The first week of December.

Its our birthday week.

Better.

Things do get better. We fall, we get up and we move on. I probably heard that on Grey's. House has a different style of quotes. Oh by the way, found a new sitcom today, 'New Girl'.

We wouldn't have done so many things, hadn't it been for the power of the human mind to push previously important things to the not-important-anymore box. And then there are those things that will always stay in the important box.

Like her.

Normal.

It's amazing when you reach that place in your life where something is truly in the past, and nothing about it makes you uncomfortable or upset or annoyed. It's tough to believe in something that you've never experienced before - how do you believe things will eventually get better and you'll stop hurting when you've never before felt such reprieve?

But now I know. I know that no matter what happens, today or tomorrow, things will get better.

Besides, she'll always be around, no?

Headache.

I woke up with a bloody headache this morning and nothing I do has made it go away. I have assignments piling up, I have presentations to make and all I want to do is break open my skull to make the stabbing pain go away.

Chocolate helps relieve headache. Too bad she's not Here to bake me some cookies.

December. Come soon.

Bake.

I have a cookie craving.

But there are no cookies at home :O. I'm sick(ish) and dread the thought of walking all of 500 mts to the nearest shop to buy myself some. Which means the only other option left is to bake me a batch.

I love baking cookies. Loved. Now I feel like it's just too much work. Too much effort. And after all the batter smells and tasting, I lose my appetite. But I did bake some awesome cookies.

So today I shall get over my lethargy and bake myself a yummmm batch of cookies. Too bad she's all the way There and won't get to taste any.

- I realise that I'm going to cry when I read this months, years, decades from now.

It must go on.

"Don't let our blog die," she said to me.

I cannot believe I let it go for so long. Was it because there was nothing to write about? But that's rubbish. There's always something to say. Maybe I didn't have the time? That's a flimsy excuse, too.

But I shall be better.

She's gone back There. And there's something about it that makes life Here different in some way. But there's nothing that can be done.

Two weeks ago, I went on my first 'without the family' trip. It was an amazing experience; a sort of wake up call, reminding me that there's So Much to do. I've become so complacent with routine that I've sort of overlooked the endless possibilities open to me. The only time we're certain of is Now, right?

I need to Do something.

Movies.

So we watched a few movies over the weekend, not together though. Two of them are Drive and Blue Valentine, both featuring Ryan Gosling. I watched Lars and the Real Girl (again featuring Ryan Gosling) a few weeks ago and suggested it to her. We watched The Believer together, she There and me Here.

I loved Drive, she didn't like it much. She felt it was pointless and I couldn't explain to her why I loved it. Like I told her, maybe it's one of those movies you either love or hate. The song- Nightcall by Kavinsky.

Both of us loved Blue Valentine. She cried and I cried too, how can you not? She called it a heartbreaking movie. The song- Hey hey heey, la la la la la laa la - You and Me by Penny and the Quarters.

She was disturbed by The Believer, it bothered me too. I asked her to watch American History X, I don't recall if she did. No song from this movie. Just the scene in the church as he's reading from the holy book...

Lars and the Real Girl, what a lovely movie, we both thought. She thought of the amazing support system he had and all I wanted to do was hug Lars and sit next to him with my head on his shoulder holding him.

Waiting to watch The Ides of March, releasing sometime in the next two weeks.

On a Ryan Gosling high, quite understandably. He's so different in all the above movies, such diversity. Very believable. There were few news articles running yesterday which said he might give up acting, to which he reacted saying, he doesn't want to make movies all his life. I hope he doesn't stop anytime soon.

Oh, also, he's part of a band- Dead Man's Bones, with his friend Zack Shields. A fun, side-act.

Don't stop acting.

Public.

This is the only public space left where I can assert my relationship with the other person owning this blog and I shall make use of it as often as I need to.

(She seems to think its adorable.)

I'm so far away and that only way I'll feel like I'm a part of something is if she;

1) Takes a picture
2) Takes a picture and adds a stick figure of me and sends it to me
3) Takes a picture, adds a stick figure of me, comes back on the social networking site we both despise and tags me (public acknowledgement, see?)
4) Takes a picture, adds a figure of me, prints it out, frames it, gift wraps it, comes here and gives it to me in person.
5) She mentions me to her friends (once, twice, any number of times) and whenever she does, she cries because she misses my FACE.

[Also, she could nudge slyly to her friends to add me on the social networking site we both despise so that I don't feel isolated and left out and don't remain a tiny speck of a byte in the corner of her non-existent friends' list.]

There is one event that can override all of the above mentioned options.

Do unto me what was done to her.

:-D

(My first smiley on the blog?)

Sheesh. The things I do for her.

What was life before her? :-O

[She said it first. I won't steal her thunder.]

Almost over.

My holidays are almost over.

Sigh :(

I had so much planned. With her. And even otherwise.

Although I haven't been able to do most of what I had hoped to do, I've had a lovely holiday. One of the best. The only thing missing was the sister. Which is why I didn't say The best. After all, we know last summer is tough competition for any summers to come :D (H&S)

But anyway.

That's the thing about time. It just goes on, and you can't do anything about it. You can't make it go faster when you're bored or going through a tough phase, and you can't slow it down when you're having the time of your life. It doesn't much care for your state of mind.

I have a little more than a week left. And I'm going to make it count. So, here's to making the next week as amazing as the last four.

Here and There is just ONE place for Three Months!

I looked at the blog after days and yes,

I'm HOME!

Yaaaaaaay.

Ohhh yes, three months. Long time, BUT, she's here too, well, most of the time, because now she's in OOTY without ME.

Oh well. Family. What to do.

I'll leave her here for a week too, so I guess it balances it out.

Been reading Frank Herbert's Dune. That guy is a brilliant writer, the book is amazing so far. I'm also reading Stephen King's Desperation side by side. First book of King I read. How I love him. Can't wait for his next one. AND, the 8th Dark Tower book. There was NO way Anyone could have written an 8th book after the ending he gave but it's King! He missed the Dark Tower characters and he felt like writing another story and so he found some loopholes in his own storyline and managed to fit in this new novel. It'll be out next year. Shoot me if I don't go buy it in the first days of the release.

Back to some reading now.

It feels like I've been on a holiday for a long time.

Three months.

 Almost.

She's here! :) And she's going to be Here for a long long while. Yay! :)

Let's hope this summer's as fun filled as the last - with cuckoo watchmen, military uncles, and the like.

Tra la la la la!

Been a while.

It's been a while since either of us have written here.

Kirtana's holidays began today and I finished one paper of mine. Three more to go!\. One week to go, less than a week in fact, until Kirtana goes awaaaaaaaaay. For a bit. She says she'll have access to internet, so maybe we'll see some travellogue-ing?

I'm having good days.

Muddle. Puddle.

My mind's a muddle. So much to say, but I can't seem to articulate.

It's raining now.

"I hear the drizzle of the rain, like a memory it falls, soft and warm continuing, tapping on my roof and walls." Simon & Garfunkel, Kathy's Song.

What a song.

"My mind's distracted and diffused, my thoughts are many miles away, they lie with you when you're asleep, and kiss you when you start your day."

It's raining. And I listen to this song every time it rains. More often than not, it makes me sad. But that's okay.

"And so you see I have come to doubt all that I once held as true. I stand alone without beliefs, the only truth I know is you. And as I watch the drops of rain weave their weary paths and die, I know that I am like the rain , there but for the grace of you go I."

I think I'll go back to sitting by the window, and listen to the rain.

Two days.

I've had two wonderful days. Now, I'm ending the day with the movie Saawariya. Very few like it, but I find the movie beautiful. I listened to a lot of The Black Keys today. I played the song 'Girl is on My Mind' a million times.

'Hold me close to you, hold me close to you...'

Now to get back to what's left. Less than two weeks of college.

Summer.

There's nothing as lovely as coming home early on a summer's afternoon and lying down under the fan, with the curtains drawn. Bliss.

The only time of the year when I've felt that lazing around doing nothing for hours is justified.

And it's summer's only saving grace.

Home.

I'm here only for three days and there's no feeling like it. I got off the bus and heard the autorickshaw drivers asking me in Kannada if I want an auto. It must have confused the guy when I gave a huge smile and said, "Beda. Bus alli hogtheni."

The joy of being in familiar spaces, smells that have associations and the cool wind in your face. Not air that feels like you have a hair-dryer in front of your face. And water that doesn't make my hair feel like a broom. When I reached Bangalore, my mum sent me a message saying, "Welcome home!" We're not the kind to hug everytime or say things like 'I love you', 'I miss you', but she has her own ways. She'll say, 'Today appa and I went to the shop and saw that chocolate that you always buy...' So cute she is. One of the best things about me being away from home is that I have grown closer to my family. Who would have thought? Today is my day with mum, tomorrow is with that woman who writes from There when I'm Here.

So much excitement. Full love and all.

I'm trying not to hate art.

I love art. I really do. It keeps me sane. And I'm good at it. (Haha, humility seems to have left my side at the moment)

But. It's starting to get to me. I do something - paint, draw, make - when I Feel like it. If art is forced down my throat, I'm just going to hurl it back out.

I really hope it doesn't come to that. That would be such a pity.

The Dupatta.

So I was walking out of a building, going towards my hostel, with each step, I was trying to settle the dupatta over my head because the sun was sucking the energy out of me. The wind blows, and just as I look up, cute guy I see, and the godamned dupatta hits my face. I immediately set it right and see him looking at me and he smiles and waves. I smiled and died.

It's not my day.

India won on Saturday and writing a post last yesterday (sunday) would have been appropriate. I had a lovely weekend, so many things to remember.

And today, when I have switched on my laptop after two days, nothing comes. It's not my day, I don't want to think about the thoughts resting in my head and I won't.

Crying is not comforting today.

Random acts of kindness.

I know it's not my turn to post, but that's okay.

I figured, we spend too much time judging people we don't know and assuming the worst about them and the best about ourselves in comparison.

Last evening when I was walking home from my stop, I passed by a group of women sitting on the steps outside the gym building. I was listening to a Beatles song on my iPod, and was walking past without giving them a second glance, when suddenly, one of the ladies jumped up and shouted "Excuse me!". She was loud enough to catch my attention. She ran up to me and brushed her hand across my neck. "There was something on your neck," she said. "A caterpillar or something," another woman said. And I just stood and stared. Managed a 'Thank you so much' and continued walking.

As I was walking, I happened to make eye contact with one of the strays. He decided it was time to start acknowledging my presence (as he did today as well), and started following me, sniffing at my bag. I wasn't in the best of moods so I tried shooing him away. But alas, he just shifted to my right side. Then, a man who was walking in the opposite direction saw this and very loudly said "Oye! Shoo!" or something. And doggie ran away.

Two strangers who jumped to my rescue.

Well, not really.

But it still made me feel all warm inside.

Let it be.

Truly words of wisdom. But easier said than done, no?

I do try letting it be. But it doesn't let me let it be, if you get what I mean. I really want nothing more than to just let it be.

If it refuses to go away, then why can't it just be. In its little corner. Without jumping in my face every once in a while. Hmmm?

Maybe I haven't communicated with it well enough. Or maybe I haven't given it enough incentive to let Me be.

I need to figure this out.

The Centre Cannot Hold.

I don't think thinking much but I do. I know I over think and that it doesn't get me anywhere, but I over think anyway. I will do the 'right thing' as often as possible. Right thing not in terms of my convenience, but in the sense of it being of benefit to a general public.

I don't know where I'm headed with this.

Maybe it doesn't have to.

See what I mean by over thinking?

We're all trained to think a certain way. We're brought up differently, but essentially, we are all of only a few kinds. What happens when you don't fit under any of these kinds? Nothing. That never occurs. You inevitably fit into one of these categories because one category will be called, 'Those Who Don't Fit Elsewhere'. What happens to the people in this category? They are either forced to subsume into one of the 'convenient' categories, or they get killed. One by one, slowly, each is killed. Not by death of the person as such. But a death similar to the Death-of-an-Author death. Who you are no longer matters. Only what you have said might be considered.

What you write doesn't reflect you but the time you live in. We all live in one paradigm. When this paradigm gets old, we get old. Or is it the other way around? We get thrown out of the paradigm to give way to new people. The new people create their own world and turn back to laugh at us.

Yes. The ones who will follow you will laugh at you. Remember when you looked back and laughed at the old man who said the aether is the substance through which light travels? Decades later, maybe even years later, a person will look back at us, it could be you, it could be me, and laugh too.

There is no truth. Everything in constructed. You are a girl because you've been told you are one and were around those who've been told they are too. You try to understand what is happening around you and plunge into further darkness. Because the world unravels when you start questioning it.

When things unravel, they fall apart.

"Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold."

When you break the centre, where from do you get gravity to hang on?

Blank.

I don't know what to say. I don't know how I feel.

Now Shwetha can go ahead and post. :)

Class.

There are days when you sit in class completely lost, hearing but not listening, you slip into a reverie and you wait for time to pass. You come out of class uninspired, you wonder why you went to class. You get back to your room and for days are not able to read or write anything.

And then there are days where you listen to every word in class and each word sparks a thought in your excited brain. You have so many things to say, but so little time, you feel. You answer, you argue, you counter-argue, you laugh at a witty statement, you feel useless, you feel...happy.

Today was one of those days.

Months and years later when I read this, I want to remember what was talked about in class. You can stop reading because it is probably irrelevent to you. Bertrand Russel's ABC of Relativity (the motion of the Earth around the Sun), the five papers Einstein presented in 1905, an exact replica of the person talking and how I laughed at the teacher's statement of trajectory being someone's excessively used word.

I love this feeling.

I like to cry.

I really do.

Give me a Chicken Soup for Whichever Soul, and I go straight to the 'On Death and Dying' section. I even make note of stories that have made me cry, and give them another read later on. Or at least I used to. I don't read Chicken Soup anymore. Haven't in a while.

Give me the opportunity to choose a movie, and I'll choose one that promises a tragic end.

My favourite songs are not ones that make me want to dance or hum along. They're the ones with lyrics that make my heart ache.

I used to think that was a major concern. But then I realized that I don't face much of my own pain. I don't think I can handle it. But there are all these emotions waiting to be expressed.

Isn't that what these stories and movies and songs are meant to achieve? Isn't that their purpose?

Catharsis.

What do you think?

Ludwig Wittgenstein, a philosopher, has said:

'It makes no sense to speak of knowing something in a context where we can not possibly doubt it. Therefore, saying I know I am in pain is completely senseless.'

If I say I see the world in blue, you can not doubt me because you can't see the world through my eyes. You can never verify if my blue is the same as your blue or it resembles your green.

I say I am in pain and you ask me to prove it. I can't.

My kids are graduating.

Technically they're not even MY kids. Well, obviously not biologically, but even emotionally, my heart belongs to another bunch of kids. Those kids are MY kids. But yet, when This bunch put on their tiny little black graduation robes and sat like grown up little angels on their small little wooden chairs at graduation practice today, my heart couldn't help but swell with pride. And my eyes almost welled up.

I'm so sure I'm going to be one of those mothers who end up depressed when their kids grow up and leave home. Just like when anyone I've cared for left. It's a path I've been on since day one. It's been engraved onto the little relationship line running across my palm.

But I've come to accept it. And just work with it.

I get by with a little help from my friends who I've previously quoted. "Hello hello hello hello, goodbye goodbye goodbye goodbye. That's all there is."

So I'll let them go.

How my day began.

I heard the alarm go beep and I opened my eyes to the harsh light of the mobile phone. What an exaggerration. I read a couple of messages from There and decided to sleep for five minutes before I reply. After switching off the alarm four minutes later, I replied semi-coherently because typing as soon as you wake up is hard. I think of sleeping for some more time and then decide to get my ass off the bed and wash my face with cold water. (High hopes of getting cold water in this hot weather. It's so hot, the water in the over head tank doesn't get cold at nights. This is not an exaggeration).

As I brushed, I typed out a message for her. But in an attempt to prevent the brush from falling into the sink, the message got deleted. Oops. And then I hear it.

My phone rang.

My phone. Rang. In the morning. Before eight. In the morning. No one calls me in the morning. My parents know enough about my schedule to know they shouldn't call me in the morning.

And when I looked at the screen I assumed that she called me by mistake. Haha, I'm sorry.

So we spoke, after fifty odd days. Yes, yes, so I counted. She gave me details about a certain situation and hung up after few minutes. And so my day began.

Of course it made my day.

Look.

Paint. Ah. Bliss.

After a long long break, I decided to get back to painting my little wall strip. And I painted myself :) Heehee.

Asked mama to come see it after I finished. And she couldn't figure out who it was. :|. I didn't think I painted it that badly. But then she said that it looked exactly like the print out. So then I showed her the actual photo that I 'Stamped' on Photoshop. And she said that girl didn't look like me.

So now I'm stuck with a possibly better looking version of me on my wall. Not that I'm complaining. But the artist-cum-perfectionist in me is quite disappointed.

And speaking of looks, I've decided to get back to the gym, starting tomorrow.

Never again shall I give my trainer the chance to look at me after a four month gap and say - "Have you looked at your face in the mirror?"

Men, I tell you.

My OCD is worse.

So there.

She posts two. I post two. Balance is Now restored.

Haaha.

I paused the movie that I was watching with a friend to come read the blog.

What does it say, huh?

This is my mild OCD at work.

I just Had to post another post.

There. Balance restored.

And the balance is ruined.

But on the bright side, both my ears popped this evening. So I can hear properly again after five days of feeling like I'm under water.

I had an amazing day today. Nothing went wrong. Even the cigarette burn doesn't seem so bad. Such days are few and far between, but they do happen. And I'm awfully glad they do.

Eeeeee :) Shwethaaaaa.

:D

Not my turn to write.

But hey, I'm sick. Atleast, sick-er.

Both of us are sick, health wise. Kirtana has been sick for longer and I fell sick yesterday. Her throat hurts, my throat hurts. She said she feels like removing her throat and keeping it aside until it hurts and I said I feel like removing my entire ENT system and keepig it aside and then we laughed thinking how funny (or gruesome?) we'd look.

Different cities, yet...

Louuuuuuuuuve.

Publicly declared.

Fixing.

I was wondering when one of us would talk about having associations with certain songs. Time Does take it all. We can only hope it takes away those things first which we don't want.

There are some songs which is still hard for me to listen to. There isn't a time when I hear the song and don't go back to another place. At these moments, I'm tempted to pick up the phone or compose a new mail on my gmail. Find the lost people. Reconnect. Do something different this time, maybe it'll stick.

Time heals wounds? It doesn't. Time never fixes anything. What do we do then? We push it at the back of our mind, we pretend like it doesn't exist, or it honestly doesn't matter anymore. Things not mattering anymore could mean something more important has come by or you've grown past it. But it's not fixed.

Some things can't be fixed. I really wish they could.

All our posts have references to songs.

And that's probably because music and life are synonymous.

Every song that means anything to me at all is invariably linked to or associated with someone in my life - someone I like, someone I liked, someone I love, someone I loved, someone I share an amazing memory with, someone I share a now not so amazing memory with. And the list goes on. You get the drift.

And that would make some songs horrible reminders of things better left forgotten. But how can you Not end up linking a song to the apt person or moment?

The same could be said for the song 'The Way You Look Tonight', from that heart-breaking scene from My Best Friend's Wedding, which I happened to catch again a couple of days back while sitting in a hotel in Bombay. In the recent past, that scene has come to mean something to me. Details shall be avoided. But it's not the song that has any direct connection - although it Is one unbelievably romantic song. It's the situation. And for a minute I could picture myself in that situation, but having another song sung to me.

And then I wonder. Am i sadistic?

But then a little while later, it doesn't matter to me anymore. And I take strange solace in Stephen King's optimistic yet not-so-optimistic quote: "Time takes it all whether you want it to or not, time takes it all."

The rest of the quote is lovely, too. But it doesn't fit in here.

Then again, I think I might have stopped talking about songs altogether in the last few paragraphs.

Yesterday.

Yesterday was a tuesday. One class in the morning, one class in the afternoon. Nothing unusual, nothing to talk about. Yet, as I sat in class, I looked out, and suddenly, I felt I was some place else. I remembered a line, 'for a psycho, words become things and get imaginerised'. I felt I was no longer Here. The heat, the smell of the garden outside, the topic of discussion, I felt I would walk out and be There.

And then I realised it will soon be a year since I left that place. I looked down at my book and realised so much has changed. Suddenly it came crashing down. Crash is a harsh word, it came gliding down?

The party last night and the late night walk. What will I do when I go back?

Today, I woke up and listened to some Porcupine Tree. The song that's playing in the background is 'Glass Arm Shattering'

Feeling all your touching
Feeling all your blood
Feeling all your touching
Feeling all your love

Seen it through a windscreen
Seen it through the glass
Seen it in a bad dream
Seen it in your heart.

It's so sad.

Sometimes you don't feel what you are expected to feel.

Leaves that are Green.

Leaves that are green. Another work of genius by the masters of poetry and harmony - Simon and Garfunkel. This is definitely one of my favourite songs. And it's been on my mind a lot off late.

Here are the lyrics.

"I was 21 years when I wrote this song,
I'm 23 now, but I won't be for long;
Time hurries on
And the leaves that are green turn to brown.
And they wither with the wind,
And they crumble in your hand.
Once my heart was filled with the love of a girl,
I held her close but she faded in the night
Like a poem I meant to write,
And the leaves that are green turn to brown.
And they wither with the wind,
And they crumble in your hand.
I threw a pebble in a brook
And watched the ripples run away,
And they never made a sound.
And the leaves that are green turn to brown.
And they wither with the wind,
And they crumble in your hand.
Hello, hello, hello, hello.
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
That's all there is.
And the leaves that are green turn to brown."

And they never made a sound.

Nothing.

Today I sit in front the laptop and have nothing to say. I type a little and then delete it. There is nothing to say rightaway and I don't feel like trying. I've had bad enough headaches without trying. Another day of headache and I'll be off to the doctor's. Joy.

I'm watching a bit of the cricket match (India vs England in Bangalore), my first World Cup match. I hate the fact that I haven't been able to follow cricket like I used to. It's a Sunday. A Sunday is supposed to be the lazy day of the week. We should stop saying that.

Thursday night was Hard Rock Cafe. I had such a great time. I had so much fun, after months. Blacklisted!

Like every other day, it's time to prepare for the next day.

The fifth morning from now will be a Friday morning. There. 

Could I be You?

"You're laughing out loud at just the thought of being alive.
And I was wondering, could I just be you tonight?"

Some days I'm there, some days I'm not.

Tonight I think I am.

There's always something to be happy about, no?

And so the night begins.

It's past ten and the night is just beginning. So much to do, so little time, that's what they always say. They? Who? I don't know. You tell me. It's not me. What? I'm lost.

I played badminton today, after four months. Body's going to hurt tomorrow. Oops.

The internet here was down for a few days, got some catching up to do on readings. Here I go.

"So what, so I've got a smile on. It's hiding the quiet superstitions in my head. Don't believe me, don't believe me, when I say I've got it down." John Mayer plays in the background, Why Georgia, the 'Where The Light Is' concert.

Tonight's music while falling asleep sounds like John Mayer to me.

The sky is dark at night and it is just beginning.

Once.

Greatly anticipated.

I finally watched Once. Needless to say, it lived up to my expectations. Maybe even surpassed them.

Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová. Two amazing voices bringing to life some really beautiful lyrics.

For an emotional sap like myself, the movie was more than fulfilling.

You also watch. Or at the very least, listen to the soundtrack once Radiohead's stopped playing on your mind or iPod 24/7. :)

Radiohead.

It is one forty-six, late at night and I just listened to the new album by Radiohead, The King of Limbs. Listening to it once more and maybe another time after.

1. Bloom
2. Morning Mr. Magpie
3. Little by Little
4. Feral
5. Lotus Flower
6. Codex
7. Give Up The Ghost
8. Separator


*smiles*


Now it's your turn. 

There.

That far. See?

Here.

Let's see how far we go.