Sometimes, I just wish that someone would transcribe the thoughts in my brain, right there and then. Not wait to switch on my laptop, open a firkin Word Document and type slowly (like I am doing now). But like some advance technology shite, if I could just see my thoughts scribbling themselves on paper (a la Harry Potter sort of thing but more modern perhaps.)
Like it happened last night, the words brimming in my head in a smooth stream, no waiting to think for the right word or check for grammar. A constant narrative, sharp and crisp. It happens once in a while, especially when I am reading a good book. Reading a good book always makes me want to write. Also, when I feel I need to record this strange set of events going on that make me zombie-like. I am sure if my brain was a place you could enter during these times, it would look like a magic mushroom-garden with colorful mushies – purple and bright. You would feel like that too – a bit woozy!
So last night:
My eyes are heavy with sleep and my breathing too (which is always a sure sign of sleep approaching). So, I decide to keep the book away (Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn). But just like that, just the act of switching off the lights and a visit to the loo has taken it all away – I am wide-awake, the loud-heart-thumping- awake. And then it starts, the narrative in my head of what is there and then – in crystal clear words, like in a movie, someone narrating the events as they are happening.
I am thinking, is this because of the book that I am reading or this blog of mine which I wrote half-a-decade ago and chanced upon accidentally. Well, not entirely accidentally, I wanted to read it since a long time. I wrote this for A, years ago, when I thought I had decided to move on, tormented with grief, gripped with the ‘soul-ripping apart from my body’ kind of pain. It was meant to be a journal of such times – a ventilation to all these morbid and achy, moony feelings. But as always, we did not last for more than a few weeks without direct communication. And then, I completely forgot about it for a couple of years. When I did remember about it, I forgot what I called it – I googled frantically for similar sounding names ‘bubble spot’, ‘spot bubble’, with hyphens, without hyphens, underscores, nothing seemed to work. And just last night, in the middle of a birthday party, it struck me “bubble in a spot”, when I wasn’t even thinking about it. These things happen to me all the time, random memories appear out of nowhere related to nothing in particular – I call it my Random Access Memory (RAM) – (this self-homemade joke always tickles me!) And so, I went to the blog and read those three lonely entries and it made me cry, bawl, rather. Bringing the pain back, and so fresh, like it happened yesterday. I guess my brain kind of just marveled at the fact that reading something recorded years ago can have such an effect. So, this book that I am reading (in which a woman writes a journal – sharp/witty writing) and this chancing upon the blog, together make me want to write – the mundane things that happen.
I am contemplating if I should get ignore this palpitation, meditate for a while and try going to sleep – it is midnight almost, but I don’t think my brain understands meditation at all. It wanders and runs wild even more, like a three-year old on a sugar-high. Then, I contemplate if I should step out into the balcony and smoke a cigarette – unlike most people, the last cigarette really late at night exhausts me and makes me sleepy. So, I step out with my cigarette, expecting the same warm air that was being circulated inside the room by my whirring (and worrying) fan. But the air is unexpectedly cooler. I want to put on the music for some more ‘effect’, but I am tired of how moony it makes me feel. So, I start with gazing at what is in my direct line-of-vision -a vast expanse of concrete – as far as I can see, short and tall – scattered in no particular order or design – like built by a kid who is bad at Lego. And lights – I can see lights – street lights, lights atop the buildings, inside the buildings. I am not wearing my glasses, so all the lightly look ‘twinkly’, so it looks prettier than it really is.
“Twinkly” reminds me of the stars and I look above almost expecting NOT to see stars because the lights are just so fucking bright. But then in a few seconds, I can see the ‘Ursa Minor’ or the little bear – it always makes my heart leap with joy – out of the very few constellations I know, this one is my favorite. It looks very ordinary like an inverted pan with a crooked handle but I am not sure why locating this group of 7 stars excites me so! It is very faint and it takes me back to the last time I saw them bright – the evening at Meenakshipura – so peaceful – I wish there wasn’t any music there – or rather the music was different – more ‘breezy and just look at the stars’ kind of music and not ‘I am going to make a party out of this place’ music. So, just to be away from the music, I had perched myself on a rock. The serenity of it all, I think it will stay with me for a long time, that place and the time, the whole setting (minus the music, I shall replace it with some slow Dire Straits in my head).
And then I go further back, a couple of years ago in the beautiful Tirthan valley of Himachal, how A and I looked at the stars, which were twice as much bright and SO many of them, like clouds of stars. A would point the flashlight on the sky and show me the outline of a galaxy, I found it very absurd to point a flashlight at the majestic vast sky full of celestial delights, like how will that help? But then it did made sense – it somehow works like a pointer of sorts. And we looked and we looked at the stars - – literally ‘star struck’! I think A could have been there all night, if I wasn’t squatting bugs on my legs and arms. And that will remain with me too…that night when we watched the stars with a flashlight next to our log hut surrounded by deep lush green mountains.
And this odd thought strikes me that if the person who invented (discovered?) diamonds was also actually a big fan of the ‘stars’? Maybe he wanted to wear the stars around his neck/on his fingers and so on, and he made diamonds. And so stars are not ‘diamonds in the sky’, in fact the diamonds are like stars on earth! I am half-amused and half-sad with this thought. It makes me think of my love for all places hilly and cold with starry nights and back to the moony circle!
So, I shift my focus on to the things more present (and crummy) and through a window on my right side I catch a head of man watching a really big giant TV. I don’t know why the world is going crazier by the day for big, bigger, giantest screens, like are our eyes getting weaker and smaller?! Have you seen those phones lately – that look like you’re holding a giant notebook to your head. It isn’t cool at all, it is loony! I think the coolest thing that happened to cellular phones was the flip-phone – it could make any average person look very ‘I-mean-business cool’ – just the flipping open of a flip phone and saying ‘hello’ could do that. I was a bit sad when it went out-of-style.
Back to the bald TV watching man - from the 1/4th of the TV that I can see, I know he is watching the news, the blue scroll at the bottom and the 1/4th of the boring graphs. It makes me sick when I think of men watching news all day long over and over again (can people not read the newspaper and wait till the next morning ?). I am glad for a millionth time that our father never subjected us to this. I turn away, slightly distraught, and look at the children’s park area below, which looks so ominous without the children –just a sandpit full of menacing looking objects. I think children in general are irking me these days. A car slowly moves in around the park and into the parking lot– there are a lot of cars parked neatly in a row, yellow, red, blue, silver, and black. They all look like miniature toy cars (cuter than the children’s’ park). And then people walk of out the car, miniature people. A tired and sleepy kid slouched in his mother’s arms as she is trying to wriggle out of the car, at the same time adjust her clothes and trying not to wake up the kid. It makes me think of my two nephews and the whole different tangent this thought process leads to – the biological clock – which I am sure I has stopped ticking because the time is surely up and I can almost picture my ovaries shriveled up and dying with disappointment, the confusion of what I want, the endless aching and pining for a real person around me and eventually to be carried around like that kid instead of carrying around people in my head. Suddenly, the air feels thicker and more humid. So, I walk back inside and start reading the book where I left – 100 pages straight - till my limbs go limp with sleep and the noise in my head has softened to a murmur.
Like it happened last night, the words brimming in my head in a smooth stream, no waiting to think for the right word or check for grammar. A constant narrative, sharp and crisp. It happens once in a while, especially when I am reading a good book. Reading a good book always makes me want to write. Also, when I feel I need to record this strange set of events going on that make me zombie-like. I am sure if my brain was a place you could enter during these times, it would look like a magic mushroom-garden with colorful mushies – purple and bright. You would feel like that too – a bit woozy!
So last night:
My eyes are heavy with sleep and my breathing too (which is always a sure sign of sleep approaching). So, I decide to keep the book away (Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn). But just like that, just the act of switching off the lights and a visit to the loo has taken it all away – I am wide-awake, the loud-heart-thumping- awake. And then it starts, the narrative in my head of what is there and then – in crystal clear words, like in a movie, someone narrating the events as they are happening.
I am thinking, is this because of the book that I am reading or this blog of mine which I wrote half-a-decade ago and chanced upon accidentally. Well, not entirely accidentally, I wanted to read it since a long time. I wrote this for A, years ago, when I thought I had decided to move on, tormented with grief, gripped with the ‘soul-ripping apart from my body’ kind of pain. It was meant to be a journal of such times – a ventilation to all these morbid and achy, moony feelings. But as always, we did not last for more than a few weeks without direct communication. And then, I completely forgot about it for a couple of years. When I did remember about it, I forgot what I called it – I googled frantically for similar sounding names ‘bubble spot’, ‘spot bubble’, with hyphens, without hyphens, underscores, nothing seemed to work. And just last night, in the middle of a birthday party, it struck me “bubble in a spot”, when I wasn’t even thinking about it. These things happen to me all the time, random memories appear out of nowhere related to nothing in particular – I call it my Random Access Memory (RAM) – (this self-homemade joke always tickles me!) And so, I went to the blog and read those three lonely entries and it made me cry, bawl, rather. Bringing the pain back, and so fresh, like it happened yesterday. I guess my brain kind of just marveled at the fact that reading something recorded years ago can have such an effect. So, this book that I am reading (in which a woman writes a journal – sharp/witty writing) and this chancing upon the blog, together make me want to write – the mundane things that happen.
I am contemplating if I should get ignore this palpitation, meditate for a while and try going to sleep – it is midnight almost, but I don’t think my brain understands meditation at all. It wanders and runs wild even more, like a three-year old on a sugar-high. Then, I contemplate if I should step out into the balcony and smoke a cigarette – unlike most people, the last cigarette really late at night exhausts me and makes me sleepy. So, I step out with my cigarette, expecting the same warm air that was being circulated inside the room by my whirring (and worrying) fan. But the air is unexpectedly cooler. I want to put on the music for some more ‘effect’, but I am tired of how moony it makes me feel. So, I start with gazing at what is in my direct line-of-vision -a vast expanse of concrete – as far as I can see, short and tall – scattered in no particular order or design – like built by a kid who is bad at Lego. And lights – I can see lights – street lights, lights atop the buildings, inside the buildings. I am not wearing my glasses, so all the lightly look ‘twinkly’, so it looks prettier than it really is.
“Twinkly” reminds me of the stars and I look above almost expecting NOT to see stars because the lights are just so fucking bright. But then in a few seconds, I can see the ‘Ursa Minor’ or the little bear – it always makes my heart leap with joy – out of the very few constellations I know, this one is my favorite. It looks very ordinary like an inverted pan with a crooked handle but I am not sure why locating this group of 7 stars excites me so! It is very faint and it takes me back to the last time I saw them bright – the evening at Meenakshipura – so peaceful – I wish there wasn’t any music there – or rather the music was different – more ‘breezy and just look at the stars’ kind of music and not ‘I am going to make a party out of this place’ music. So, just to be away from the music, I had perched myself on a rock. The serenity of it all, I think it will stay with me for a long time, that place and the time, the whole setting (minus the music, I shall replace it with some slow Dire Straits in my head).
And then I go further back, a couple of years ago in the beautiful Tirthan valley of Himachal, how A and I looked at the stars, which were twice as much bright and SO many of them, like clouds of stars. A would point the flashlight on the sky and show me the outline of a galaxy, I found it very absurd to point a flashlight at the majestic vast sky full of celestial delights, like how will that help? But then it did made sense – it somehow works like a pointer of sorts. And we looked and we looked at the stars - – literally ‘star struck’! I think A could have been there all night, if I wasn’t squatting bugs on my legs and arms. And that will remain with me too…that night when we watched the stars with a flashlight next to our log hut surrounded by deep lush green mountains.
And this odd thought strikes me that if the person who invented (discovered?) diamonds was also actually a big fan of the ‘stars’? Maybe he wanted to wear the stars around his neck/on his fingers and so on, and he made diamonds. And so stars are not ‘diamonds in the sky’, in fact the diamonds are like stars on earth! I am half-amused and half-sad with this thought. It makes me think of my love for all places hilly and cold with starry nights and back to the moony circle!
So, I shift my focus on to the things more present (and crummy) and through a window on my right side I catch a head of man watching a really big giant TV. I don’t know why the world is going crazier by the day for big, bigger, giantest screens, like are our eyes getting weaker and smaller?! Have you seen those phones lately – that look like you’re holding a giant notebook to your head. It isn’t cool at all, it is loony! I think the coolest thing that happened to cellular phones was the flip-phone – it could make any average person look very ‘I-mean-business cool’ – just the flipping open of a flip phone and saying ‘hello’ could do that. I was a bit sad when it went out-of-style.
Back to the bald TV watching man - from the 1/4th of the TV that I can see, I know he is watching the news, the blue scroll at the bottom and the 1/4th of the boring graphs. It makes me sick when I think of men watching news all day long over and over again (can people not read the newspaper and wait till the next morning ?). I am glad for a millionth time that our father never subjected us to this. I turn away, slightly distraught, and look at the children’s park area below, which looks so ominous without the children –just a sandpit full of menacing looking objects. I think children in general are irking me these days. A car slowly moves in around the park and into the parking lot– there are a lot of cars parked neatly in a row, yellow, red, blue, silver, and black. They all look like miniature toy cars (cuter than the children’s’ park). And then people walk of out the car, miniature people. A tired and sleepy kid slouched in his mother’s arms as she is trying to wriggle out of the car, at the same time adjust her clothes and trying not to wake up the kid. It makes me think of my two nephews and the whole different tangent this thought process leads to – the biological clock – which I am sure I has stopped ticking because the time is surely up and I can almost picture my ovaries shriveled up and dying with disappointment, the confusion of what I want, the endless aching and pining for a real person around me and eventually to be carried around like that kid instead of carrying around people in my head. Suddenly, the air feels thicker and more humid. So, I walk back inside and start reading the book where I left – 100 pages straight - till my limbs go limp with sleep and the noise in my head has softened to a murmur.
