on contradictions

 Traveling is not all that its talked up to be, especially on trips that require one to rough it out on an assignment. I always always have wanted a job with a travel profile, and I have one now. But I regret each time i have an outstation assignment – when I have to get up at unearthly hours to make a quick departure. At those 5am moments, I always promise myself I will immediately reevaluate everything I’m desperately wishing for. One cant be too careful about what one is wishing for and I did desperately wish for a traveling sort of a job.

Even two days on the road, alone, without a bath, indifferent food, lack of decent bathrooms or even a bus driver who insists that there is no stop for the next one hour with a ‘ladies bathroom’ is enough to make one intensely dislike outstation assignments – the truly, the only saving grace is the quality of the assignment (duh).

After a point, most places look pretty much the same. The same kind of trees, the same kind of winding roads, nearl the same sunset, something even the same kind of people, same dialogues.

Sometimes its the hope that something beyond that tollnaka will change that makes us go that extra mile, it is the adventure, yes. People say even that travel broadens one’s horizon – we never return wearing the same shoes we leave in. But who has measured this intangible thing. Its just a series of anecdotes leading to the formation of a theory, a quote. 

Its perhaps just the fatigue now that I want to scream when a trip is round the corner. It feels jaded. Again perhaps its only the people or the lack of them when I travel – then again its not so much the roads we take but who we take them with that broadens the mind. So, maybe traveling in leisure with some friends is all that its talked up to be but then from past experience even this is only until the time I feel cramped in space, style, and thought and yearn to go wild. Grow at my own pace.

 

… an oscillator

 I feel i must write some thing now and then, just to keep this thing alive. i can act like there is no time, when it is really mismanagement of time. Earlier time was divided into semesters. At work, it is divided into weekly meetings, though only just. Even the most exciting jobs can get predictable. Excitement can also saturate beings. But i feel im living in phases, with a 90 degree time lag, sometimes maybe 270 degree. This work till that work / plan comes through. i am here till i go there. This, that, here, there are the troughs and the crests and if i make a good graph, they might make an uneven saw tooth formation. I might be an oscillator. It could be a sine wave formation, but a sine is too predictable and i definitely dont want that as an input. 

I can be tangential but this is still about time.

Spitian Notes – I

On our drive down to Kee monastry in Spiti valley, an animal loving friend got off the jeep to hug one of the two donkeys. For the donkeys this was probably strange even for Spiti standards.

In the next two days, Pooh Jha ( as she will be called here ) would hop out of the jeep to fondle another donkey, some sheep, a few blue, brown and yellow mountain goats and one domesticated and saddled horse. And although she expressed a desire a number of times to sink her head into the hairy mane of a yak, we never found one close enough for her to hug.

This was perhaps good for the yak as Pooh managed to spook the majority of the animals we spotted whom she tried to hug, despite proclaiming deep love and affection for all of them.

It began with the donkey pair that was quietly grazing on the road side, the day we went to Tabo and Pin. Pooh moved one step towards them only for them to shuffle sideways, away from her, without interrupting their afternoon meal, pretending to ignore the world, which perhaps allowed a distant thought to lull into her head that a hug may be possible after all.

She stretched her hand to pet one of them and they wriggled their rear and put a couple of more steps between us. She lunged one last time to hug and they broke into a trot and scampered away in tandem, their bums and tails synchronized and swishing. Oddly though, the donkeys never brayed.

She never named this couple citing treason on their part as the chief reason, but her next donkey love, Pooh called Ghanshyam.

This one was grazing away unsuspecting of what was about to descend on him. But Ghanshyam was quick on the uptake. The instant he sniffed non-four legged presence around him, he put in as much distance in between as was possible on donkey legs after an interrupted meal and days of non-bathing.

For a while, Pooh and I ran with Ghanshyam, calling out to him to wait and be hugged and then pose. But Ghanshyam ran unmoved.

I do not have pics of Ghanshyam. Of the first pair I have a forlorn Pooh looking at two donkeys running in the distance.

These were our later days in Spiti valley. And this was much before my camera phone broke. There was one horse — I forget his name — who Pooh managed to hug, of whom I have a video clip. Otherwise sheeps ran away, goats ignored, even a little kid didn’t take being pichkooed too well, but that is another story for another day.

On the third or the fourth day, journeying in Nako, we found a water beetle, who Pooh adopted and called Augustus Kramis – the third. Augustus ran away when he was scrubbed, force fed and force-sent to learn Sanskrit to be a Brahmin. An adopted housefly called Raghupathy in Kaza fled home when Pooh offered to get him married – or so I think, I forget the real reason. Of these I never managed photographs.

Yaks we never found in Spiti. They said they were abundant in Leh. But I have a postcard of a bunch of yaks on a farm in Spiti. Two of them, Pooh has named Ganpathy and Kundalika V. Young Ganapathy is peacefully grazing unaware that Kundalika is eyeing him. Kundalika is good at math and Ganpathy is good with knitting, or so Pooh said – I think. I might frame the postcard as an ode to the hug that never happened.

Happiness is in a washing machine.

Bringing up father

I had many nightmares as a child. Lions, wolves and ghosts in the middle of the night would drive me to my father. I still have nightmares, but I live alone now and father is many thousand miles away.

Yesterday, my father had a ghost on his chat list he did not want to talk to. Technologically challenged that he is, he thought the ghost on his list knew exactly what he was doing and could even read his chat transcripts.Today, I logged on to his account and deleted his ghost. Sigh.

Heads ought to have an inbuilt computer. All that I know is neatly folded into files with categories and colour coded titles, at my beck and call, which a search button can recall.

My brian , though, I compare to a black hole. Each swipe of information I feed it is swallowed by this gaping hole in my head and all I get is a blank. It is a colourless entity, opague. And depending upon how well it ( the brain) likes me, it will recall all that knowledge . Right now I dont think it likes me much.

I feel like an incredible geek.

This ought to be an unpublishd post.

…Doing

I am reading ‘History of Doing’. Like Pulkit says, its a fascinating book. It has been very educative and whats more, I found some material on my dissertation topic too, however much of a long shot it is.

I am trying to relate discussions in the ‘…Doing’ on the woman’s body to this article I read recently– Whats wrong with Cinderalla? in the New York times.

The writer does not want her 3 year old daughter to buy cinderalla dolls, not just to save her from an impossible body image but also to prevent her kid from imbibing the mannerisms of a princess — that of a nice, pretty  girl who avoids conflict . She concedes defeat to the forces of marketing finally, passes the baton (metaphorically) to her daughter ( she will find her own solutions ) and ends her long rambling piece (which I read because I am interested in her subject)  making a point somewhere in between.

So the point is, somewhere in these past 15 days, I realised what Mangai was telling me to do for my dissertation. It never was clear to me then, but I am drawn towards this subject when it is too late for a dissertation as such.    Sighh

My new year resolution is to be more prompt with my blog. And more cheerful. less procrastination.  meditation. maybe yoga too. less internettking, more reading.

For obvious reasons, I have become so used to this lazy life that I have begun to dread going back to hostel. Going back would mean getting up early, rushing through a bath, cold breakfast, melancholy-ness (?), hard work, all in the name of training.  Four days of happiness left.  pftt

thoughts

There is a lovely passage in this book On Beauty. Not so much lovely in language but in content. Kiki talks about women and their bodies. How most women grow up loathing their bodies, wanting something else all the time, everytime. It’s a wicked world. I like the book. Its funny-ish, has depth. I like it

And today we had the quiz.

I miss being well-informed. I don’t like staring at the ceiling when the quiz is going on. And I hate having to go through proxies to reach blogs. I miss regular browsing, discovering new websites, reading online for hours and the regular stuff.

I love to crib. And I love the time between five and six outside on the terrace at Mylapore. Its little things like that that make life worthwhile.

So clichéd.

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