Diary Days

I just finished writing my response paper for my Internal Assessment and I hated every moment of it.
I feel like such a fool, pretending to be all smart and stuff, at this University.
I have nothing original to contribute to the field of academics.
Worthless.

But on the other hand, I smoked three cigarettes today.
I like smoke.
I wish I could taste smoke in different colours.
My favourite would be purple.

Something gave me pleasure today.
I will not tell you what.
But it felt nice and I was taken aback while I remembered the old familiar feeling growing inside me.
I couldn't do anything but kept staring down, with a smile that seemed confused whether to break out or not.
But then I re-arranged my face and the day was saved.

Love is truly a wonderful thing.
Specially when it lasts forever, in your head.

Do you know flowers could fly?

Waves and Sand.
Hold an ocean in your hand.

I also had the chance of reading Kristeva today. She is this French Feminist - post-structuralist rather. And her notion of the Semiotic and the Symbolic- as in language as being masculine and feminine- was a nice little theory that interested me. Apparently, the pre-oedipal stage when the child is connected to the mother's body and the post-oedipal stage, after the child's birth, has something to do with the language that the child uses. The first stage is the semiotic, that is repressed by the symbolic. The symbolic is male and semiotic is female, but a writer can write semiotically too, like James Joyce, using fragmented speech and the stream-of-consciousness.
Okay, 3 a.m. is not the right time to be talking about all this and I must have muddled stuff up. Will try and do a reasonable post about this soon.

In the meantime- love me.

:)

Old.

My birthday passed and it was good.
It made me feel nice and wise.
Today, however, I do not feel that great.



I have forgotten to put words to a feeling, Because it doesn't matter to anybody.

Yes.

Nobody.

Pity it took me this long to figure it out.

I love nobody and nobody loves me.

But this knot in the space between my stomach and my chest is twitching and I don't know why I continue to type but all this is a lie. A lie and a fantasy I have created in my head. Love, Engagements, Loyalty, Marriage- how can all this be for me?

I am a Widow.
I am a Whore.

There is no love for any living person. No love for any single person.
Only pretence.

But tomorrow I will be fine.
And the mask will be indistinct again.
I can learn to live with secrets?
Can't I?

But the wind is mild outside today and I was walking along a corridor and I turned around as if I recognised somebody and it was You. And You frowned momentarily, trying to place me, failed and turned to go your way.
And I woke up and I realised that if we ever cross paths again, you will not recognise me.
Something like the ending of Butterfly Effect?

Maybe I passed you in the metro or in a mall or at Hauz Khas Village.

Two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl.
Year after year.

I prefer the mask to this. I prefer anything to this. This raving and ranting and silent screaming. As if the inside of my throat is full of splintered wood. The effects of eating sawdust.

I am 23 and I am not dead yet. Everything is a lie. You know it.

I take on the identity of the man I am with. I am nothing. I morph into what He wants me to be. And the worst part is that I know it.

But I am a coward. And I am not free. So I read French poetry and try to taste you on my tongue.
Coppery blood. And only Keane and Blind Pilot is soothing. But this will pass.

It has to pass. I am normal now. I have healed. I do not care about You or Him or the Only person who will read this post and get the references. Yes, I may have loved him someday. But he knows me to well now so I wont.
I have healed.  I am normal again. I do not love You any more. No I don't.

But then again I don't want to be Me. I want to be You. And I want to live as You and die as Me.

'Non, non ! pour Elle, tout ou rien !
Et je m'en irai donc comme un fou,
A travers l'automne qui vient,
Dans le grand vent où il y a tout !
Je me dirai : Oh ! à cette heure,
Elle est bien loin, elle pleure,
Le grand vent se lamente aussi,
Et moi je suis seul dans ma demeure,
Avec mon noble cœur tout transi,
Et sans amour et sans personne,
Car tout est misère, tout est automne,
Tout est endurci et sans merci.
Et, si je t'avais aimée ainsi, 
Tu l'aurais trouvée trop bien bonne ! Merci !'

( I got the reference three years too late)

This is why I do not like being alone. Its too damn loud.

Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play.

Now I need a place to hide away.

Siesta

The midnight blue sun bleeds feebly outside my window.
"Love me tender, Love me true, all my dreams fulfill..."

Your warm silhouetted figure passes gently by the bed.
I reach out with my fingers to touch you.
Cold tipped fingers brush against a warm palm.
I shudder involuntarily.
"I knew I'd find you here."

I feel the pressure of your knee as you shift your weight onto it to climb into bed with me.
I have waited for this day for a very long time.
 I feel a buzzing in my ears as a heavy weight settles in the fold of my breasts.
I savour the weight nostalgically.
It is where my heart used to be.

And then the phantom weight is replaced by your arm as you wrap it around my breasts from behind.
Trapped. A love-grip that I never want to escape.
Instinctively I turn towards you in the dark and my lips finally find yours.
You taste like smoke and a vanilla star.
And your hands struggle through my hair and my breath is hot and my tongue is parched
And I don't know what I want but I know I don't have it yet.

You briefly prop yourself  up on your elbow and lazily draw a pattern down my breasts and my stomach, stopping precariously.
I can't see your face but I know what you're thinking.
Suddenly the world seems such a perfect place.

Your body presses into mine slowly, probing, slowly, too achingly slow.
Throb. Throb. Throb.
A dull pain that doesn't seem to stop.
Till you part my quivering thighs and penetrate me with your tongue.
A love-cure.
And all I can do is close my eyes and squeeze my toes together and...

"Take me to the place where you go
Where nobody knows if it's night or day."

I squint up as my bedroom door is flung open, flooding my room momentarily with a harsh morning light.
"Did I wake you up baby?"
I smile weakly at my boyfriend.
You have fled again, before I had a chance to ask you your name.
Someday...
Till then this is our little secret.

"You may say I'm a dreamer..."

In Light of Recent Events...

People ask me why I declined all invitations to join in the protests that are happening in the city I now live in- New Delhi - why I never signed any petition they posted on my wall- Why I never changed my DP or shared pictures online to support the cause.
The truth is- I don't know.
Today I see the youth of India want change. Delhi wants change. They have been rudely shaken by the fact that an educated girl who would chose a movie like 'The Life of Pi' at a South Delhi multiplex could meet such an end. Suddenly, the threat is not in the outskirts or lower class women- domestic help, Dalit women, jail inmates etc

The shock was more personal than I had expected it to be- after all, I too had watched 'The Life Of Pi' at Select City Walk, Saket,with my classmates on December 4th. The show got over in the evening and I made my way back home.
I was lucky.
People all around the country are wanting change.
They want women to be fearless and stand up for themselves.

I was at CP, Jantar Mantar on 23rd December. I did not join in the protest. It took me an hour to reach home, the streets were blocked due to the protesters. My auto was immobile due to the traffic. a bike on my left hand side drew my attention- the pillion rider was staring at my face. Unlike other times however, I did not turn my face away. I pulled my muffler down and stared back at him. As he had slowly leaned toward the auto initially, I leaned toward him. He slowly drew away. The auto driver looked at me in the mirror. The traffic started flowing as usual.
Strangely, I did not feel triumphant.


Recently, I did something where I thought I was standing up for myself- albeit on a public forum like FB, and I had to face a lot of flak for it. People I did not even know were inboxing me and asking me to keep my issue private- to keep it off FB- to keep quiet.
I had done that for a year.
Now there will not be too many people who read this post, and those who do, will think it is unrelated to the national issue.
But I can only decipher what is happening in the world in terms that are familiar to me.
I see a sea of opinions against a woman who wants to take matters in her own hands.
Does the mind, the body, the very will of a woman depend on the people who will talk and talk and do nothing?
Who will label a woman because she decides to give her body to one man and not six?
The youth demand justice for rape, but do they understand that their mindless gossip, abuse, slang-rapes a woman of her dignity?
It is done without a thought. A woman is a slut, a whore, a bitch, a cunt. There are many choice words that I don't know in Hindi and Bengali that might have similar meanings used on a daily basis. People don't mean them. It's just habit. An ex of mine had no qualms calling his friends 'chooth' or 'ma ka bur' or 'maagi'- only later, much later, when I realised the meanings have I abhorred them.
But now people reading the post will think I am being too sensitive. Maybe I am. Maybe I live in what my favourite professor an my University called 'the climate of fear'.
Ironically, he used it with respect to the Incidents post 9/11.

9/11 will be remembered in history. But 16/12 when the crime was committed will be forgotten.
I had this horrible idea of reading about rape cases in India. I really shouldn't have. I started with the Mathura rape case of 1974.
After going through ten different rape cases, spanning thirty years - I had a dull ache in the lower part of my stomach.
Medically, it is where my intestines still lie.

I am lucky to be alive, lucky not to have been raped- yet.

For that is all that remains to keep me safe in this city, or any other part of the country any more.
That and the will of God.