:)

3.2.19 ஊடலுவகை Sulking Charm
She
1321.
இல்லை தவறவர்க்கு ஆயினும் ஊடுதல்
வல்லது அவர்அளிக்கு மாறு
He is flawless; but I do pout.
So that his loving ways show out.

Look what I found in the good old kural :)

I want to write. I want words from lands full of lush-white silence and bleeding-green language.

I want to disappear and not have to explain why.

I want to know that there is some meaning to the pursuit of truth, to wanting to do the right thing the right way with the right intention.

I want to be left alone with my contradictions.

I want my spirit burned clean by a pure blue flame from the skies.

I want love.

I want all the pleasures of music.

I want the warmth of memory to flood my insides and ooze out the pores of my skin.

I want to be reassured that intelligence can be gentle and uplifting; that wisdom is not boring, that it's worth all the delight and the pain of experiencing experience at its minutest; that ignorance of the heart's voice is the most vicious and vulgar of crimes.

I want a solitude that will chant life into my ears.

I want conversation that will make me want to come down from the mountains.

I want a consciousness that will rise clean above the surface and see what we all need to see, feel what can't be felt.

I want to be able to walk and breathe and run on and on and on and on.

I want to live.

It seems to me that both the artist and the philosopher are preoccupied with the same domain, that of the self.

One seeks to cling to the self, to explore and expand it, to eke out a place of one's own. For the other, all attempts at uniqueness seem folly.

One seeks expression; the other, release. One yearns to be visible; the other will settle for nothing but oblivion.

Trouble is, I don't know who's what.

***

The smallness of your heart comes in various shapes. But then that is bearable even though it's the one thing you have been trying to escape.

What is inescapable, and hence unbearable, is when you confront it in someone you don't want to confront it in.

***

Anger and desire seem to be conjoined. You distill anger from your spirit and later you realize that desire has slinked out the back door. And when anger makes a special appearance, desire starts licking the edges of your soul. While the artist needs both, the philosopher seems dead set against them.

Age is a quiet shutting of doors as day deserts.

Turn your back, knot your robe, shuffle around the house, lock the windows, draw the curtains, turn on the light and wait for the lizards to come out of hiding.

Age is renewing the newspaper subscription, feeding the cat when it isn't hungry, watering the cactuses shrubbing the porch.

Plumber fixes leaks for free. Neighbours make excuses to check if you're still alive. Careful : don't bore the kids.

Age is valium, bed sores, wispy hair, sagging breasts, oatmeal memories, cataract evenings, cancer lurking around the prostrate.

Fall asleep in the arm-chair. Drool on your shoulder. Forget dreaming. Forget worrying.

Age is a phone call nobody makes.

Watch the world shrink. To the street. To the door. To the puddle of urine around your feet. To the hardened lines on your nails. To your thoughts. Feel it shrivel inside your pajamas. Feel it warp into the furrows on your forehead and trickle down the wrinkles around your eyes.

Age is a dusty calendar two years old.

Slice a vein. Inject an air-bubble. Slip in the shower. Drown in the bath-tub. Easy does it.

Age is an ache for life that refuses to go away.

sometimes
the only way back
to the beginning
is from the end
forward

***

how are we to see
each other
if we are both
invisible?

***

he eats
the newspaper
and reads breakfast

***

the staircase
is silent
upstairs or
downstairs

***

why does it
still rain
if all of us
carry umbrellas?

The problem of looking for love, today, is a problem of handling multiple selves.

What we look for when we look for love is for someone: who will allow, and not just tolerate, these selves; who will have the curiosity -- and consequently the patience -- to want to understand us, and continue to understand, and not force us into spiritual cul-de-sacs and hold us hostage; who will nourish -- and not mutilate -- our various selves. Someone for whom we will be more than willing to spawn more selves, on our own terms, as we reciprocate.

Do we have many selves? I think it's safe to say that. But we need a little clarity here as to what we mean about a self. Is it the same as a mood? Because then that would mean what we are looking for is someone who will just tolerate our mood swings. And if a self is different from a mood, how?

The difference between a mood and a self is, in my opinion, one of longevity and democracy. Where a mood comes and goes as it pleases, a self seems to be ... umm ... self-sustainable. While there seems to be a default mood that all moods are supposed to defer to once their fifteen minutes under the spotlight is are over, our selves, on the other hand, seem to co-exist peacefully, having agreed among themselves as to who will take over when, depending on the utility of a particular self under the given circumstances. Where a mood is puerile, a self is mature. To make it more fascinating, perhaps a self is just a grown-up mood that refused to go away.

So then, do people have multiple selves? I'm going to be slightly presumptuous and say that the majority doesn't, based on anecdotal evidence (very suspect, yes). And even among the minority which does, most of them -- that is the majority of the minority -- are not aware of all their selves, in the first place, or what drives these selves. These people, then, either struggle to accomodate these selves in a world that is, it has to be said, more kinder to such schizophrenia than it was before because it offers more opportunities for peaceful reconciliation of our multiple selves without self-destructive rebellion, or, are confused about these selves because more often than not a greater degree of ... ummm ... self-control is required to attain a reconciliation of selves than it is to shun parts of themselves to retain the illusion of control; it's easier to give in to order and method than it is to push oneself to the precipice overhanging the abyss of madness that such schizophrenia naturally is. Because, all said and done, the precipice induces a vertigo that is tempting to succumb to, a tempting vertigo at that*. "Madness is like gravity. All it takes is a little push."**

So, this then is the challenge of love: How well do we know ourselves? How well do we know each other? How selfless can we be as we strive to realize the essence of our selfishness? How patient can we be in our efforts at self-realization in the face of hormonal impatience? How willing are we to allow, understand and nourish? How willing are we to give in to the madness of our selves and yet not go mad ourselves?

* - Now why is it tempting?
**- Line from the movie The Dark Knight.

Stretch

Note: Reader discretion advised.

Nobody told you this.

That the desert will feel this cold at night. A cold that permeates through to the marrow of your consciousness. Till you can't feel anything else but a dense blue haze freezing the behind of your eyes. Till your thoughts start chattering about inside your head, like icicles inside a matchbox.

That you won't know how far you've come until you're too far out to go back. That then it is but natural for you to feel vulnerable. That having experienced your vulnerability, it is a logical progression to pretend otherwise. That pretty quickly you grow into a routine of pretend and feign. That then, one day, tired and weak-kneed, you will give in to feeling whatever it is that you've not been permitting yourself to feel. That whatever it is, it will leave you crying, heaving, retching, will make you want the night to open its arms and take you in.

Nobody taught you anything.

To walk that emotional highrope between overconfidence and depression. To play shadow chess with pieces of yourself. To weave light from drops of darkness. To plunge a knife straight into your heart, watch the blood drip, then pull it right out and bring yourself back to life.

I'm teaching you this.

Fuck around with your mind. Turn it inside out. Try it on now and if it doesn't fit, keep fucking till it does. Feed yourself bits of your heart. See how they taste. Let your feelings simmer on a hotplate till they suit your palate. If something doesn't, spit it right out and pick the next one. In case you thought otherwise, you don't need a soul. Souls are for suckers.

I'm telling you this.

There is no desert.

There is no cold.

There is no you.

Everything's changed.

Nothing's the same.

Go now.

Loyola

[Rewritten to eschew obfuscation]

Where does time go?

Ancient walls whitewashed to hurt the eyes. Smell of fresh paint moistens the imagination. The mind is visited by visions of time serving detention between layers of fossilized alabaster, by the feeble shapes of stairway conversations snatched during recess.

The weight of a century bears down on the cross-beams. The heaviness of routine, like a stubborn odour, hangs everywhere: of 45-minute periods and weekly time-tables; of monthly tests and quarterly exams; of annual fests and summer vacations ... generations of rebellion disciplined around a time-regimented education.

Cool hard benches, languid yet orderly; ebony and varnish. The familiar comforts of butt on academic wood and desktop graffiti. 'Suneetha'. 'Crazy bitch'. A mean bolt of lightning in fashionable Powerpuff pink -- someone with a sense of humour.

***

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

-- Lines from 'But I can't', A villanelle by W. H. Auden

***

Tension ticks in the air. Twenty minutes left.

Tall Jesuit windows paired with ventilators above; three spare pairs to a wall.

Wind hustles the broad corridors outside. Neem trees sway religiously in the morning sun. The 9.17 rolls into the station in the distance, slows downs, breathes itself to a stop.

A small steel stool stands outside the doorway, shining in the sun; a green plastic pot sits on top, filled neck deep with water; uncouth aluminium tumbler lolls from a blue nylon cord tied around the mouth of the pot.

The train booms, leaves.

Pitted blackboard sprawls across the wall up front; poster of the Virgin Mother overhead. Chalk-white-dust nostalgia. 'Class Strength: 40'. 'Boys: 23'. Boys ... 'Girls: 17'. Girls ... 'Present: 37'. 'Absent: 3'. The luxury of redundant information.

The 9.27 rumbles in punctually. Pencil points are poked against trembling fingertips. Three minutes left. Prayers push past pursed lips.

***

Time doesn't go anywhere.

Time comes here to file her nails sitting in the library, to dry her long white hair while she waits reading a book in the cafeteria, to lie under the trees in the campus and balance her soulsheets.

Time comes here when she's tired of herself.

Time comes here when she wants to grow old.

Every evening, the sunset fills up my room.

No, make that: Every evening, I let the sunset fill my room up. It's a very deliberate act, delusive, egocentric and narcissistic.

Tchaikovsky starts to play on my Nokia at 3 'o' clock. I switch off the fan, reach for my mobile phone -- a little amused at the thought of the eternal inside a box, switch it off, reset the alarm from 1500 to 0700. I walk over to the windows on the western wall, pull aside the curtains thereby diluting the darkness, unlatch the panes, swing them open and stand back.

I watch how sunlight instantly floods the room, how its fingers seem to intimately know every nook and corner of my room. Like the caresses of an old lover. Well, almost.

I then plod back to mulling over information asymmetry and the marriage market; or plunge right back into a conversation about Chitrangda Singh on GTalk; or come back to a high-pitched argument with Mr. Schopenhauer about women ... sometimes I just listen to Atif Aslam and sit in my chair, doing nothing.

Self-improvement is masturbation.

Sometimes I talk with a certain Tyler Durden.

Self-destruction is the answer.

Presently, the superstar in the sky dips below the sunshade, swinging down his chosen longitude for the day.

Sometimes I wonder how it must feel to stand somewhere on that precise geographical minute, in the full glare of the setting sun, at that confabulation of space and time.

Sometimes I think about a ball of sunlight, bursting out of the sun's core, unravelling untrammelled through millions and millions of miles of nothing, the photons then tumbling through the atmosphere and a convenient hole in the ozone, thrashing through all that smog, past the grill on my window, all that distance, only to be stopped flat by a puny plank of wardrobe wood. Sometimes I think about how it's happening all the time and I'm depressed. Sometimes I think it must be lousy being a sun. Who'd want to be a sun? Not me. A meteor shower -- now that would be cool.

Dad comes in to ask me something and starts clamouring about how hot it is in here. I tell him I'm meditating and silence his protests. Sometimes I think parental salvation lies in being outsmarted by one's kids.

The room is turning a shade of ripe summer yellow. The marble flooring starts to heat up. My skin feels like a flame has been drawn across its surface. Naturally enough, I'm sweating now. Trickles start to crawl down my forehead and my temples.

Sometimes, I think of sweat and the travesty of its colourlessness. Would sweat be any precious if it was the colour of blood? Or would blood be any trivial if it looked and smelt like sweat? Sometimes I remember asking my sister if sweat evaporated and became rain. Sometimes I can recall the look of disgust she shot me across the dining table.

The window panes gradually blush a flaming orange, and I think of the rasna kid. Sometimes I wonder what happened to her. Sometimes I wonder if executives at Coke and Pepsi are involved in efforts to accelerate global warming. Sometimes I think of frisbees on the beach, of budding biceps and capri calves. Sometimes I think of our dog, Tiger. Sometimes I think of coming back home after kindergarten and tumbling with him in the yard. Sometimes I think of how he died in a pool of his own blood. Sometimes I don't think at all.

A twilight purple on the walls announces the arrival of a violet dusk. I'm drenched now. Hair roots, arm-pits, t-shirt, shorts ... I get up, shut the windows, flick on the compact fluorescent lamp, grab a towel and head for a shower, gently closing the door behind me, a little satisfied at having boxed the eternal. For today.

Deconstructing

Absurdity. Aquarius. Australia. ABBA. Ayn Rand. Arsenal. Alaipayudhey. Amol Palekar. Auden.

Besant Nagar. Beach. Beer. Beatles. Bhagyaraj. Badminton.

Cats. Cunning Linguist. Cruciverbalist. Cricket. Chess. Cooking. C & H. Coldplay. Cotton. Crazy Mohan. Conflicts. Contradictions. Compromises. Conversations.

Dad. Deep blue. Dumas. Dylan. Doom. Dravid. Dreamer. Deserts.

Engines. Economics. Eagles. Evanescence. Emma Thomson. Evasive. Elusive. Experiments. Escape artist.

Finding Forrester. Fall. Freedom. Ferrari. Football. Frost. Friends. Family.

God. Goli. Golmaal. Grass. Gremlins.

Happiness. Hope. Humility. Hunger. Help.

INTJ.

Jhumpa Lahiri. Jack Higgins. Jeffrey Archer. Jam.

Kerala. Kundera. Kishore Kumar. Kindness. Kites.

Lazy. Little women. Ludo. Lucid dreaming. Lucky. Linkin Park. Louis L'amour. Loyalty.

Murakami. Mourinho. Modesty Blaise. Meryl Streep. Marriage. Markets. Mentors. Maggi. Musafir.

Neruda. Norwegian Wood. North Sea.

OCD.

Paris. Purpose. Poetry. Programming. Philosophy. Photography. PGW. Pirsig. Peter O Toole. PhD. Pirate.

Quixotic. Questions. Quizzing. Queues. 0-0-0.

Roti. Rhaita. Rubik's cube. Realist. Redemption. Retreat. Renege.

SRM. SCL. Snob. Snoot. Seinfeld. Steve Waugh. Steffi Graf. Smita Patil. S & G. Sangarankoil. Sacrifices. Solitude. Sinner.

Tamil. Thirukkural. Tracy Chapman. Terry Hatcher. Top Cat. Tennis. Trees. Theories. Trial and error.

UCAL. Unforgiving. Understatements.

VVV. Vitriolic.

Writing. Wolfenstein. Winter. Warmth. Wisdom. Whimsical. Wistful.

X

Yellow. Yoghurt. Yojimbo.

Zero maintenance.

PS: I was bored.

Seven eight lay them straight

So after years of not believing in resolutions, I'm putting myself on the line here. Will review this once a month to see where I'm heading. Will expand/trim list based on progress.

Things to do -

Reading:

1. Lord of the rings
2. The wealth of nations
3. Intelligent investor
4. Genius
5. Get RSS aggregator organized

Writing:

1. Two blog posts per week
2. Review each book to increase take-away
3. One essay per month
4. One poem per month
5. One fiction piece per quarter

Thinking:

1. Work through Critical Thinking

Speaking:

Travelling:

1. See the Himalayas. Properly. (7 days?)

Sport & Fitness:

1. Continue playing Cricket during weekends
2. Continue working out

Music:

Movies:

1. Chip away at list. Least: 50. Most: All.
2. Review each movie on blog

Food:

Finance:

1. Get papers in order and file returns on time
2. Pick an index fund to invest in
3. Pick an infrastructure fund to invest in
4. Open that bloody demat account
5. Bring liquidity down to ___

Altruism:

1. Continue working with the RTI act
2. Teaching (?)

Kaizen:

1. Do what you say and say what you'll do. Commit and finish.
2. Give up coffee
3. Sleep less (6 hours?)
4. Learn to shave with a safety razor
5. Give up TV
6. Read for 2 hours everyday
7. Write a 100 words everyday
8. Work on that wordlist

Career:

1. Here, here or here.

And oh, happy new year everyone :-)

Sleepless

He stands in front of the windows, looking down at the sprawling city.

It's three in the morning. The rain had woken him up, the drizzle easing itself in through the windows. Sliding off the bed, he'd staggered to the windows and shut them forcefully. By the time he trudged back to bed, sleep had left him stranded; incomplete dreams rapidly shrinking behind his eyelids.

He stands in front of the windows, curtains drawn apart and peers into the night, past the pattering rain, at the glistening road twenty floors beneath, at the occasional traffic slithering into the distance. He's grateful he can't hear the noise up here.

He looks up, his gaze sweeping across the sleeping city, his eyes moving from window frame to window frame. Neon landmarks punctuate the dark landscape; the lights ghostly and electric in the rain. Concrete spires reach into the sky in search of a capitalist God, one who will reward ambition and achievement. Office lights flicker in the distance all around him. Dish antennas mark the terrain; milestones marking individual progress.

The city never ceases to amaze him. Another symbol of a civilization's narcissism, an offspring of its obsession with itself, with the ideas of optimism and progress. He's never comprehended these concepts completely but he likes being here. Likes the anonymity that shrouds his existence here. Likes the relief that comes from realizing that he did not have to hang on to his identity. Likes discovering himself without any biases. Unlike a few other people, he relished his rootlessness, this sense of drifting that comes from living in a city and letting its routine overwhelm you.

The city somehow encouraged him to have a certain bent of personality. It fed and nurtured in him a set of virtues that permitted him to thrive here. The ones who flourished here, he often thought, were those who seemed comfortable with these ideas of rootlessness and anonymity, accepted them without questions, people who inculcated a self that sought itself in everything that it came across, people who were cool with the concept of an identity that is as much gushing sewer as it is languid shoreline. In that sense, a city was an evolutionary culmination as far as civilizational constructs went, a compromise between between complexity and utility.

MS distracts him as her voice rises above his thoughts. Kurai ondrum illai plays softly on his laptop, the blue glow from the screen lighting the walls of his apartment. He should switch the monitor off, save energy, be a conscious citizen, stop global warming, but he lets it be for now and listens to the song, paying attention to the lyrics, sleep slipping away into the distance ... Kurai Ondrum Illai ... his life has been like that for sometime now, without complaint. More importantly, without being conscious of the need for complaint. He smiles as he wonders why anyone would want to thank the Lord for that. But then he would take anything as long as it was sung by MS.

A plane sweeps in from the north. He watches it descend slowly. Again, he can't hear anything. Just the muted experience of watching a plane sans its defining sound. What is it about identity, about personalities, that makes people cling to them? He watches the plane circle the city. The rain must be making it hard. Must be a long night at the control centre. Control. Chaos. A city, he thinks, is man's best attempt at the impossible -- large scale chaos control. Every council regulation is ostensibly to control, but then it is a desperate attempt to accommodate more deviation. The framework keeps bulging as a city grows. And as cities evolve, this framework of rules and control dissolves into a polite, gentle anarchy that everyone learns to live with.

The rain gets heavier. He draws the curtains shut, walks away from the windows and settles down on the bed. The city will soon awaken and he tries to get some sleep. But then his thoughts claim him again. A city also represents that ultimate challenge which man is confronted with in these troubled times: the reconciliation of individual with society. The more he thinks of it, the more futile such an attempt appeared. If at all there is a pattern to civilization, it is one where individuals came together to form societies, societies from which they later detached themselves to retain their individuality, an individuality which later broke the societies, a pattern which is easily decipherable in the motivations of most cities. And that detachment marked the beginning of the end.

The next song comes on. Another favourite.

(to be continued ...)

He stands on the terrace, stripped to the waist, hands on his hip, looking up at the sky with eyes closed.

A cloud covers the noon sun, lumbering from east to west. He can feel its shadow sliding across his face, as if someone was conducting a slideshow up there. Evaporating detergent from the clothes hanging nearby tickles his nose. Wet tiles underneath remind his soles of the storm yesterday.

He waits, counts the seconds, his lips mouthing the numbers, eagerly anticipating that energy bursting through from the sun, imagining the heat on his face.

The city revives itself all around him after the rains. Like a gaint clearing his lungs after a cold. Dry streets, noisy schools, scrubbed docks, pavement stalls back in business, packed buses purposefully commuting from suburb to suburb ... he senses all this around him as he waits expectantly.

The shadow leave his cheeks. And then, light. Warm uninhibited proud clean light.

He feels it on his forehead, on his freshly shaved chin, on the curve of his stretched neck, on his chest, on his back, on his feet ... on his soul, on his mind ... feels it everywhere. Sacrifices begin to make meaning.

He opens his eyes and squints.

Sunshine never felt this good.

Noticed ...

... this on a girl's t-shirt on my way to lunch -

I'm rich ...

I'm single.

Pink short t-shirt. Glittery lettering.

*Sigh*

Untitled

Bing!

He wakes up. Looks down at his watch. Ten thirty. "ETA 15 minutes" says the monitor up front. He reaches sideways for the seat-belt, breathes in and buckles himself up.

"There, that's the city," the girl to his side gestures at her grandmother. The old lady sits up to look out the window. He leans back so that she can get a better view.

The plane turns to port, homing in on the airport, breaking through the last of the clouds. The city looms up slowly. All is quiet inside the aircraft. No banter. No calling out to the airhostesses. No watching tv. No talking into cell phones. Even the babies have stopped crying. If silence is prayer, then they were all believers now. Very soon, they will be back to being people, back to their quotidian lives, back to the numbers and words that populate daily existence. But for a little while longer, they will remain passengers, deprived of their egos and the security of their bounded imagination, forced to exchange faith for convenience, rebellion for conformity, time for thought.

He reaches into his jacket and starts his ritual.

Passport. Check.

Did Icarus have a checklist? Did it have a bullet point saying 'Beware the sun at all times'? Was it just testosterone, a fatal transgression committed in the fever of youth? Was it because he wanted to go to heaven without dying that the Gods sent him back? Or was it just disguised suicide? Pity. Someone should have told him. The sun never lets you near. Maybe that's why we glorify him. Flaws shine in intimacy.

He takes his passport out, flips to the visa, looks at the immigration stamp.

That's when they take your identity away, don't they? That's when you take a break from existing, don't you? That's when you become a position on the plane, a statistic curled up inside a spreadsheet, that's when your life remains suspended in this aluminium coccoon where hope is neither absurd nor a refuge, but a compulsive state of mind. Suspended until you land. Suspended until they stamp you back into the assembly line of existence, returning your self to you whereupon you drive away into the welcoming morass of your life.

Wallet. Check. Ipod. Check. Paperback. Check. Ipod. Check.

He smiles when he catches himself double-checking the primary source of music in his life. Music removes him from the mundane, heightens every moment, shades his life with colours he would otherwise not perceive. Music is what he uses to negotiate with the world.

Terms of negotiation. Give and Take. Give, give, give, or take, take, take. At times slave, at times master ... every moment you trade with the world, but then you like to play games on the planes of your consciousness, you don't like to believe that you don't barter, that you are above and beyond human need. But then you need. All of us need. Love, hate, solitude, communion, power, submission ... it pays to adopt an attitude to help you get through your days. As long as it helps you trade.

"Pretty excited huh?" the girl asks him. He smiles at her and nods his head. "Yes."

He'd helped her board her grandmother. They'd got talking. She was touring the continent with the old lady. He was on business. Strangers thrown together for the duration of the flight. And like it happens sometimes in such situations, a common chord had been struck ... You get on this plane or bus or train. You meet people. You strike a conversation. Sometimes you like the other person. At other times, you keep politely skirting the fence of personal contact and decline to venture further. Sometimes you bid goodbye and remove these people from the vicinities of your memory. Sometimes you exchange phone numbers, fall in love, marry, beget children, die. Where is the excitement in all this? Excitement exists in those shadows where the light of consciousness cannot penetrate, in the deluded mind which thinks but does not realize it thinks.

And yet, when people ask him if he's excited, he almost always says yes. He cannot understand why. Maybe it's wonder, a sense of intirgue, a need for confirmation that he feels, but he cannot bring himself to accept that since these, in turn, would spawn excitement. Or maybe he realizes that the glaring light of awareness is too much to bear and that people are better off living in darkness.

So, either way, he says yes. Because he's undecided.

The plane starts dropping. His ears pop. Another reminder of the imminent confrontation with reality. He can feel the plane tense, the metal plates pull together as the aircraft plunges through the stratosphere. All pretense is up now. Anything could happen. The earth zooms up rapidly, streets and houses whiz by in a blur of urban colour. The overhead cabins get rickety as the plane picks up speed. Faster and faster.

And then the feel of rubber on tarmac, the bumpiness of the earth below them.

Touchdown. Deliverance.

Relief in the air inside the cabin as the passengers let out a collective sigh. The plane taxis down the runway to the gates. If it were not for propriety and seat-belts, he believes they would all get up and let out a cheer and pat each other on the back. It brought to his mind a conversation from the past.

So did you like flying?

Depends. I don't like to fly for long. I like the earth too much.

Poor Icarus, he thinks and reaches up for his bag.

***

In Hannover, Germany on work. Expect posting to be sporadic (as if it already wasn't).

The little known joys of a weekend

Friday evening.

I'm inside the lift, on my way home from work. Along with me are three middle-aged firangs in business suits, from the office across the corridor. One of them is going on about a house-warming ceremony, drawing parallels across cultures. The guy he's talking to nods, apparently very interested. The third one wears glasses and stands too close to the door, head hung, lost in thought.

The lift stops. Mr. 3 almost steps out. The talkative guy restrains him, "No, not here. This is the third floor. Still three left."

He then turns to Noddy, "Statisticians need bodyguards, you know."

Laughter erupts. Mr.3 goes red in the face. I smile sympathetically at him.

I can so see this happening to me a few years from now.

*

Saturday morning.

The alarm clock wails. I smack it down with disdain, wake up and loll about in bed, staring at the ceiling, looking out the window, thinking about the long weekend stretching out lazily in front of me.

And then I go back to sleep again.

*

Sunday morning.

Nila kaigiradhu at 6 A.M. on the terrace. Harini, A. R. Rahman and my MP3 player.

Bliss.

*

Sunday afternoon.

Home-cooked lunch and then shooting the breeze with a friend.

Warm nostalgia.

*

Sunday evening.

The soft, furry feel of a brand-new tennis ball nestling in the hollow of my palms; a catch well taken.

Contentment.

*

Life is good.