spilt ink

I want to go to there.

2010-03-09T17:40:00.001-05:00

I heard Tina Fey say this in 30 Rock and it seemed to make so much sense to me. "i want to go to there" said with an immense amount of desire causing one to zone out and fix gaze at object or dream in question.

I've been struggling with my writing since December and I've heard other people grappling with a writer's block (sometimes, when I indirectly label myself as a writer, I tend to blush.)thanks to the whole MFA apprehension. So I'm trying to angle out of it and write something everyday.. well at least every other day. Imagine, I'm finding it hard to ramble.

Life goes on here in Montreal..I have currently wrapped up my second session of volunteering at Maison De L'amitie and am waiting to teach my next class. I have, fortunately enough, landed a part time job teaching English to corporate clients. It's funny, that I consider the language to be my strongest point (GRE u can shove off) and still catch a shiver in my ankles thinking of teaching directors of finance the nuances of the language. I mean I don't really 'feel' for their profession, as in it doesn't appeal to me or anything.. I guess I'm scared that sometimes I don't mean to be a social person and they'll call me on it? gah..

So let me dwell (read obsess) over MY MFA application process. So basically I was done with my applications by the first week of January and then all we do is wait to hear if programs have started calling their chosen few. Yes, i said 'few' and I mean it. Consider the odds here.. a program has 4 spots for poetry and gets close to 500-800 applications in that genre. I have just one question. Really, when will the economy pick up so some people who want to work will go to work and then I can finally start on school? Just so I'm not facing THAT much competition! But here we are, I wait on faculty decisions hoping they see some spark in my writing and know that I'm capable of great poetic prowess.(are you reading, committee?). From what I've been told, in varying amounts of reassuring advice, I should be tremendously happy that I know what I want to do and am ready to do it. And that I am.

So here's what I say to the four programs that I'm waiting to hear from. I want to go to there.

I've always been in love.

2010-02-25T12:56:00.002-05:00

Fry and Laurie- crack me up won't you!

2010-02-25T12:46:00.003-05:00

Ani difranco

2010-02-25T12:40:00.002-05:00

a Bit of fry and laurie

2010-02-09T11:03:00.003-05:00

Seriously. Comic relief it is.

umm sometimes..

2010-01-08T09:55:00.006-05:00

I have feelings concerning airports, bus stations, doorways and misunderstandings. It feels like my heart is cleaved to my chest which will detach itself from my body and fall onto the floor writhing in anguish and then lie fatally still. Then I bite a sliver of my lip, try to defocus and feel my eyes swiveling like marbles in directions they are not used to taking. My throat seems to swell like an itchy blister and I squint even when the sky lacks a sun. Not someone who can shrug goodbyes of any kind, I live with them for a while, till I am ready to shake loose.

Otherwise, I'm doing pretty alright. How're you?

My pointers for the day.

2009-11-15T12:39:00.003-05:00

1) I think just this once, I might like to have a vague idea. Which way does the wind blow?
Winter is being sneaky and gentle at the same time.. sneaky with rearing its head every odd day, gently though, a slow reminder in the progressing month. We know and expect now for the sun to develop a sudden shyness to the beings of this planet at this time of the year. So there will be this sudden need to put in the extra effort to make everything cheery and warm and keep hard, frustrating thoughts, listlessness and hopelessness at bay. How long? one can only wonder... till we give in.

2) I might be giving in now.

3) Yesterday I arranged for the standing fan to look the other way while we slept. Yes I had the fan on in winter. Why? The suburbs get too quiet and stagnant and under my skin and so sleep is a fickle thing. I miss sleeping in humid rooms with a ceiling fan to stare at. Somehow I've always slept like a baby if there's a ceiling fan around. So this was my attempt to create some movement in the room. True, it is completely psychological and I did sleep well.
Even now, not a sound. What is everyone doing? It's a warm-ish Sunday at 10deg C and there's no one out, no children bundled up, screaming off to play just before lunch. NO ONE walking around to get someplace else. Everything is quiet and proper as always.

4) The tree outside my window was a bursting yellow, like her smile couldn't stay in her chest and burst into her face. It is now emaciated with twigs for hands and feet, crisscrossing over each other like a petulant child. She won't listen to my woes today.

5) I must get out of this rut in my head.

6 months ago

2009-10-22T19:08:00.004-04:00

I've been thinking again. I mean I might be over doing the thinking bit again. But what's done is done.

An update on my life and its happenings. A trip to India has happened. A 3 month long trip, in which time I have basked in the glorious humid dusty weather and managed to fill my guts with an array of street food and the likes,making me therefore, content with my existence. There's so much from my trip (i hesitate each time i have to type 'trip to India' because it's just going back home..not a 'trip'..somehow..), stay in India that has enamoured me, perplexed me and caused a vague dirge to issue from my heart. So many things to do, that I must do. There really was no other option.

I'm sitting here these days, attempting to increase vocabulary and rediscover the charm (or ascertain one, if required) of Math so that I can suitably impress graduate school with my candidacy for graduate study. I might also be seeing Montreal differently. Perhaps an age of 2 years has mellowed my acceptance of the town? Or we are speaking very early into this winter and there is still some gripe left in me after all!

The following week will see me face a room full of poets who would've analyzed my poem over the week and have something to say about it. I await, eagerly. That is all for now.

You know?

2009-03-30T15:03:00.003-04:00

Mostly, we like to read about things that we can identify with to some extent. I guess that's true with just about everything. I suppose a sense of appreciation (by this I mean empathy) is justified to oneself. So say hypothetically (For now. I may delve into this later)if one wrote about the missing tile in their white washroom, would you as a reader, seek to identify the missing tile in your washroom, thereby identifying with the piece of writing in what the loss signifies for you? Or would you appreciate the skillfulness of artistry in depicting the immeasurable loss of the missing tile for the writer, knowing that you have a fully functional and flourishing washroom thereby removing yourself from such a situation?

As you've probably guessed by now, the missing tile and the washrooms are likely allusions to something else. These may also be something you don't particularly care for or have experienced.

What if there were no empathy involved in the appreciation, would an appreciation therefore be valid?
What really denotes the 'soul' of a writing piece?

Takers anyone?

Smile.

2009-03-12T18:40:00.011-04:00

Every morning.

I rose groggily to an incessant sound somewhere between a warm, new day and the canvasses of my nightly dreams.

It was mother, frantically tugging the end of my sheet and urging me to wake up. "yaillu yaillu yaillu" (Kannada for 'wake up')in sets of three she'd chime after every 10 seconds. I'd smile in my half asleep state, knowing my smile was echoed in her voice of knowing what came next. With the sheet over my head my hand rose from the soft folds of the bed to indicate that she would find me fully awake in the next 5 minutes. I flashed those five digits in my sleepy hand.

7:42. That was the train I had to take from Nerul Station to Matunga to get to college for an early dose of lectures in post colonial literature, prosody and romanticism versus realism. But somehow, the idea of trading prosody for sleep seemed a much more viable option for my young mind. So I would inevitably end up an hour late, having missed the day's first class and lazily gathering up evidences of my student life, for eg. a jhola (cotton handbags slung sideways across the shoulder, of immense space, where contents disappeared to make space for more arbitrary things..some of which are best left in my memory) and my walkman (who said Ipods?? tut tut) playing either Pearl Jam, Ani Difranco, Alice in Chains and/or artists along these lines. I remember I couldn't exit my home unless my earphones were firmly plugged into my ears. It is for this very reason, that I would have the rickshaw driver flail his hands to get my attention and point at my dear mother who had come running out of the society (a congregation of buildings, where each is a different wing, captured under one name) in her night dress having hastily worn a sari petticoat under her dress and shyly waving my lunchbox in her hand that I had forgotten to pack into the infamous jhola. (I soon progressed into a good ol' sturdy backpack, which still, unfortunately didn't do much for my lunchbox episodes.)

Did I mention that I was in college? Yes I religiously took a lunchbox to college, made by my mother who woke up early as if my personal alarm clock, made rotis and veggies to go with while constantly checking if I had all the pre-requistes of making a safe journey to college. A bottle of water, my train pass (which i often forgot, so you see how helpful she was?), my books for class (this is a habit she never could kick since school) etc. I always remember her standing in her disheveled state of the ruckus I created every morning, watching me, smiling and waving till I was completely out of her sight.

8:42. I'd positioned myself near the doors of the arriving train so I could jump into a compartment while the train was still slowing down at the platform and secure a place (preferably by the window) for me. As we passed Vashi and went onto the bridge connecting this little island to that of the main city, I would stare out and see the Arabian Sea. It reminded me of my father and his penchant for the sea and also of his patience which seemed limitless and vast, just like the sea.

I didn't realize it then, but I'd tense up and feel heady almost, when it was time for me to push through the crowd (at Chembur station) two stations before the station I was to alight at. Arrive Kurla station, platform number 8. Somehow I am catapulted out of the train amidst a shower of choicest abuses in Marathi..and avoid skilfully, being drenched by fishy water (literally) courtesy the fisher women traveling alongside to work! I have now to make my way among people who feel like raisins in the bread that is Bombay, and reach platform no. 4. My train to Matunga on the Central Main line is expected in the next three min. So if push came to shove, we didn't have much of a choice. Sometimes we just go past the pushing and regale in the shoving.

According to my calculations, I had just the one station in between (that of Sion)to bear before I could get off at Matunga. So I would hang, yes i said hang, and I mean hang from the pole at the entrance of the compartment so half my body would remain inside and lose itself in a mix of sweat and talcum powder and jasmine flowers while the other half would breathe in early morning rituals of the slum dwellers and smell grease off the train tracks. I have felt such a sense of freedom and oneness with Bombay hanging off a train that I've yet to feel elsewhere.

4-3-2-1. "Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus jaane waali dheemi local plaitfaarm number ek par aa rahi hai." We'd hear this as we pulled into Matunga station and everyone at the door would tense, bend their knees and arch their feet while holding onto to something for dear life (thanks to the pushing and shoving from the inside) to spring onto the platform while the train slows itself. Finally, I begin my walk towards my education on paper.

Once out of the station, I would walk among vendors opening their stalls for the day's business. Flowers in orange and white strung together in white thread with green leaves popping at intervals were displayed on large aluminium plates while fresh luscious green cabbages and spinach adorned wiry drumsticks alongside plum red tomatoes and the burst of orange carrots preened themselves in big brown wicker baskets. Fancy shop owners did their daily rituals of revolving a stick of incense around their blessed doors and hopeful cricketers were out on the field, prancing and heaving in exhilaration.

Students poured in from everywhere, as if a river of hope and energy to be harnessed. I was one among them. I stepped into the foyer of the building, that never seemed imposing to me and made my way to my class which was perched on the 3rd floor of the building and built as if a hole in the wall. Our class was tucked away where the corridor ended and u had nowhere else to go. Now turn left. There it was, unassuming and I suppose not alluring to most, but a class of 20 who delved into the art and philosophies and histories of all that becomes literature. While discovering my senses and my inclinations, in college I found friends without whom my life would be the whistle you couldn't get a sound out of. This place, Bombay was and will always be home, where I came into my own. Where I formed a beautiful relationship of friendship, based on trust and respect with my mother and father, where I could boast of a brother who was one of my best friends and where I eventually fell in love with my love who was all the way up north!

Bombay has given me so much. My heart yearns for its familiar caresses like those of my mother's hand against my sunken back, soothing me, assuring me that it'll be another warm, new day, tomorrow.

weekly post

2009-03-03T17:20:00.003-05:00

what a fun weekend this was! the house was full and merry with our guests from Ottawa, in the name of Nuit Blanche, AYE! I revert to my obsessive self of cleaning the house like i was possessed and of cooking with a blaring image in my head of my mother's legendary lunch/dinner spreads. So I've come to terms with the fact that although I'll never be able to equal her energy and expertise in the culinary field, I do manage to hold my own. The husband for one, seems to look prosperous I'm told, and I take that as a good sign of my culinary efforts!

So we lounged and talked and laughed and giggled. We seemed to be stuck on to the Hindi channels having submitted ourselves unintentionally to a marathon of Hindi movies. As a direct result of such endeavors, we found ourselves discussing Bollywood couples, Bipasha Basu's dimpled knees (yes nabarun,it's there, u might as well admit it!) which eventually led us two women to discuss a sense of constant longing for the mother land. How despite all it's socio-economic issues, it still works. For all the first world-ness this country holds, sometimes the whole idea of so much structure is downright depressing. I guess it's an inheritance of wanting the unpredictability of a developing nation.. where everything seems to be in constant motion of either an effort to get better, or just incessant repetition, but it somehow serves to make you feel like you are part of this big change, a part of the evolving system. Maybe I just miss my country and love it for all that it is, and all that it is not. Just like any other kind of love.

I strayed into an Indian store where i go to do laundry here, and found green chillies. The kind we get back in India. I don't think I've ever felt happier looking at that shade of green, those sizes of chillies, knowing exactly what they do to pep up my Indian soul. The guy at the counter had this wry smile, which made me suspect that my elation was not the first of its kind. Green chillies.. whoever thought they'd only be available at far flung Indian stores and not at every nook and corner of every street? i suppose I did take it for granted, like a few other things on my grocery list.

So the weekend came to an end and we went back to the spaces we'd chosen and created of work, home, street, city and country. Till that time comes when we make different choices, you know where to find me.

what is plan B? and other stories.

2009-02-26T23:56:00.005-05:00

I guess we assume, that everyone's already gotten to Plan A or at least knows what it is? what's that? presumptuous you say? what ol' tosh hey!

so I am now beginning to mold out of thin air (or thick, i'm not really judgmental, tomayto to you, tomaato to me) a vague shape of a possible activity that may achieve some semblance of sanity and stabilize a depreciating sense of skill. but notice I said I'm beginning to. Only just.

I don't have a Plan B.

I wonder if I should digress.. or save this for another post? gah, why do i feel like I'm wasting virtual paper? this post it is. I wonder (after a certain conversation) about the age old thing we call love. I just had to huh? after all this time, being known for my angst, i go and bring this one up.
and it's gone. I've lost interest in it again.

now let's see, what yanks my chain? ahh now there's a bottomless pit right there. One of the things, that irks me to a great degree is that of self implied peer pressure. Imagine there is the support, no pressure to be anyone else than who u are, yet people take it upon themselves to wriggle and fit into a certain warped version of what is extraordinary. This quest is embarked upon, unfortunately for the wrong reasons...that of the IMAGE and not the actual physicality of the experiences but what a narration of these experiences can do to the image of the person in question. isn't that just plain dumb?

I guess it irks me. SO WHAT? nothing really. you just got to know me a little better.
Did i mention I've attempted to network? I'm told it's how u do things and get things done. So at some point I may not be completely honest(with some folk who I don't know from the person on the left anyway) and I'll feel guilty about it when I'm by myself attempting a culinary feat. it's either then or in the bathroom. But guilt happens.

That should be it for this post..I shall surface sooner than later, with something to say.
Always, there is something to say.

operations of the subliminal one.

2009-02-23T13:23:00.003-05:00

What? right.. the door's over there? then what's this I'm running into? *shaking head to obtain optimum view* Ah the omnipresent wall. *crash boom bang*

It's not that I like to crib.. ok fine, i tend to indulge it once in a while (begging friends to not speak up and refute this). During these tedious, nerve wracking, nail biting days of waiting, if it's not the weather then it's my constant need to justify my entire application!! question the SOP, question the writing sample...question dismal grades of the undergrad phenomenon. of course I can write better. But that's exactly the point right? that is what I'm looking for in an MFA. The absolute power of it all. the time to completely drown oneself in the writing hoopla, the exposure to other writers, other resources that I might not have tapped into yet and need a nudge or shove in the said direction. So, this may sound extremely strange, but I actually think I deserve to get into SOME program this year. I'm certain all other applicants think they should too! which makes this whole process so great if I do actually get in. I'm shivering in anticipation of being a part of a program and being surrounded by all such talented people.
Hear my plea.. o admissions committee.

Most of my day is spent in constantly refreshing a number of pages.. my email inbox, facebook, the MFA blog..and at times when i need some distraction, i find that wall i keep running into. I speak to friends on the phone and feel like gagging coz i have nothing new to say. It's cold, i stay home and sashay between the kitchen and living room, the former for sustenance and the latter.. well I just told you, refreshing pages hoping for a life altering message.

But I'm still insanely hopeful and jump at the sound of the phone ringing. I never thought too highly of all those 1800 numbers and it should suffice to say that now, I answer the call (coz what if the area codes changed and the programs I'm waiting to hear from are having fun at my expense just to see how I'd react to an 1800 number? I also imagine the admissions committee is a gust of periwinkle blue vapor that can think and is calling me in many raspy voices), hear the "this call may be recorded for quality management purposes" and cut them off in mid sentence. I hang up. no goodbyes, no polite exchanges of "i'm really not interested", nothing. I just shut the flip phone back into it's display position. I can't be who you want me to be Mr. XYZ in sales and services.

So here's to another week of antsy grumblings in the tum tums. Obsessive checking of my mailbox, inbox, blogs and online application status. God help you if you are a telemarketer.

Would I?

2009-02-18T18:59:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I feel as if i need to be told twice. I wonder what happens to me in those moments between hearing information and me having to absorb it. I seem to lose my composure and flutter in the air, vaguely. So know this, sometimes I need to be told twice. Never thrice.
Anyway, I trot off tomorrow to volunteer at the radio station of this university and I'm thrilled to bits. So thrilled, I'm actually scared by the certainty of proximity to other people and the whole social networking vein to it all. I'm really not as anti-social as I make myself out to be. The explanation here, is that after a year of being cocooned in a house, with very basic outdoor activity and even less chance of meeting any like minded people (much thanks to flailing economy and linguistic barriers), I may be purely, shy.

But I will hold my own, knocking knees be damned, and plunge headlong into the volunteering opportunity that has to do with music!! what more could I ask for..the other thing that keeps my bones from cracking against each other, that survival gear that is music.

I suppose I'll have more to rant and regale about once tomorrow comes and goes. I wait intermittently (not knowing if I should obsess or not) for my efforts to produce some feasible outcome. I can do this so much better.

Swimming in pools..

2009-02-08T12:13:00.000-05:00

It's not an analogy. quite literal infact... the husband and I (after an intense two week discussion of climatic dips and thermal clothes and snow boots) finally stepped into the wilderness (read the street outside) and took our bus after a 675m walk to the bus stop, to L'Aquadome!
Built for the residents of Lasalle, the 3 indoor pools are heated, have different features, need based et cetera et cetera. So there we were, amidst veteran swimmers who were doing hardcore laps up and down the 25m pool, where we lasted half the length of that pool and took to bouncing around and observing the innate technique of swimming. Plunge in, emerge when you think your lungs might explode, breath in through mouth, back in the water for three strokes, push shoulder forward and come up for breath #2.. back in and so on and so forth. I vaguely discerned the lifeguard peering casually in our direction and wondered if he was wondering if he should jump in to save us, seeing our lack of skill or if he was having a hearty laugh while maintaining his curious composure.
After a shower and change of clothes (duh!) we left the premises and head back to our trusty old bus stop and waited while the wind whipped my hair into a new do. The bus showed up eventually (it's a Saturday, you can't hurry the sweet old thing) and we were privy to raucous laughter and inane loud conversation courtesy high school folks( i now know that Rooney likes this girl in their class), causing me to think of my days of decibel controlled laughter with my bum chums from college. Just when I was preparing to immerse self into general deviations in the days of my youngish youth, there is this subtle nudge on the side of my jacket (the jacket's too puffy to let the nudge permeate through to my actual hand) indicating that the ride is over. Time to get off and walk. 675m- back home.

some coherent rambling, early 2009.

2009-02-03T19:38:00.001-05:00

I checked in today with this godsend of a blog for hopeful MFA (creative writing) applicants. Such a sense of dread has seeped in, it seems strangely familiar yet I feel unworthy of this weighted awaiting. Acceptance. How much of it measures in many single moments?

Ever get the urge to quantify and back your accomplishments or otherwise with an unnerving sense of logic and if not then apply that inherent humane sense that you inherited from your parents? I think I must do it all the time. I'm refusing almost at every curve, to be part of 'THE' process. Don't get me wrong, it's not because I have no cause and that I want to ride against the wave of things for the heck of it. But more so because I'm distinctly aware that the multitude of possibilities and their deviations are as available to me, as they might be to the third person from the right, and all it comes down to is who chooses to and who chooses not to.
I'd imagine myself wiping off drops of water off a 13 year old pan with a mousy scrub, wondering simultaneously if the scrub should be replaced and of the severe options that presented itself in youthful versions of working my head and heart, that I morosely let go by. All this while I pick the grit in my nails.
I hope I live up to glorious ideas of the person in my head...Imagine living the rest of your life justifying a here and now, when you know in the cavities of your chest you could have changed it. For me, the word 'settled' always caused a numbing of the intestinal area somewhat. I hear of stories. take a year off, travel the world or choose a continent and become the local gnat on a local bar window. Life experiences are what it's about. Seriously, something must be said for people who have the nerve to get up and get going.
So I hope, that a decade later, I can bravely claim for myself that I tried to pursue that which fires me and will continue to blaze away in one way or another. That we are women, qualifies us more than ever to never give up on our thoughts and their processes.

for Aria

2008-07-10T22:42:00.000-04:00

She's
the light that walked into their lives
She's
all 10 fingers and toes to their sight
She
lifts like a feather
her laugh's like the weather
so sunny and warm
when her eyes
move to and from
her new mummy and daddy to be..