People so many people!

The one thing I think I'll always remember about the crazy "taxi" ride through Kolkata-known as Cal to all "Real" Indians-would probably be all the people carrying things on their head. Everyone, everywhere amongst the brightly coloured buses, the children begging on the road, the trams and the people riding on the backs of trucks, is carrying something on their heads.

but maybe I'll also remember the pavement which we got a chance to stare at, seeing as to how the traffic was at a complete standstill. Through the space between the two vehicles next to us, I could see, bananas. Now I come from Sri Lanka, I've seen bananas. I know the quaint image of the bananas hanging in the shop front. But this many bananas! How many bananas! It was an entire pavement covered with a 3-4 foot high mound of bananas and right next to it was a man carrying more bananas on his head!

Or maybe I'll remember the little boy who came to our taxi while stuck in another jam. He was bare-chested and could not have been anywhere above 8 years of age. "Eh didi...Eh didi" he kept saying with a beseeching look that was very,very good. But, we don't give them money right because we know it's wrong and that this is all an organized scheme.

But, Tina had cheese sticks! Sow e gave it to him and off he walked off happy. Looking back we saw him break out into a huge smile as he tasted the first cheese stick! :D

The old building, crumbling and dilapidated, the shouting people, the garish posters of the goddess Durga, the blue buses which look held-together by mere wires, the coolies, the bicycle ricksha-walla, the ACTUAL rickshas, the back of the taxi guys head, the fellow yello ambasador cars next to us, the throng of humanity...all of it is a blur of colour.

I'm glad we didn't take the Volvo from the airport!

Cheshire Cat

This blogggg....has become a diary of self-confused, whiny, pathetic 15-year old. Each and every one of the last posts drip with self-pity and oh what do I do now. This Cheshire Cat is a virtual SLAP. I'm a self-actualized 21-year who deals with situations, not bawls over them.

*MANIC SMILE*!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

STOP SMILING… LIFE’S NOT A KODAK MOMENT!

Humility is sometimes a hard-learned lesson. Self-importance on the other hand, very easily acquired and easily maintained by delusions of grandeur and vague recollections of passing compliments. But what on Earth allowed you to mould this fascinating, enigmatic, all powerful image of yourself?!

It’s fascinating in itself how you go from a relatively insignificant and homely human being ( Who might even be described as “mousy!) , surprised that anyone might even think they’re attractive, who faces every compliment with a genuine surprise and shy wonder ( ME? Seriously? Oh-k!) , to a definitely better-looking but totally out-of-proportion person who thinks the world is always watching her?

Maybe it’s that fast zoom from nerd to smart, maybe nerdy but still very cool. Maybe be it’s the transition from being relegated to watching the “beautiful” people, only watching, never part of them, to actually kind of a beautiful person. You’re finally in a position in life to be able to look and them and LAUGH, not just stand by and ogle like some bloody waif at a baker’s window.

Suddenly, you’re supposed to be everything to everybody, especially that one person. Egged on by compliments…how great you look, how smart you are, how very many friends you have, pushed on by great results at everything you do. Freudian Ego puffs it chest like a Testosterone-injected rooster among a group of willing hens.

And soon everything’s about you. Everyone’s worrying about your welfare and everyone’s watching every separate move you make with bated breath. Everything you do academically is a guaranteed success and whatever you write is brilliant. Small failures, glaring mediocrities go ignored-they don’t even make a noticeable dent in the sturdy Ego.

It takes a surprise defeat from an unexpected flank to make you realise that the Universe is not going to wait watching for your very foolish vanities.

Grabbing at straws

Serrating my fingers

Leaving them cut open

And raw, red,

Skin peeling off.

The strings of despair

Threats of chances slipping

Away.

Gripping harder

In a pathetic effort

To retrieve,

Bring back

The Perpetual Yesterday

Of yellow suns

and light.

Crumble Pie

Life crumbles
Very slowly around you
A gradual process
It transforms from
Unfairly perfect to
Ugly.
Polluted with pacifying
Half-truths
And the forced smiles
Of civility.
But the will stands resolute.
Because even when
You have none
For in the end our
Journey
Is a solo drive,
You have yourself
And you're damn good enough
For yourself.

Natural pessimism?

It must be my natural pessimism, Although I believe very much in optimism and I preach it to all those people who see the glass as being half empty.
Every time I'm on my way home from a REALLY good time, the kind of good time which makes for memories you talk about years later, in conversation starting with " hey you remember that time when we went to...",l I think of how soon, it'll come to an end.

This is life after all. if everything was one, big happy holiday, the point would be lost and I wouldn't even be able to enjoy what i can't have all the time. But life gets so complicating so FAST, it's like a flash of lightning leaving you with this fading feeling of forgotten euphoria, and a burnt ass that you have to deal with.

Geez.

The terrors of insignificance

it's so easy to feel insignificant. You simply allow the carefully constructed Ego and Super Ego to fall away a little, the armour you build up to avoid feeling the true mediocrity of your life.

The you get to thinking fantastic thing- like if you were to get raped, if you were to fall terrible terminally ill, if you were to offer someone the ultimate choice, you or The Dream, where would you stand in terms of the people who you deem important. Somehow, family always seems to be the ones whose opinions matter the least...because you already know what they'll say. That's at least a boring given.

Then you might come across someone fabulously talented, someone who writes expressing feelings you never even thought to encapsulate, or someone who sings so beautifully it bring unwitting tears to the eyes of the listeners who unknowingly hush up to hear better. Then you're hit with you as you are-nice enough, OK too, a good person maybe even a special person or missable to some, but just that and nothing more.

An ordinary Joe. And soon the people whose opinions you're sadly unaware of, will reliaze that too.

Up until you strap up with your armour again, it's enough to keep you thinking about it.

The Visitor

You know how human society as we know it, came to be because of the gradual move of nomadic tribes towards settled agriculture? Eventually, because they were no longer hunting and gathering, they formed concrete groups. SO, like my Uncle R was telling me today, without society, the average person goes mad.

Reading Dear John by sappy retard Nicholas Sparks was not such a great idea. I've become a nomad. I have no real "place" anymore, and my "people" are confused. I'm in one place, so-called home, for a short spell and then return to "abroad". I'm a visitor in both places in the end...Sri Lanka moves on fine without me, people still go for parties, the sun still sets and rises(surprise surprise) and India was fine till I came along, and will get on just jolly without me, what with the 2 Billion people etc etc. And now I'm in Australia.

The Travel Bug is supposed to liberate you, not make you feel like you're losing touch with any sort of ground level activity right?

I am a visitor, even to the people who should be "my people".

The Easter Bunny's missing

"What's the big deal, Easter isn't really celebrated that much in Sri Lanka" L said when I said that I wished I was home for Easter. That's true, it's not really that big a deal. In fact we kind of dread the 3-hour masses, the Way of Cross in the hot Colombo sun at (forgive the pun) ungodly hours and the general ritual nature of it all. Most of the time, Malli will end up asking " How long will mas be?" at least 6 times, resulting in everyone being bugged.

But Easter is such a family thing. Well OK so is Christmas, and I don't even want to THINK of having to spend Christmas here, but Easter is on a smaller scale, so I guess that makes it more intimate. The 4 of us go for mass, and Mum will come open the door at whatever strange hour we return. We gossip about the sermon/priest/strange attire of the fat lady in the front pews singing in the loud voice. We have a leisurely dinner. On Alleluia Saturday (Which is technically our Easter mass) we watch the Blessing of the fire-my favourite ritual-and renew our baptismal vows together. Then afterwards, generally mill around wishing everyone. And on Sunday, we invite the heathens read as my mom's family :P for yummy Easter lunch. It's actually no big deal.

But today as mass was finishing and I was surrounded, yes, by friends, there was something missing. Somehow there are some things which you always connect with family and when family is not around-you can be totally in control of your independent destiny-you feel the hole like some fat rip in the fabric of your soul, no matter how pseudo-spiritual that sounds.

So, I want to go home!

Scribble

BRIGHT

As the stars which glisten

So deceptively close by

As the fat moon which sneers (peers)

From between ghostly branches

As the smile of the young girl

Picking Yellow flowers in a Blue dress

As a dripping ice lolly

In the Summer warm,

The thoughts of you flash by

Like searing lights leaving

Scars of hopeless wants

And a deep yearning

For home.

Smile like you mean it

It's very easy to appear happy. You just have to make up your mind and decide to wallow no longer. The thing is that sometimes people would rather you carried on this pretence of "all izz well", rather that crying and howling and generally being tetchy with the rest of the universe.

Isn't it a little sad that people who matter to you would rather be comfortable around the carefully controlled You rather than the genuinely troubled, moody but authentic nonetheless You?

Shouldn't the important people, at least, want you to be tetchy is the world is giving you a bit of a hard time?

Lame-O

Today I was told that it's OK to be lame. That I don't have to be mature all the time...and what a relief that was :)

Love you Rosh :)

How can you be optimistic?

What a question to ask? I like to think of myself as an optimist

because most of the time when things are at their lowest I like to think "OK not much we can do here, let's see how we can move on"...because if you keep viewing the glass as being half empty, that seems to be an awfully dreary way to go through life.

K however has another opinion. She's just a kid, 2 years younger than me but only a year junior in college...as Tranquil Roomie's cousin, we get together and bug my poor TR for her various amusing foibles. She's a sweet thing, all rough and tough on the outside but a real marshmallow when it comes down to it. She runs. Whenever you see her, she seems somewhat furtive, always running away from some one, trying to blend in to the background despite distinctly fair skin and dead straight black hair. And she runs. Fast. out of our hostel. To the gate, For the food. Away from the food. She's seated with me on the ledge today...and we're talking as usual about our different views on life, she being the eternal hard-as-nails pessimist. You should not be optimistic she says, because there's nothing good in life! Ah but there is I say! No there isn't says this budding Bhuddist.

I tell her that people like her build walls around themselves so they cna't get hurt and she retorts with somehting very interesting...they get hurt too, may be even more so that others. But they don't want to get hurt further so they shut off. And she runs she says, to escape...because she has something at the back of her mind which says that if she runs fast and long enough, she'll find a place where all her problems disappear :(

Photo Haram!

Field Assignment-Russel Market, Shiwajinagar...gives Pettah and other shady palces a good run for their money.

Most pictures accompanied by "Photos no! Haram!", "Ahhhhh!! Shooting?!", "looking beautiful!!", "unintelligible Kannada" or the ever-popular wolf whistle.

Sir says, "Today, your focus is on faces and hands (pronounced "Hans" ) :D

On pot!

My new credit course at college is a real treat :) Pair up something I've wanted to do for a long time with a German photographer and voila! Photography credit course!! :) Today was our first pucca field trip-to the Pottery town( actually very small village) close by...thanks to the Solar Eclipse and the pretty crazy myths people here have managed to weave around it, much of the pottery town was closed...at least, we didn't manage to catch any potters in action, as it were.

BUT, that didn't mean local colour disappointed.

Premonition

Something tells me next week is going to be shitty.Foe one thing, this entry sounds stupid enough but I'm making so many irritating tyops it's like I never got past 6the Grade English in school.

I mucked up a friend issue, something I manage to avoid doing usually...and I didn't realise that it would have the far-reaching consequences it would have. I, very nicely and as I so often tend to do, thought only of my self.

it also sucks because I can't tell the person I want to tell about it because of the "need-to-know" nature of the damned thing...now I finally understand the meaning of that phrase in all those CIA-related movies and books I used to watch and read.

Plus I managed to let the Aqua Guard run over, spilling precious water and yeah that's it. So basically, our end conclusion here is that the whole thing, including this bloody entry, is stupid.

let'see how the week turns out.