First day in Calcutta.

First day home. Pretty lovely. Perfect almost. With the requisite ingredients.
Its R's birthday. He's plumper than he used to be. But the happiness he had on his face upon meeting me bang in the middle of the metro platform, where I haven't traveled in years now was genuine and perfect. It was strange. I could tell he wanted to give me a hug and so did I ( give him a hug, I mean) but we were too awkward, but still it was pretty good. I talked a lot of rubbish. He tolerated it. He always does. Somehow he thinks I have a lot of intelligent things in my head. I'm not as convinced.
I didn't think that I'd meet that many people today as I expected but I did. I even met a person who I didn't know. It was almost like I never left. People turning up at my house uninvited and yet made welcome.
But I noticed the changes which made me nostalgic and sad.
I am happy people  are moving on with their lives, sometimes without me. But still. maybe its the beer.
R and P are happy. and I see how people are happy with their lives and thats so much better than what was there before, people fighting and hating each other.
It's good that things flowed together as if there has never been a disruption or a change. I like how people are able to muster.
I met S too. and the hug that I got from him is perhaps one of the best that I have felt in a LONG time. It felt like nothing in the world. And now I am sitting on my bed, writing this, and my father is in his room and playing Kanika Bandhopadhay and Debabrata Biswas on his antiquated but bloody amazing sound system, and the sound is wafting down into my room, and all is actually perfect in the world, suddenly.
I hope the rest of this trip goes as good as today did. 

Placement Art

Because I need to move my ass and get my tablet home and not keep it in office. Or buy a new one for home.

Miss Marisa Hawley, I think she's called. Ballooner, Adventuress, and A Thoroughly Well Rounded Gentlewoman.

A Tea Party of Fairies and Phantoms.

A Very Short Story

There's a short version to this story. Also a longer one. You have to decide which is it that you'd like to hear.  The shorter one is very matter-of-fact, brief, almost a precis. All of these are different words to describe the same thing, you say. Yes. And I raise you a cynical. The short version of the story has lost all its illusions and is too old for this shit. Let's get this over with, fast, it says.
The longer version of the story is more... tragic. Its cinematic. Steven Spielberg directed it. It is a journey, like most movies are, that gracefully skirts around the more traumatic events and deposits you safely at the happy and just ending. At least, the long version makes you happy.
The choice is yours.
Which version do you want? Do you want help deciding?
Alright, then. Do you have a lot of time? No? Hmm, that sort of works against the long cinematic version. Let's see what we can do. Do you generally depend on the film factories to make you happy? Yes? Oh, very nice! That's definitely a point in the favor of our second option. (Let me tell you, privately, with no added incentive to myself, the second option is the much better option, in my opinion. Value for money, I say. You get the whole ride. Why wouldn't you want the whole shebang anyway? You're paying for it!)
What? You don't like the hero? Oh. Maybe the shorter version is for you, after all. I bet you save money on movies by reading up the entire movie on wikipedia. (No, I am definitely not biased! Why would I be?!)

Oh, all right. Here it is.

Once upon a time, there was a boy who was a god and a girl who was also a goddess. But they had forgotten that they were. They fell in love, but they had to save the world. Soon they remembered who they were. And realized they could never be together because that would mean the end of the Universe, matter, everything.

The End.

Readin Anais Nin

I have this tendency to behave in a certain way when I am reading something. A latent behavior of Acting, though I am in no way an actor of any sort. I think its an exaggerated version of the experience of reading a book or even watching a film. You are so taken in, flown away into the stream of what you are experiencing, an out of body experience, that you just don't want to come back into your body and who you are for quite sometime. Its a freeing experience, like suddenly you have no identity and no sense of self, you are a blank canvas. You can fabricate and be whoever you want to be. You can be a pirate, a Jack Sparrow, a vampire with the flowing long coats and boots, and the swagger and the wayfarers, and a cigarette dangling off your lips as you walk down the street, and nothing can touch you. All that runs through your mind is that "I am Awesome."
That is just one way to have an out of body experience. The other things are more spontaneous. Its like what the government thinks will happen to impressionable minds when they watch violence and debauchery on screen. Shah Rukh Khan smoking in Don, the eggheads fear, would inspire children and people who love him to smoke too. It doesn't matter that they smoke anyway, as a right of passage. I know. I used to be a fourteen year old not too long ago. Its the pull of the forbidden. You're not supposed to do it. The scary experience of being kids and going to a booze store and buying really horrendous vodka, and hiding it in very conspicuous ways and consuming it in filthy little corners of a house empty and presenting a golden and perfect opportunity. Buying the damn things isn't hard, not in India. The scary part is the fear of who will walk by and notice, especially acquaintances of parents, and God help you if the cigarette guy is the same guy your dad buys from (This happened to me). Anyway, I feel a compulsion to do the same kind of things that the character in a book I'm reading does. Put on the same pretensions as they do.
For example, if I am reading of a writer, who constantly talks of his/her art and expression and thought, I want to write too. If I watch a film of an artist who keeps a journal of fantastic illustrations as a form of a visual diary, I want to do that too. And I do.. I have a collection of notebooks and little journals, filled with one or more pages with illustrations I don't remember doing. And they pile up.
The impetus to write this post is me reading Henry and June ( Anais Nin), and thinking I too need to say something. But the eternal problem lies with what comes after the first step into creativity, i.e., opening a fresh journal, with pretty and colourful pages, and facing into the blankness. Blankness of the page itself and of the mind. I want to create, but I have no idea what. And there are no impulses. The blankness of the page immediately stops being liberating and becomes suffocating upon first viewing. And anything you force yourself to put on it becomes immediately hateful in your eyes.
These days, I can look at a blank and beautiful collection of papers and feel inspired a little. Its actually quite like premature ejaculation or the first experience of a teenage boy touching a member of the opposite sex. Its over as soon as it starts. Hence a journal of a hundred and fifty pages, remains untouched except for the vomit of excitement on the first five. Oh, the plans and the plans, that go down the drain the moment pen touches the paper!
Sometimes, as I am reading something, I get surprised at thoughts coming out of my mind. I am reading Anais Nin now, and after the urge to write was considerably under my control, I thought that it was amazing, I liked the language. Then I felt " This is So Pretentious!"  A woman who lived entirely in a warm cocoon of herself, and people like her. That's all they talked about, apparently. Obsessing about every strand of hair on top of they heads, their eyes, their mouth and their skins. About how they felt, and how wonderful their feeling are, and how intelligent and intriguing and wonderful their minds were. They need no reinforcement from anyone else about their magnificence. But the strangest part of these observations is the sudden realization that "Hey, I'm actually thinking! My blank coconut shell of a head is actually not empty at all, it has a couple of straggly thoughts!"
Reading Anais Nin is actually a two fold experience for me. The first part appeals to the visual artist in me. The experience of the production values of the book, is charming. I love the publication design, and the cover, the texture of the paper, the consistency of it. I look at the print of  text, and I notice that it is thick and a little runny. Probably a wrong or faulty print. But to me and my imagination, it looks like the story has been written in quill, by hand. Its got a hand made quality to it. And since the book is essentially Anais Nin's diary, the feeling of reading what she wrote in her own hand is reinforced. This is very enchanting.
The second part of the experience is a self exploratory one. As I am reading, I am running the same exercise every other reader of books go through. I immerse myself in the story, and she wrote well, with fluidity, so it wasn't very difficult. And as I do this, I also try to understand and relate to the characters. And I can't. They are so very different to me. The voice, the decisions, everything. What remains the same is the compulsions which urge her to write. It is the same in every creative person. What attracts and what distracts. In this I identify. But her actions I cannot. It is very jarring for me to face a character so unlike myself, yet so much the same in a book. It doesn't happen too often. And because of which I end up asking myself questions about what I would do in the same situations. These questions lead to much more specific and probing questions of what Nin wanted from her life, and what I want. And the answers become more clearer and lucid in my head, and there is a sense of closure that comes with finding a calm spot at the center of the chaotic tornado that is everyday thoughts and doubts.

What Barfi Did to Me

Today has been one of the bigger melancholic days I have had in a long time. Damn, that doesn't read like a proper sentence.. Well, it was a very melancholic day.
I moved into a PG and I feel more isolated living with a roommate than I did living by myself. I cannot explain this, but I hate it that this explains the old adage that people can be lonelier living among people than living with themselves. I just feel like I gave in and posted a facebook meme.  In fact, I think there is one up on my  feed right now, reading the exact same thing.
Somehow I don't have things to look forward to. And I cannot seem to count the positives in my life anymore. I was bad at arithmetic anyway. I go to work, but I'm past the two month stage, so the shiny excitement is gone. And I have exactly ONE go to person in this entire city. ONE. Maybe I have not cultivated anyone else, or I never seem to have the energy to look people up and call them and do things. But it seems easier to feel shitty doing things by myself and feeling pathetic about it.
I have ranted here about how society has conditioned us to want to be with people and if not, feel pathetic about being alone. Well, I don't think I can rant about it anymore. I can only just say that it feels shitty to be in a public place like a movie hall and be by myself. Yes there is a freedom to cry in the darkened theatre and I indulged in the unfiltered melancholia and let the tears fall as I sobbed quite shamelessly as the movie I was watching pushed the buttons. Its like I paid three hundred bucks to find a place and a subliminal permission to cry. Somehow, I had stopped allowing myself to feel sad and lonely. It had become very scientific and clinical. I would coldly observe that I was quite alone, and hence lonely and that was it. I moved on to volubly project the pleasures of being by oneself.
Yet it only takes one thought and a day and a series of situations and the water escapes the hands of the little boy with his finger in a hole in the wall and the sea escapes. Everyone at work goes home for the weekend early because they are done, and can't wait to get out of work, while I sit, potter away, working, because what else would I do? Come back to the PG and feel more isolated because the person I'm rooming with is not really my friend and doesnt talk so much? The one person who I can call on, is broke, has her own thing going so im on my own. Blow number One. I try to fix the situation. I decide to go to a movie. I go, get a ticket, and a healthy dose of looks from couples and friends who are there to watch the film. Yes I feel like more of a freak. I watch the film, and I cry. Because its about home, my home, my state and moral of the story is that everyone falls in love and finds someone to love or to have, or life is unsuccessful. Even mentally and physically challenged ones. Subtext is, you don't have anyone, and look at you, sitting by yourself watching this and crying.
Why is that always the moral of the story? Why is it being reinforced through every fucking possible media that you need companionship and love or there is no hope? What about people like me? Living away from their homes, out of touch with their friends, working, and has not had a single hug from any living person in months? Why is there no positive reinforcement for people like me? Why does no one say, its going to be fine, there's nothing wrong with the way you are. Why are there no positive reinforcements for people like me that doesn't enforce the concept that companionship and a relationship is the only way to be happy?
 Because dammit, I want to be happy. I want to be satisfied with my sparsely populated life. I want to be absorbed happily in things that I feel compelled to do, like draw and write and read, and not have niggling thoughts at the back of my head that I'm enforcing a practice of activity in order not to notice lonliness.
But fuck this. Fuck the way that I'm feeling. Not even art will come out this. Let alone dreams. Dreams that I can work at. Its just a fuck all day, thats all.

I saw boats this morning, with blue sails, glittering in the sunlight, among the mirror the waters of the lake create, with wind playing hop, skip and jump joyously between them. This is a happy day.

In case you wanted to know what I look like when I'm moving houses/cities

Think before I speak

Spoke too soon, when I wrote that last post. I had to move out of the house last weekend and move to safer environs. The reason has been a little exaggeratedly illustrated below.

Being an Adult

At the ripe age of twenty six, I have finally set foot unto adulthood. I have finished education (unofficially, of course) and now earn my own keep. It is very surreal. There was a point, only some months ago, when I thought this would never happen. But ab mere paas  gaari nahi hai, flat hai, aur chakri hai, though I am sorely missing my mother, though that situation is not going to be rectified anytime in the foreseeable future.

 Things have happened very fast. On the day that I finished the last hurdle into my diploma, I had mentally prepared myself for a long and arduous wait until someone hired me, very convinced that my luck with my diploma (or the lack of) would most certainly run into my attempts to become financially independent. But then I discovered what I now believe is the secret to most things in life (at least with me). If you are struggling with something, you will struggle with it for a LONG time, to the point of feeling that its never going to end, but when good things happen, they happen out of the blue and in a hurry. It’s still a little unbelievable for me, this having a job, and it’s a pretty decently paying first job too, with really flexible work environment, and the people seem nice. I don’t know how I lucked out here. Some might say that its karma. But you know what happens when one is forced to keep swallowing shit. You become convinced that you are a genuine cent percent shit eater. And no amount of good things happening to you can convince you otherwise. You keep on imaging the shit-throwing bogie man around the corner. It’s become a way of life. It’s basically Hinduism. I won’t even go into the finer implications of that one. It’s become who you are. Confidence and mental peace is a thing of the past. You are just sapped of any positive and optimistic energy.

 But am I happy with where I am now? I don’t really know, truth be told. The knocks never really stopped coming, you see. I got the job, and that was fine. I uprooted myself back to Bangalore as soon as money would allow it. And I had a temporary refuge with a friend, who has been the most generous with me through out my three years here. I mean ‘above and beyond’ levels. I thought I could take my time to fix things up for myself. But shit happened, and I woke up one morning to find myself not knowing where I was going to sleep the next night. Well, I made it through that phase, and I am grateful for all the help that I got.  Now I live in what can be called “the digha hotel”, with I, myself and some other chick who lives in my head.

 Its been a month and a half since I started work, and basically had my life halfway in a non tremulous position. And since the head space is calm, I’ve been rediscovering my old friend from No. 76, SFS Colony, loneliness. And all the beautiful side effects that come with it. It doesn’t feel odd at all. I am savoring the isolation with a side of self pity. You know you are truly jacked when you start enjoying your own self pity trips. There is also a certain amount of madness involved with living with yourself, and only having yourself for intense company ninety percent of the time. It starts showing from week two. You talk to yourself. Aloud. Swear at things, and talk to them, and be really surprised to hear yourself talk, or just be surprised to hear yourself say stuff your brains probably thinking but—shit--- You never hear yourself think, generally, do you? It’s bizarre. It feels like someone else is talking through a voice which can only be your own through a very obvious process of elimination.

Then, you start having feeling excited about men you just met because, damn, you haven’t had any form of human interaction with anyone but two people for months or weeks. It’s scary, because it seems real. But again, you’re jacked if you start enjoying the excitement, while knowing all the time that you’re just doing this because you are bored and it’s probably not real. That depressing thought is the side of self pity of which I spoke of before. This is the self pity which tells you that this is the real life, and it’s not going to change so basically any human interaction will follow the current trend of superficiality and will probably not last, and more importantly, is not real.

 But I am learning something new. I am learning to be by myself and to enjoy my own company. And doing this while not living in my own head. I am re learning to wander around places in the city with no agenda, just because I want to and doing what the hell I want. Walking by myself around Brigade and MG Road while looking at how beautiful the evening sky is and how amazing the city looks, is a treat which is hard to discover if you are constantly with people. You can’t just stop and look. Or sit on a bench or a low wall and stare at the sky, just because you can and you want to and there is no reason not to.  I went and watched a movie by myself the other day. It felt strange to pass by a theatre and just popping in on a whim and buying a ticket to whatever was showing then, after office. My head said that it was pathetic to be going to a theatre alone. But it wasn’t an unpleasant experience. Just a little sad. But I have professed to how much I am liking my current side dish of self pity.

I don’t know why is it that I am conditioned to want to not be alone. Most of us are that way I know. But I find it strange that because of this conditioning, I cannot enjoy it as much as I should. It’s like being Catholic. It’s like I’m not allowed to enjoy being by myself without feeling lonely and wishing there was someone there with me. And I know myself enough to understand that I don’t truly want anyone there, because I’ve become a person who is uncomfortable with people and being social. I don’t want to make the effort. I don’t feel like it. Ideally, I wouldn’t mind being with someone whom I don’t have to talk to, but just be. I don’t really want the mental pressure to talk and entertain  another person to make that person’s effort worthwhile. So this feeling that I wish I had some company when there is no reason for me to want this is very inconvenient.

But it is what it is. And I guess this is what ‘adulthood’ is all about.

Phairy

Haven't posted anything in a long time. And since it doesn't look like I will be posting anything whiny today either I thought a doodle would assuage the guilt a little and brighten up the blog a bit. Its been too much of a text blog until now, and thats not how I'd imagine this to be.

Have been thinking of writing for over a week now. I feel a bout of self pity/ longing coming on, from sheer frustration of the brain without things of interest kind. But this I will do later. These two lines shall tide me over the river of complacency until then.

Work That Comes From The Heart

I have this friend, who is a very nice girl. She is talented, she is fun, and she has it sparkling out of her eyes to such a degree that it practically leaks out of her eyes like tears, but only fun. I met her and lived with her only once, about a year ago, and only for a few days, a few weeks. But I learnt that she is working with crafts and she is working in Jaipur.
A couple of days back, I notice that she has been putting up stuff online of what she has been working on at the present, and I don't know if it is for her graduation or not, but it looks like its going to be BIG. Its called Banaras- The city of stories, and its BEAUTIFUL. Or so it seems from the little glimpses she has let the general public like me see. It involves video, photography, illustration and anything they can think of to tell a story.
But what is it about it that has induced me to write this? It is the HONESTY of what they are doing. Because the honesty is something which hits you the moment you look at the work being done.
 It practically slapped me in the face, I don't mind telling you. And I relished the sting of it. Because it made me realize what it is like to do something you want to do, and not having to whore yourself to do it. Because until a couple of weeks ago I was in the same position. I was in that position for the last six to eight months of my life. And I was nothing more than a prostitute to the powers that be. The work that I came out with is less than my work and more of something I'd rather not think about anymore. It left me with no sense of identity whatsoever. I hope them powers that be are happy to suck the soul out of students day in and day out in the name of education, ripening them, stewing them in their own misery, and spitting them out once the juicy parts are scoured clean.
 Because Benaras- The city of stories looks like it has an individual voice. Its like a strong nostalgic flavor peppering every image, every video, every illustration. And its wonderful. This is not the work of a couple overtly gentrified and uber sophisticated design school graduates who have been fed on lies that certain things that have been shown to them entitles them to walk out with the unshakable belief that everything else around them is less that inferior to them as the dust under their feet. There is no pretension. What there is, is a very transparent sense of understanding, and an honest attempt at understanding the subject that they have chosen to work with. The openness is apparent and is one of the most beguiling things which draws you in even if you are just watching teasers of the actual project. These girls have gone out, speaking a language which might not be sophisticated to some that I know, lived with their subjects, interacted with them on the same level and then built a narrative which speaks a unique language of its own. How can you not be taken in by something like this? How can you not call it beautiful creativity? It might be unpolished and rough around the edges, but the content shines through like silver vessel under a pool of grimy water. And lets not kid ourselves, Content is King, Queen and the entire damn Kingdom.
 This brings me to question, why is our own innate creativity not enough to be appreciated with out the proverbial "But..." tagging along after every honest creative output we produce? Whats with the hypocrisy? The powers that be shout out from the rooftops that the design institution is a place where creativity is prized like the virgin in a medieval romance, that encouragement of groundbreaking and alternative thought is the byword to live by, thought which loafs around all over the place while leaving the box to stagnate in a dusty corner is how one thrives and lives there. Such utter bollocks. Underneath this surface propaganda is a pure hankering after a piece of market, a market which already exists. This market is a place which has been established over fifty years ago for a certain number of things, and the only thing that gives one the edge is doing something which appears to be breaking ground in ways which appear to be different, yet still in the market, only crafted to look like something which has never been done before. The product generated isn't catering to a different clientele, it is just handing the consumer something which does the same thing as another product existing before, only the product now is completely incomprehensible, because it is dressed up in words which are frankly so spaced out that I don't think the designers themselves know what they mean. Its just design vocabulary  version of corporate jargon. I wonder where is the new thought?  If I think about this in a logical fashion, I come to the conclusion that a new thought requires a new market. A new market which is specific to what is on offer. A new market cannot be generated like a conjurers trick. It is amorphous and it forms by it self. Interest is generated. One cannot force interest. Its like lycra, you either have it or you don't. And interest is what is the catalysis of a market. And to be clear I am talking about design and art here, so when I say market, I mean it in an illustrative fashion, not in a financial/economic strain, tho that does factor in at different levels obviously.
 I believe that each one of us toiling away in art and design bring with us our own brand of creativity. This is very obvious, of course, since the design school purportedly encourages this innate and individual creativity. And what we produce from this, the content, has  to generate interest somewhere. Its an action-reaction thing. The numbers might vary, but I refuse to think that innate raw creative output has no takers. There always will be, even though the numbers might read a solitary one. And that is worth it. That is worth doing the work one wants to do, and believes in. Assuming an audience is unintelligent is insanity. And a general intelligent audience will always find work which has content shining through the rough exterior of interest. And at the end of the day that's what all of us hope for isn't it? The generation of interest? Because most of us spend our lives on the eternal crusade of things of interest, because we are human beings and hence we think, in whatever capacity we can.
 I finished my project, which was a webcomic, with no desire or interest in anything. I felt empty. I felt like I was going mad. And I had followed to the letter, everything I was asked to do. If you look at the final work, you will find that it has no part of me, or worse yet, most undesirable parts of me. Parts I shudder to own up to. You will not see my voice in it. You wont find me wanting to say something. You will see that I was attempting to say something and it was unceremoniously buried under a dung heap of what is the current practice of sound design. To make it something else, now that I have the opportunity, is something which makes me shudder to the bone. I don't have the energy for it. My throat is sore and it needs solid recuperation in order to infuse my voice in it again. What is hateful about the entire experience is that none of it was appreciated.
 I was always fighting an uphill war against standards which are not my own, by someone else's, and whose standard, in turn, was derived from things which were not true to them, yet they did not see. Keeping standards is important, very much so. But everything unique should have its own standards, no? What are we measuring it against? Is it even possible to compare? Is it not a logical fallacy to compare two unique things? I always thought that the word 'unique' broached no points of comparison. The only standard which something which is one of a kind is required to live up to is itself.
 I wanted to tell a story. And I told it. I put thought behind it, I spent time on in indiscriminately, tortured over decisions that needed to be taken, painfully, and finally made a narrative. Only to be told what was unsatisfactory about it was everything. Why? Because my style wasn't meeting the standards, the technology wasn't meeting the standards, in summation, I wasn't meeting the standards, in context rendering my effort and artistic effort null and void. And this was something I was working on for myself. It wasn't a project for a client, but a brief of my own creation, as asked for, and a project of my own. What changed was everything.
 I can categorically state that, to this day, the story has never been read. It is buried under a shit dump of  working design. with no prospect for the silver in it to shine through the grimy water. There is no prospect for anybody to say, sure its rough around the edges and its unpolished,  but I love it! And I am left with a wasted eight months, with a severe case of lost identity and looking forward to immediately jumping into any work that comes my way which will put money in the bank.
 I am a wonderful creation of the design school, I must tell you. My blood is equal parts plasma, frustration, bitterness, deep envy and a depth less level of cowardice and unwillingness to take chances. A fantastic creation of conditioning I am.
 I look at a project like Banaras, and I think how absolutely delightful it seems, and more than that, how interesting and joyful it must be to be working on such a thing, and envious of having that opportunity to not be worried about their creativity being set to standards, and just working for the joy of doing something which generates interest in oneself and also generates interest from the work itself. It is priceless, and it is absolutely delightful. And I hope with all my heart that it turns out to be everything the creators wanted it to be.
     

I've been meaning to work on this illustration but I  just dont seem to be able to gather sufficient energy to do  it. I have only manage to grasp five minutes a day to do it, and only when I know I have to leave immediately to go somewhere. I have managed to finish with the damn project and have cleared the jury, but I don't have the necessary enthusiasm to shout about it.  It just doesnt seem to matter.  And the disinterest that I feel about it is translating into my complete forgetfulness about going to college  to collect my certificate or to talk to them about it. Do. Not. Have. The. Energy. And so  this cycle goes on. I feel physically unwell.
 All I can think about is that I want to go home. Calcutta. Not that  I am confident that I'll be happy  there. But still. I want to be there right now. I  want to have no thoughts at  all.

I close my eyes,
and dream.
Of being in a romance,
where there is no
fear of a prince
sweeping me off my
feet, mistaking me for
a princess.

Yet, I dream,
of faraway things,
which disappear in a
wisp of smoke
the moment I open
my eyes.

"You are stupid." you may say,
"That is what dreaming is like."

And I know, dreams are
hardly meant to be remembered.

Some snatches might
remain, when you open
your eyes, but they
grow more distant , as
the sunlight and reality
seep back once again
into your brain.

The immediacy of it
is lost.
The reality of dreams,
are altered.

To capture such dreams,
you need to invent such a machine,
that captures altered dreams.

Until then,
I will satisfy myself
with wishes of
love, that demands nothing.
And excitement which
comes from the extra
skip in the beat of
my heart,
when I delude myself
that I like someone.

And call that want
and delusion,
My dream instead.

Hit By Melancholia

This happens to be a very common occurrence. And something which always begs publication into the various social networking sites to gain whatever little legitimacy that it feels entitled to.
It can be set off by anything. A beautiful summer evening in Bangalore ( and the coming of twilight in Bangalore is truly a beautiful thing). Bangalore has beautiful skies. Expansive, and you wouldn't believe the colours if you saw it. The high rise buildings are so far and in between that it never interrupts the sky. When you look into the skies of Calcutta, you don't really look into it. You are interrupted by the trees and  the street lights and the buildings, though they are not really tall, these buildings, but still, the skies of Bangalore seem to dominate. The highway from the city to the airport, where I have been living for the past three years, make the most use of the sky. When you pass the air force base on  an airport Volvo, you are elevated enough to see the parked choppers on the base, beside the hangers, as if neatly laid out for a photo op for an ad. And I would buy everything the ad would want to sell, because the sky makes the scene truly incredible.
 But its the feeling that comes along with it that is making me write this. I am usually alone when I am in the frame of mind to appreciate the skies of Bangalore. And more often than not, I am also in transit. A bus ride from where I lay my head to rest to where I go to drink my guts out is also the narrow gap in time where what I have lost, unnameable and indefinite, and my yearnings, even more unnameable and indistinct, hit me the hardest. And the Bangalore skies play an enormous role in that.
 I look at the sky, and feel the evening, absorb the breeze and the weather, which is Bangalore's biggest blessing, and it reminds me of freedom.
 Freedom that I have, yet which I forget to appreciate. I could be sitting somewhere at eleven thirty at night and drinking and have no one to answer to, but myself. I could be standing and waiting for a bus home at Mekhri Circle at 11.30 pm, and again, I would have no worries of someone waiting for me at home, worried sick. I do not complain about people worrying about me. I appreciate it, and I love them in return for loving me so  much. But I am talking about the feeling I get when I see  no buses other than gigantic Volvo buses leave for destinations such as Hyderabad, Chennai and Mysore. These buses, predictably enough, define infinite possibilities for me then. They are my versions of sailing ships in the night. They have no barriers, and the world is open and limitless to them. I get a feeling that jumping onto one of those buses would bring me as close to being truly unfettered as possible.
 And the night. The night always feel truly timeless in my head. A day is short and the sun runs on a schedule. But the darkness of the night you cannot track across the sky. It remains constant from the time it falls across the sky to the time it has to lift itself to make way for the sun again. Its the seeming endlessness of it is whats so wonderful about it. And there is nothing more beautiful as the night in a city. You can own whole cities then. They are yours to walk, and peruse, and revel in. Time stops then, and the city is suspended along with it. You can pick up bits and pieces and examine them, wonder at it, and then put it back. Nights are really when the city you live in is truly yours.
 Combine all this together, and its a potent mix. But it still lacks the finishing touch: Age.
I was going to the city yesterday, not for any specific purpose, but just because. And the weather heralded spring and possibly summer, not unbearably, but just enough to bring on this kind of melancholia. And I thought of other years that have passed before and the other seasons such as this, and Age made me think of the idiot that I was then. Because I had thought that there was something better waiting for me away from the tea shops, and field we all used to while away our lives then thinking that life hadn't started yet. Then I moved away, came to the city of endless skies, and moved into a different routine of sorts, tasted what could be Life. But I was still reticent to label it as such, because there was still the faint whiff of disappointment that would attach itself to my time here, and i didn't want Life to be anything other than sweet smelling. As I sat on the roof of my PG house and drank with whole new set of friends, feeling the set downs that this new life had wacked my ass with, I still refused to believe that I was living. Then suddenly, three years had passed, and I had lost almost a year in a black hole, from which I have emerged with barely any memory of a sense of self, and I still stubbornly want to hold on to the belief that Life, as I want it, hasn't started yet. But its a losing battle.
 This is it, a nagging suspicion whispers. These endless skies, and the bus journeys, and the knowledge of the friends whom you have nothing to say to, and the changing aspects of life which will never be the same again.  It will just go on and on, while people keep falling off the sides, and no rope will hold them back. The melancholia now isn't really about what I have lost anymore. The melancholy I am now left with is actually about how I have been reduced to not thinking at all, and just mindlessly going from one point of definite joy to other, with having nothing much to say to anyone anymore.

Feeling quite helpless. Because I know I am in shit, and I can't do anything about it.

In Pursuit of Happiness

I have a vague realization that most of the titles on this blog either read like a self help book or like the scribble of a super depressed and angry goth girl, but I think its something to do with how I have done the blog design. I am very satisfied with it. Another realization is that I actually prefer a white based layout of anything nowadays. It soothes my soul. I forget how many places I use the same element.
 I hope its not too late, but I just decided what my new years resolution is. I resolve to be happy. Simple enough right? Its actually like a careful design problem. But the solution is very simple.
 Do things that I actually want to do - The bullshit I do because I don't make an effort not to do it = Happiness
This means, I only meet people I want to. Hang out with them in ways which will make me happy. Not be with people because of compulsion of adjusting with friends expectations and needs. Actually fuck friends expectations and needs. I'm done compromising. I know damn well they are the one who should be compromising, and not me. I'm done letting them be the primadonnas.
 It also means, I do things that make me happy. If the concept of Happiness is a little to vague, I'll be just satisfied with doing things which engage my  mind positively, and brings me peace. I need mental peace. I need to be blank in the think box for a bit. And also try to live a healthier life. My operating question now is:
Do I really want to do this/go there?
The answers are usually a simple and resounding Yes or a No, if applied with the first equation. That should work.
I spend a lot of time talking to people and finding out things about them that I don't really want to know. So when I genuinely talk to people I want to, the satisfaction is more surprising. I just talked to a friend in Bangalore and her new job, and also my other friend who is working with her. Usually its people calling me up. But this was a case where I  called instead. And I asked interested questions about her life, and she answered me, and there was no barrier. It was just me asking about life and she answering. It was wonderful. Its so important for me to be able to talk to people who are interested in things I am, and does what I do. And that it is a friend and not a work place colleague is more of a precious gift. Somewhere down the line a few unlikely girls whom I met in a different city have become more close to me than people who call themselves my closest friends. I don't regret changes, at least not loudly. But today's conversation just enforced a hard and fast resolution to be made, and kept rigorously.
We creative-types are wont to descend into insanity, otherwise.

Discovering Inspiration

Sometimes I think that I spend 99 per cent of my life feeling disillusioned or just questioning my true interest in art. This is more like an over all whining which grinds on at the back of my mind behind the heavy curtains of conscious thought.

But there are moments like these, too:

 http://english.bouletcorp.com/2011/03/18/subway/

Go through legions of these, and a stage by stage process takes place. First, I am awed. The sheer awesome power of art, especially something done by hand, knocks the breath out of me. That is the true miracle. Just the joy at looking at lines, and colour, and brush/pencil strokes, and finishes, well, it cannot be described. The genius of it is only to be felt. I admit that I don't find the renaissance stuff as awe inspiring nowadays as illustration done today, possibly because hand done illustration is once again such an oddity, and such a rare thing. 

The second thing that happens, is that I want to do something as cool. write /draw things. Be active. Be creative. I think, "I can do that!" but then, I realize I don't have the originality. Whatever I do, will be aping what I just looked at and loved. And that again knocks the wind out of me once again, but for an entirely different reason.

The third and last stage that follows is that I want to kill myself. For not possessing the genius of the brush strokes, or story telling, or just plain ideas! If I am, at this point, in Bangalore, I send whatever I am looking at to my partner in suicidal tendencies, S. Then we moan. About our uselessness. Our need to be Awesome. And our complete and utter failure at it. And how we just don't have IDEAS. And then get into worse conversation about how we can acquire style, but the genius of having an idea is the main thing, which cannot be. 

And then the circle is completed, and restarted.

The Comic Is Done

At least what seems to be the starting of a story. It was so painful. The writing, and the drawing. I just gave it a days gap (in that I read Patrick Rothfuss's majorly hailed first of a trilogy, The Name of The Wind. More on this later) and when I read it on the site a an hour ago, I cringe. Its incoherent. to say the least. I wouldn't be surprised to find that its been dismissed as rubbish. The art too is nothing to call home about. And the thing is (twenty-twenty hindsight working here) editing would do make it so much better. The dialogues are huge. The language terrible. Its obvious I was trying too hard.  So much was riding on me. Actually still is. But I submitted yesterday and so I feel I've closed that chapter of the project. But something I just read told me that any art that you make, will never be perfect, and Zadie Smith said, I'm paraphrasing here, that if you are an artist or a creator of any sort, be prepared for the misery of constant dissatisfaction. And its true.
Coming off this project, I have been left with a couple of very deep feelings. First, I am relieved. I am relieved to be off someone else's timeline and deadline for a project which had supposedly entirely been my own in theory. The cost of being on someone else's time has been heavy. And the work has suffered. Too much stress. Too much panic. Too much pressure to perform. To be brilliant. From what I could manage to decipher from the horrendous writing in the story, I think some of it subconsciously came out in it through opinions of the protagonist. But its to incomprehensible in its language to be understood.
Second, I need the time and the lack of pressure to go back into a project like this, some space away from the project, in order to see its fault and make it perfect. This seems like a no brainer but a diploma project will only give you maybe an hour away from it. Not an entire day. And even if you do take a day, you are still completely inhabiting the head space you had left. There is no severance in the connection to the work. Hence no perspective. And really, thinking that "Now, I will write." doesn't really produce fantastic things. And that's what happened to me this time. I had always considered my self to be a tolerable writer. But this bullshit that i have produced is possibly the worst I have ever written. Its trite, contrite and I hate it. As of now. Which brings me to my third realization.
 You cannot use the design principle to produce art. Or to write. In the last few years in Srishti, I have been conditioned to the factory mode of production. Supposedly for the greater good, and the need to constantly meet the deadlines I will face if(when?) I go into the professional arena. But it cannot be applied to when you have to write. Or draw for that matter. Yes deadlines are important. But not to the extent that you are settling for bullshit in the place of ideas. You can plan everything as much as you want. Plan an outline. Plan a character. Plan every fucking thing, if it takes your fancy, but none of it will be any good if there is not spark of genuine inspiration behind it. And inspiration acquisition takes time. It needs to be a delicate balance of planning/deadline setting and inspiration. And I did not have the time here.
At the moment, I realize that my head is completely empty. All the plans I had made have slipped by the wayside. All the things I had planned to do once I had this project out of the way, seem to fail to come to mind. All I have done is develop a crack like addiction to books. I think the analogy is appropriate because books and crack are both expensive like hell and basically does the same thing. I think I have bought three books in the last month itself, and I have devoured them in an insane space of time. How much? I finished the first two books that I had ordered off flipkart (I am a flipkart virgin no longer) in a a matter of six or eight hours to the minute I bought them. A total of about four hundred pages. And today I finished Patrick Rothfuss, whose Name of the Wind, is a whopping eight hundred pages long. And I have been reading it since yesterday. I seem to be going through books in a insane rate, and cant stop feeling the urge to keep of buying books. Because I honestly can't read ebooks on the computer comfortably. My eyes hurt. The only failure in reading has been the two books I picked from the garbage- the second book of the millenium trilogy and a book by Malcolm Caldwell. Somehow that I just couldn't read.
 But. Reading the Name of the Wind has been a comfort. Not because of the quality of writing. I honestly havent judged what I am feeling about the book. But I felt happy and comfortable in sitting with a book obsessively knowing that I had absolutely nothing else that needed my attention, or the fact that I was shirking no duty. That freedom was delicious. And I reveled in every little bit of it.
It's a comfort to me that I have some time now. Some time to just be without work. At least formal work. I can make things that I want to, without having to be judged, if I want to. I like the personal-ness I think this time offers me. I can do things which don't have to stand up to any one else's standards but my own. And do it on my own sweet time. Who knows? Maybe its worth doing. Maybe the efforts might be more satisfactory than that of what I produced for the school.
 Anyway. I have gotten into making lists, during the project. And the white walls in my room are dotted with neon colored post its of to-do lists. I think its working for me. So might as well make a list for things I want to do for my leisure as well. I think I just will.
 Also, my fears have been unfounded. People have been calling me from all over to tell me that they have received the mails that I sent them, with the super honest letters and cards. And most seemed to be super overwhelmed. The one person whose reaction I was fearing the most was very positive. So I went and posted another card to B. I hadn't before because the ass had not sent his address on time. But anyway, I feel like quite a pro with the post office now. I can take on the bloody world, as they say.
 On the other hand, I am also feeling the need to have money of my own. I hate having to ask my father for money. And spending his. I want my money, which is my own, to guiltlessly buy books, and do things and not having to shudder at thinking of having to ask for more money to pay rent, while hating wanting to buy another book, because that would also involve asking for more money, because rent would have cleared the house out.  That being said, I cannot really take time to relax too much because earning money requires getting a job. And that means getting back to work, and sprucing up the portfolio and all that running around and another round of stress. I have some serious thinking to do.
 And maybe I could squeeze in a bit of relaxation also.

I wrote Letters

By hand. On paper. With Sketch Pens. And altogether I thought it was quite a project. And I posted it at a post office. That too was quite an adventure. I am not sure why something this stupid made me feel like I was accomplishing something, but it did. And just as I finished posting the letters and was walking back I feel a sense of emptiness that takes place when I finish a project. Its like there is nothing left in me. I look at the papers and sketch pens and post its, and tape and scissors strewn around where I worked, and I feel like they are dead things. I can't make stuff out of them any longer. Chances are I will be doing something with them. But I don't know what.
 Oh, look I am being my bright ray of sunshine again!
But really, I wrote the letters and I went and printed new years cards that I had made, and I thought it would be nice to do this. But I had not encountered on some revelations when I tried to write the letters. The thing that  I realized was that I was afraid. Of the reception to what I was saying. People tend to look at honest disclosures or something which emotional and sentimental very uncomfortably. And their reaction is what I found myself fearing. I realized my heart was breaking as I was writing because somehow I know what the reactions are going to be. Yet I kept writing. Because somewhere between the start and the finish, it has turned into a social experiment. If it fails, then I have only to lose the friends whom I think are my friends. We won't be casual and friends-like anymore. And how bad will that be? That was what the fear was about. What kept me at it, was that I realized that I already felt isolated. And I already am alone. So what the reactions and actions of people hundreds of miles away are going to be doesn't really matter. Because I'll still be alone.
 But the entire Post Project, as I am calling it in my head, I completed. And it was fun as I was doing it. And there was a point where I thought I would not be able to complete it- meaning I'd never end up posting the letters, but i did it.
 A lot has been cost at the price of this little project of mine. My comic project was put on hold for two days, between 31st december and third january. And there is a lot to be done for it. I have to finish putting in the text for the comic. I have to redesign the website. And I have to do the documentation. and I have exactly till the 8th of this month to do it. So following that its fourth of the month today, I really couldn't afford to take the two days off.
 But I don't regret it. Because I cannot regret living my life. My life isn't just the Comic project. I refuse to let the project dictate it . I was letting that happen before the Fiasco. But post it, something in me has shifted. And I cannot let something make me so unhappy that I cannot do anything else. Doing other work is healing. And that is very very important.
 So I have been doing the post project, and then I have been reading too. I felt like I had no oxygen without contact with books. Flipkart saved me. And reading and doing other stuff is what makes me feel human in this entire hellish experience I've been having.
 But for now, I have just been elated to have put sketch pen to paper, and printed cards and put them in an envelope and stick stamps on and drop them into the mailbox.