Ghostly and ghastly!

I don't like ghosts. Not that I have anything personal against them. What I particularly find annoying about them is the fact they take you by surprise, almost always. Unpredictable is the word.
Yes, I admit that anything unpredictable makes me nervous. There is a strange nervous energy that gets unleashed within me. Hence, I don't like ghosts.
Also, friendly ghosts make me depressed. It only reinforces the fact that human beings are moronic creatures, mostly judgemental and selfish. Unlike the friendly ghosts.

The scary ones also show some grace. They have interesting ways to handle fury, which humans pathetically suck at!

But I still don't like ghosts. They make me feel powerless and naked. They can read my mind, predict my behavior, seem to know me better. So basically, I can't play mind games with them. Now how annoying is that! The worst is you can neither love nor hate them.

And just when you think that you have cracked a friendly deal with them, they disappear. I hate endings. As much as I hate unpredictability. I don't like ghosts.

My last blog post says 2010. Yes, it's been almost three years.
While nothing much has changed about my outlook in life, still there have been changes. A change in city, work, lifestyle...and of course oodles of boredom and flashes of excitement in between.

Needless to say, I haven't had the time to reflect or spend time in doing anything remotely productive, apart from, of course, visiting new food joints in and around the city.

Yes, I still hate waking up early in the morning, can't survive a day without meat, have lost interest in making new friends, work no longer gives me pleasure, sleep does, and so does spending a day doing absolutely nothing.

There is more mental stability though. Something I had not felt in a long time.

Camphor

I knew it the moment the clock had struck 12 that night. The nauseating euphoria and the unbridled laughter around me had given me enough indications of what is to come.
My instinct seldom ditched me. In fact it has always been right...whenever I have felt that things are moving towards the worse side. That was exactly how I had felt that night. I hadn’t prepared much to receive the year 2010.
So it all began. A boring, depressing wait for the clock to strike 12, followed by a numbing noise of shameless jubilation, the routine first day of the year and a lethargic three-day trip back home. Sometimes I just wish I could chop the head of the man who invented this concept of time and calendar years. Who the hell says that a new year brings new beginnings! I have vowed to celebrate the New Year, only the day there is a new beginning. My new year will be that day.
I just didn’t get enough mind space to believe that a whole year rolled by just a few days ago.

There is nothing new. My eyes continue to itch when day light falls on the curtain every morning. I still have more hair on the floor than on my head. Thoughts of future make me yawn and sick. I still feel hollow and I awfully miss dad. I can’t listen to music for long, it makes me emotional like a fool. I read but forget. I sing but rarely. I dream but wake up sooner. I believe...but I know I am deceiving myself. And I continue to live…if that is what life is.

Bubble of despair

Apart from making resolution lists, editing them, brooding over life, indulging in useless shopping ventures, and watching sunsets, I managed to spend time watching films. The recent one that i saw was The story of Adele H' by Francois Truffaut.
What really hits hard about the film is its simple yet poignant narration of unrequitted love and subsequent self-destruction. A lilting film with a tidal pull to it. It's about a woman who is destroyed by her passion for a man who is indifferent to her - a woman who realizes herself in self-destruction.
Adele, the daughter of writer Victor Hugo, and her obessive neurotic love for naval officer Lieutenant Pinson. This film is so totally concentrated on one character. We become as much absorbed in Adele as she is in Lieutenant Pinson. And explains the nature of neurotically willed romanticism through the character. The subject of the movie is the self-destructive love that everyone has experienced in one form or another and the riveting character of Adele goes all the way with it.
You believe her capable of anything, because you can't see yet what she is. To get her love, she fools herself to believe a magician, destroys Pinson's hope of happiness by claiming to his fiancee's father, that Pinson is married to her, changes her identity as Mrs. Pinson. But at the end, losing her mental balance and fails to recognise him.

Another 10 days left to slip into 2010. The year 2009 seems so unreal in the calender of time that its almost like a slap on the face of life. I hate changing calenders. Jan has never been the beginning of a year for me, it has just been a number. The number that used to once excite me. Now mocks at me as I snow-glide into the not-so-envious years of life.

This time I promised to make my New Year resolution list a lil real n attainable. So here it goes:

1. Read more. Instead of reading three books at a time, finish up the books in a month’s time.
2. Start the day with music
3. Spend time alone, productively
4. Panic less, practice calm
5. Manage anger (this is the most difficult of the lot)
6. Listen to the soul-speak rather than getting overwhelmed by stupid pointless emotions
7. Learn to make cakes that don’t require a drilling machine to cut. (have recently failed in 3 consecutive attempts)
8. Get madly happy for no big reasons
9. Keep a collection of fine wines, not necessarily to get drunk (the bottles luk more pretty)
10. Get less of reds and oranges in the wardrobe
11. Make travel plans happen
12. Acknowledge the fact that being ‘single’ does not necessarily signify the marital status n be cool with it
13. Talk less and listen more (rather only) to sane voices (a tough one again, not the listening part...but finding sane voices)
14. Convert drafts into blog posts (need to cut down on my hours of sleep...drastically)
15. Take disappointments as a basic element of life (this is not an option)
16. Accept the fact that most people will fail your trust n most people are assholes
17. Figure out more interesting ways to handle depression than shopping and fussing over hair 18. Buy green and blue nail paints
19. Expect a lil less during annual increments and a lot less in love
20. Cry hard and get over it sooner
22. Cut down on sleeping hours ( again...a very difficult one. i think i am gonna fail here!)
23. Finish watching the CDs selected by Baba
24. No eye-liners when I am in a screwed up state of mind. (takes a hell of an effort to remove it from teary eyes n its quite embarassing too)
25. Buy more pot plants

A year has rolled by with lightning speed. I realised it only today when I brought out the diyas to light and then looked at the calender. Time almost seemed like a concept that is unreal, fake, cruel. Diwali has been anything but bright for me.
Last year I had wasted precious hours decorating the rangoli when the same merciless clock mocked at me and my ignorance. It was only the next day that I realised the value of those two hours I spent messing over the colours of the rangoli. And then I had a close encounter with death.
Its hard to believe that almost 11 months are over since that day.
This time i have decided to spent the day all alone. I didn't go home. In fact I dread going to Nagpur. Every visit makes me feel more hollow. It reminds me of the dusty lanes of my grandmother's house, the brick red walls of my convent school, the ancient houses of Mohan Nagar - the place which still has managed to survive in its old form, the mysteriously peaceful rich green pathways to the Seminary Hills Cemetry and the scooter rides to these places with Baba.
The last time I came to the Old City of Mohan Nagar was with him to meet his writer friend. And we had spent the afternoon in discussing literature, cinema, life, relationships.
A year since then, the place looked strangely colourless. I tried my best to strike a conservation on similar lines. But the rhythm was clearly missing. This pain and suffering of a sense of loss is much more than the mere absence of an individual. I suffered every moment...trying to meet the same people, make a fresh beginning. Sometimes there r no fresh beginnings. u just have to live with the end.
So what do u do when u r helpless? Just give up, or go with the flow? I don't even know how to give up on living. All I know is I want to give up.

Spa for the soul?

I was aghast at plumbing through depths of emotional angst at a spa. A spa, for heaven’s sake! What ever happened to good old-fashioned, shallow self-indulgence?
In my desperate attempts to divert my tortured state of mind, I have been indulging in several futile exercises. After swimming, the latest one was body spa. I had heard and read how wonderful it felt and how it had a unique way of making you feel good about your body. Yes, that was quite true. What I didn't read, however, was that there was no body spa that had a similar effect on the mind.
But let me honestly admit, my senses did feel pampered at that point of time. I opted for an aura massage – a combination of Thai, Swedish and Hawaiian massage techniques – to make dent in to my fiercely protected emotional baggage and an almond and saffron facial since it sounded quite exotic. For a while I floated off to the mountains, the place of floating wisps of clouds where everything smelt of hibiscus and lavender oil. The oil that trickled down my back felt like snowflakes and it had the warm fuzzy after-effects. The fabulous head and feet massage that the ultimate effect on my jaded soul.
At the end of the two and half hour session, I finally forced myself to believe that I felt greatly relaxed and had a silly smile on my face as I walked back.

But all this was so shortlived that I couldnt help feeling stupid at my brazenly shameless levels of self-indulgence. For the rest of evening I cried. My soul ached for a spa - a supremely exotic one!
I wish I never went for a body spa...atleast I could imagine that there were, perhaps, few things in life that could make me a feel a little nice.

As I write now, I can just see letters swim into each other and memories colliding together to form a dark inky mass of vapour that hangs over my head.

I looked at my fast bloating figure in the long mirror....which was another grave mistake of the day.

I have decided to skip dinner.

Floating moods

Swimming pools and clouds are the latest interests of my life. It’s perhaps one of the most de-stressing experiences to float in the waters and simply watch the silvery wisps of clouds glide past one another like wafting confetti. Or watch the reflection of the monsoon clouds change their moods in the transparent pool water. It reminds me of quiet melancholic laidback evenings when like the changing patterns of the clouds, my moods would go through the twists and turns, experience ecstasy like lightning flashes and droop back to the forlorn alleys of the past.

Right now, my greatest joy is to idle in the waters and enjoy the exquisite solitary moments to reflect on. So on a Sunday morning, I was jealously guarding those pages of memories from washing out of my mind and enjoying a float. I spread my arms in the water and watched the vapours of clouds glide dreamily on pale heights behind the hills like melancholy hermits. Whenever I moved my head above the water, I saw those torn shreds of black clouds, the eternal symbols of all voyaging, all yearning for home and heard the noises of work and everyday activity rise up mingling together. I felt the painful struggle for life and isolation from the world outside. I wish I was a cloud - go through life like a cloud, wandering everywhere like a stranger, floating between time and eternity.

I am stuck in such a strange quagmire of existence that even starting a blog seemed like a great effort. I am living in an organised disorder of intense emotions. At times I am overwhelmed by an undefinable loneliness and gloom that by now, I have become accustomed to like a trusted friend and less of a torment.
My mornings smell of despair and nights bring in memories that float up like phantoms. I don't remember days when I've woken up to a sense of well-being. And now I am reduced to a helpless victim of fits of melancholy. Years of non-creative existence, a dusty mind with overbearing unfulfilled desires and wasted emotions have paralysed me.

You feel that time heals all pain. I think anyone who has had a close encounter with death or has seen sufferring closely, will know that it is something that stays with you forever. I have seen the death bird silently pecking away the last bits of life. The helpless feeling of watching your loved ones fade away with time is frighteningly painful! The eyes that once looked at you lovingly getting disintegrated, the lifeless pale hands that once held you through the tides of life or the resounding sounds of laughter that has now become just a faint distant murmur in the pages of memory! It's surely not easy on the heart. It's like living in a house knowing well that one day an earthquake will crumble it into pieces without leaving any semblance of its existence.
Yes, life does continue despite the discontinuities surrounding it. And there are times when you laugh, enjoy the quick moments of ecstasy and listen to songs that once played through the days when you were a six-year-old. And then again you smile, may be it was an old joke you shared...you want to smile again. But you can't!