. Their intertwined fingers probe all corners, all recesses of each other's past and their gaze is fixated on a tomorrow of forever togetherness. Friendship has no thirst. It needs no reason. Love has thirst. It needs every reason to exist. From the sparkle of the eye to the lover's tears of childhoods, they need to know all and feel all and hold it in the warm hug of memory.

what good is a cell phone? you stare at it for long. hoping for it to ring. hoping for it to light up with that name.  and its bloody unmoving. and then it makes noise when you don't want anything to do with it or anything else at all. if only it could carry a smile with it as well, instead of the dumb smiley. a real smile. the infectious one. if only it could carry touch, the caring 'i am here' touch. a real tight hold on the silent cowering fingers.

her pout is her hug and her lips draw blood stilled in rapture i laugh out at my dazed-ness and give up the moment i had yearned for all this while...

every day, an hour before sleep is due ego deserts me. and i am left lying on the bed curled up with unsure thumbs and fingers twiddling with the cellphone. the day after, ego wakes up with cocky erasure of memory of ever having felt needy. ego! you beast! you deserter! stay true or let alone. what good is an undulating pride. what good is an undulating faith.

tea. 1. sitting in cafe desert rain, sipping on that apricot tea on a lovely afternoon. with the spoon i swerve the warm concoction. the little apricot pieces play waltz with tea leaves in it. its cold, but sun's rays stream in through the wide open windows. there's a bunch of local kids sitting around, being cool, chilling. some one is playing a guitar. i am 'mainland' indian, so not many people are interested in me. But my companion is french, so she receives warm smiles. She is eating her favourite cookie. i must admit, its quite something. But I prefer sipping on some more varieties of teas before devouring those cookies. Someone just came in having trekked the stok-kangri. we shake hands and swap stories. we laugh at our different accents - german, marathi, english, french - and ensuing miscommunication. 2. A 12 km stretch to a remote village in ladakh wasn't really a road. but no one told us. with the trusty pulsar, we trudged on steep slopes, dangerous ...

i am the little air particles jostling, fighting to be breathed in by you. breathe in, silence every cell of my body taught with anticipation. darkness and questions groping for the past to bludgeon open the future. breathe out, sight of your smile bellows me upwards in bliss. i dance and i sing and i land gently on your skin. caressed flooded with love we are blind to time finding eternity of bliss in a moment. for a moment to dissolve into another for the life on a roll forever i am the little air particles.

i want to scream your name out loud loud as i can be to feel it rolling out of my tounge to feel it leaving my throat dry my face twitching with anticipation that my shout may be heard by you that with every subsequent shout you come closer until i need to shout no more whisper no more until the breaths intertwine and its noise is all we can hear

Since a few days, i had imposed a self-censor. I wouldn't use the adjectives 'beautiful' and 'kickass' (to be forever on a quest for beauty is not normal. i must taste some normality too once in a while); and i would try not to be introspective all the time. (trying not to be so 'full of myself' all the time, there's the whole world out there that needn't be reflected onto me..) but how else could I describe Jeanette Winterson's 'written on the body' but delectably 'beautiful' and what else can one do but reflect when confronted with such poetic mirror to our hearts. its one of those literary pieces which you want to hold unto yourself like your lover, for its beauty and for its truthfulness. I read half the book the day I bought it. and then tried to resume it the next day on local train. Now local trains are a many things, but definitely not a temple to beauty and truth. And this book deserves nothing less. It deserves to be re...

am watching werner herzog's 'stroszek' right now. stroszek is a down n out guy, alcoholic, in-n-out of houses. He consider's his piano to be his best friend. he is in love with eva. she often runs away only to return battered and bruised. eva is involved with some hoodlums. she prostitutes to raise money so that they may leave berlin for US. this all triggered me to question the notion of a relationship. i mean, when u say you love someone what is it? a certain comfort level? or a 'home' that you return to (but need not necessarily stay in)? or shared trust? or simply a good long conversation that lasts for a life time (of the relationship)? priority towards someone? or lives intertwined? lack of options? desperation? convenience? what is it? and what about now? that things seem just as important as people? in my family its a running joke that my real relatives are my books and compter and not them, because i tend to be a reserved person. its like we are picke...