Sahyadri and the reclaimed lands.

he wakes up and looks at the ceiling. Ceiling Fan.

She is already in the kitchen. Boiling Milk.

he closes his eyes. the Sayhadris.

She looks out of the window. adds tealeaf.

He comes and stands behind her. kiss on the nape.

She covers the heated vessel with a lid. Brings down the boil.

He talks about erosion. How he feels at par with the western ghats. How he remembers the crayons and the monsoon and his childhood packed in a crayon box. The color of the transparent water in the lake nearby. He is vanishing and feeling eroded like the Sahyadris. He says.
The Western Ghats and it's magical days.

She tries to forget all this. All of this.
 The sound of bacon frying in its own fat.
The horrible lustful smell of it.
 Through the window she sees the white flowers falling.
 She throws these images outside the window.
Out of each and every possible window.
Color temperature of life SHIFTS

Pours herself a cup. Sits on the sofa. It's without milk this time.
Not like the last night. Not like the last morning.
Nothing is the same. A is not equal to a,
And B is not equal to b.









Looking at new flowers and rays.
Fitting feet in the painful leather again.
Without hanging onto the past again.
Stepping out, once again.
Mosaic is more romantic than marble she says.

She will soon go to the shore. Let the old memories sink into
the sea along with the golden drop of Sun.
The people standing against this background
in a silhouette will too forget her soon
The unfortunate maternal love
this land presented her with,
will happily disown her too 

 A drop of gold. She likes to call the Sun.

* Parts of Stanza 1 and 2 are inspired and partially taken respectively by the works of an upcoming Indian writer/ photojournalist and film maker Ishan Sadwelkar. The Sahyadri metaphor is a part of his extensive study and understanding on the region. 

* The pictures have been clicked by me at Sinhagadh fort(lies in Sahyadri range), my lovely Kitu Gupta's house in Mumbai and the 'arabian sea-the shore-the all and ever accepting endless horizon' seen from Juhu Chowpatty. 

bhaari post

There are some days in MITID, my college, that make me feel like I am actually in a college. All thanks to some really talented friends and faculty which know how to teach and inculcate the habit of expressing ourselves on a regular basis. It is just that it is not so often that one does so. The open elective course in our 6th sem brings out the best of us. I did mine last year which made me go through a carrier change and a reformation phase in life. Well it's not that hardcore too. I don't mean to give any wrong ideas here. It's a course in which us 'design' students are made to choose from a list of activities other than their own departments.

You will come across a Retail student working on a sewing machine figuring out the stitch for his vest, a product student dying endless ropes for an elective in weaving, a graphic design student understanding how zeebrush works. And same goes for everyone else. It's like acquiring a new skill-set all together and not being under the pressure of doing it to get marks, but to have a product by the end of it all.

This year's highlight for me was the comic illustration O.E. conducted by Aroop Sir from the animation department. Some of the panels were so good that made me laugh at and enjoy the very reason of our existence in this place. Humor often comes out from a tragedy. And the students came up with hilarious visuals of the day to day life we spend here at mitid. Some choose to sulk over the problems and some come up with light hearted comical visuals to eradicate the misery temporarily, which does no harm to anyone :-)

I don't really know who has done what, but just sharing the stuff students had done during the course. These were one/two/three panel artboards for comic design. Took all the snaps in a hurry as I had to catch my train to Mumbai. Was lazy to crop and compose (like always). Also, scanner was not the feasible option at that moment. The folks currently at Mitid would empathize with me :-P

Detachment Stage : love

Yesterday was spent at Matheran. You shall get to know soon why I was there and what for. But the point of this post being made is something which mattered to me in the current context of my life. 

I am an illiterate when it comes to dogs. I have realized I am one when it comes to human beings as well now. There is always a person who makes you feel that way at some point of your life then and now. 

But very few souls make you feel wanted and loved. Very few express their love and willingness to be with you. Some do it but are full of their own insecurities and call it just pure need. Some go one step further and term it as clingy behavior and an obsession when you ask for it. And then I met Charlie the white pup yesterday. 

I have always been good with dogs. And cats. And babies. Yes. Im sure a lot of people can relate to what I am saying here. Somehow we connect better with those who don't have the power to blabber too much or process very little. But mostly with those who just feel pure emotions. So when I was done spending some time at the sunset point, I was heading back to the open area where mules and tea shops and infinite number of monkeys had set up their base at. Where my newly made friends and team members were working on something. From a distance I saw this tiny little thing running towards us, chasing after a family who was very fancily doing their 'khachchar-rounds'. I don't know what came to my mind and the next instinct was to grab him. That moment onwards we were inseparable. People clicked his photos, took their photos with him, my group people made jokes about how he found his mother (me) and blah blah. It did this weird thing of stretching itself and sticking it's belly on the ground as if It was taking in all the warmth that the red laterite soiled earth had to offer. 

I got him to the hotel. Fed him hand-mashed biscuits. The pup slept on my arm with his face hidden under my elbow throughout a song performance and a magic show. We fed him some chicken and soggy roti. Some random uncle wanted to get his pictures clicked with him and was completely manhandling the baby. I obliged but after a point took the pup away as the baby was feeling uncomfortable. Annoying prick of an uncle that was. By this time he was named charlie by the people around ( I swear I wouldn't have let that happen had I been not busy with arranging for his dinner in the dining hall). So I made charlie sleep on a thick yet soft brown doormat and covered him with a thick turkish towel. He kept on waking up again and again. I kept on removing the army of tics on it again and again. It kept on shivering. I took it to the hall outside and made him sleep on a couch with his bedding intact. Finally not giving a fuck about whether he sleeps or not, whether the sounds disturb him or not, whether he gets scared or not. Clearly we both could not sleep. And the more I spent time with him the idea of not being able to adopt him became more and more painfully disturbing to me. By each and every passing moment I was being content with the presence of this creature in my life. So content that I din't feel the need to long for another person to be in it.  

I kept on wondering as to how really rescue this one. Whether I should leave it here or take it to my hostel and let it struggle along with the other dogs. Although the dogs in my campus are taken care of pretty well. But I don't want to take that step. For the first time I was in a situation to choose. Whether to take on someone's responsibility or leave just leave him behind, thinking life will take care of it. Mostly it's me whom people leave behind like that. But yes, coming back to my point, they are people. Flawed and over-processed people. Just like myself. 

A lot more had happened to me emotionally. Next morning when I was leaving for Pune I saw that Charlie wasn't there on his bed anymore. He must have been goofing around somewhere. I just kissed away his thoughts in my mind a goodbye. Since then I am avoiding all the possible interactions with dogs. Touching skinny ( our beloved young campus bitch) was relieving yet saddening. Now again my friend will be like "Why do you brood into negative spaces?" Well, maybe my mind loves doing that when I'm not feeling the love. And this I am saying when I have enough people in love who do love me, but I guess some of you reading this will realize what exactly I am talking about. 

Hoping to find him on my next visit to Matheran next month. Posting some pictures of the pup. And no I am not going to call him Charlie :-P   

Paw-ing around and earth-belly heat generation

friends from the group

Simultaneity and the beauty of imperfection.

She took her t-shirt off
The color of her bra clasps
colored the room grey
I moved my eyes away

He took his slippers off
lay on his subtle paunch
got lost in the darkness
between himself and the bed

A long slender back 
rested on a dreamy waist
the valleys of the body and
the non-existent curves of chest

some traces of hair on his arm
brushed against mine while walking
nicotine, nicotine, caffeine, nicotine
scratches from the bed bugs last night

this poetry is going nowhere
getting entangled in the imagery
of those two people i met
who could never be mine

I imagine them in my existence
Playing with their toes, 
to be near the hills,
In the rains.

I, I want to play with their toes
Make love to them as we sleep
on a hammock, under the warm sun
just after the heavy downpour

creating rainbows without touching 
feeling the love without seeing
erasing the grey-ness around us
omitting the labels that surround us

My two friends. 

He said, She said

She said, "I will do it again."
He said, "It's pointless. It doesn't exist."

She said, "You should try believing in us. For once."
He said, "There is no us."

She said, "I will not fall for you."
He said, "You will get over it soon."

She said, "I like the lights dim."
He said, "Then how will I see the depths of your skin?"

She said, "Let me love you."
He said, "There you go. Again the same mistake."

She said, "Let me hug you. Let me wrap myself around you from behind. For a while."
He said, "You are clinging onto me again."

She said, "It makes me happy."
He said, "Get out of movies,
there is no happy ending in life."

She said, "I know better. I just need mine.
Not ours."
He said, "Don't drag me in your life."

She said, "Don't enter mine."
He said, "People change."

She said, "I have never met a coward like you before."
He said, "You killed the romance."

She said, "There was romance even in the way
the red colored bus arrived at the bus stand today.
Falling leaves took the attention away from the annoying
heat as the driver pressed the break and put the vehicle to a halt.
Time stood still.
The leaves fell happily in the invisible arms of the tar road.
I never felt that with you.
What do you know about romance anyway."

Don't forget how to Human.

PART ONE

don't do anything stupid.  just don't.
That's all I can hear my mind say to myself in my friend's (bhagwat's) voice every time I see an ex's unwanted, pity filled message in my inbox. Or every time I see his recent pic with the guy i'm a in corrosive relation with at the moment.
I say to myself that it's the retrograde perhaps, making me go through such emotions. But Swaroopa and Pragya made realize how i am falling in the same circle again. I have been watching two-three films daily to shrug that thought off from my mind.

On the morning of 26th january, I had just returned from breakfast. And I was going through a few posts on fb. I had still not switched off my fairy lights on the desk. The sun was bright but thanks to the suffocating room i have been put into, there wasn't a need to shut them off. I was sleep deprived and had to see off Piyali Aunty that afternoon. Suddenly a message showed up in my inbox, by a person who himself deleted me from his friend list, for his own spiritual reasons, said the most hurtful things to me one day post my birthday and consequently ruined my relations with people who meant a lot to me. Well, I don't care about his side of the story because mine never mattered.

this was the message:

hi shubhanshi

I recently attended a vipasana course

I feel it might be of help to you. 

Check it out if you want to whenever you can. 

The main center is in Igatpuri.

(the site address)

all the best

No need to reply. 

now later that night when I was over the trauma of going through this message, Mehul texted me saying 'usse bolo aap vipasana apne andar lelo'. 

I like it when your friends make issues like these feel trivial. And insignificant. Infact that day itself was quite an opener to me. 

I immediately read the message. for some reason went into a frenzy. Called Swaroopa. And cried. I had not cried for this entire time about this particular man. Either friends or my own self took care of me. Not to forget the cold waters of the swimming pool. But that morning I cried. I had not slept the entire night. I was writing my BA assignments. 6-7 hours at a stretch. If I got bored from one subject I switched to another and started finding the answers. I realized how fucked up the European History is. I felt how amazing drama is. I realized I have still two more subjects left to write and finish off. 

Swaroopa stated the obvious saying that he is a chut. Of course, the female genitalia is a LOT better than a fucked up confused horrible being who calls himself a human. And that I could come over to her house anytime and just vent myself out. Now that's one thing understandable. Staying in that dinghy room of my hostel wouldn't help me make myself feel better about anything. I had to meet Rudy and his mom at the station anyway. So I just packed everything and left for the night. Took a bus, reached the station and said bye to Piyali. She showered way to much love on me that day. I think if there is really any thing that matters to me is the love of my elders. Hope I never stop counting their blessings. I just fail to recognize the same from my own set of elders. 

I had a small chat with Rudy and took another bus to Kothrud. I swear those 2 bus rides were important to me. 

I felt good when Rudy told me how much his mom adores me. And the fact that I took time out to show her around camp, or help her buy books from the raddi shop and the sarees from the store. 

I think there isn't any greater gift than investing your time into someone you care for. My efforts seldom go unnoticed and mostly seen as obsessions. Hence it's a breather when I am acknowledged for my unconditional love to those who matter. 

By the time it was night. I was in a much better frame of mind. And I was amazed how I hadn't done anything stupid so far. Hadn't sent a stupid bitter cuss filled letter to a friend, had not slapped that bitch, who well of course, is a bitch. Did not tell loks about it and went mad on not seeing his reply on the matter.  I had just been into a retrospective mode all day long. throughout those journeys. From questioning myself as to why he sent me that message to what was the need to even mention 'no need to reply' in the end. It is all over. Why the fake concern. Nikki doesn't talk to me anymore. Why the fake concern. I did a pretty good job of picking myself up in the past few months, got my heartbroken twice and still I am alive like everyone else. And living happily too. I had deleted all our conversations. Blocked him to spare him the need to even write ' no need to reply' from that moment onwards. Fb is seriously a life complicator. 

Then I remembered one thing. And it changed my entire perspective about the life I lived with him so far. I was proud of that man. I am proud of him. 

I had a history in stammering as a kid. i somehow recovered with regular practice.
it was directly related to my ability of maintaining confidence in unexpected situations.
what followed was only moments of blank-outs in which not just speak abut i could not even process anything. And such phases used to take place for 30 seconds to1:30 minutes.
but It was never a problem
In my second sem i met 'him'. And i was blown away by is ability to speak publicly so well with a stutter. I think i fell for that. That was the pure reason i fell for him.
I fell for his disability which he could wear it on his sleeve so easily. Only i dint know that it wasn't really easy for him. After an year when i confessed my liking for him, he was taken aback.
We started spending more time together and it was like, if he had to say something and used to get stuck, i used to finish his sentences. Im sure he never noticed that though. I knew what his next word is going to be. Then another dark period came in which i started to know about his deepest fears and insecurities and slowly without realizing, his fears and all those insecurities, started to rub off on me.
I became more dependent on him. My moments of blank-outs returned.
The more intimate time i started to spend with him, the more i zoned out.
The more i started writing and stopped speaking in public.
I used to be silent when he used to be around. And the moment he used to be back in his room i used to flood him with my messages. I started hanging on to written words and clang to literature.  That started to frustrate him as well. He even told me once that he stutters with words, but if I continue doing this to myself, I will stutter my entire life with my thoughts.
Then i told him about my history,it was like a mental stutter i was going through in which i could not articulate nor process anything. And then we started to research on it together. Whatever new book or article he used to come across, he used to share that with me.
Those six hats and what not. I still have those pdfs man.

He used make me sit right next to him in the lab and make me read from page so and so to page so and so. He told me about how he has to join these couple of meditation practices to work on stutter and other therapies in bangalore. But he could not as that would mean missing out on college
He said he wont be able to work in the industry if he hasn't cured his stammer, as no one wants a stutterer on sets. And then one day he just told me that he is leaving college. In fact that too I predicted right at his face when he was about to tell me about it. And then he just left. We still remained in touch and his stammering increase. We were physically close than ever. Then whatever the shit happened next year. He started to do random photography jobs. Whatever the shit happened last year in 2014 and eventually we stopped talking.
he had come to college this year in Jan for a friend's shoot. He behaved very unprofessionally with me. it was so bad that i had to withdraw myself out from the shoot. I wasn't doing anything major anyway. Plus i had to work on my own edit Then post the shoot, he vanished for this course apparently. In which for ten days people dont speak and practice intense discipline.  

I was proud of him .
i just couldn't figure out why i was really doing it.
all this while in the bus
when its the only time i can think freely.
I realized, that power of love is always greater and much more bigger than the power of hatred. 

I have a feeling u won't agree with me. But then that is your take.
I could recover from him dumping me because I truly loved him.
The line which says, that u have to learn to let go the person u love, made sense to me at that very moment.
I don't even need to brag the same to hundred people here
even if he sent me the message for showing off, that's his level of maturity. And that's sad.
I would have still been proud of him hadn't he told me about it. And requested me not to reply.
If tomorrow he actually recovers from his problems, i will still be happy about it.
After blocking him he must have felt that i hate him or whatever, obviously i do.
But i love him beyond that.
I gave him whatever he wanted me to, and I always gave what I want to. All these months, i never tried to contact him. I practiced moving on.
I just know for sure now that he has no place in my life and neither do I have in his.
We were like mirrors and if you keep two mirrors in front of each other, there is only chaos.

Closures are not for real, but I am sure it was his way of doing it.

Bhagwat's Bday gift. 

Piyali's Byloom gift to me. 

PART TWO.

The same weekend. I met Kanu Bhagwat. A confident n cheery positive vibe wala person ( I always end up befriending the likes of those) who has some real good shit planned up for the future. 

We spoke about films and business and all things young. And of course, love. 

She mentioned no matter how many times we fail in love, it surely does end up building our character. Only if we let it happen to us. That horrible relationship you came out of? You must have learnt something from it. Even if it means that you were stupidly in love and made chai everyday for a person who you were mad crazy for, at least you perfected the art of making that cup of tea for that person. The prize is in subtracting the bitterness and see to it that you have one bonus life skill to yourself. If I can confidently take friends out to the city and make them and their parents enjoy the hidden gems of Pune today which is still alien to me, Is because of that douche bag who messaged me after so long and asked me not to reply to him. Our walks and rides through the streets haven't really gone to waste. They continue to still live in my experience of expertise in loving someone. Be it a person or a place or a feeling. 

Now I need to stop at this point. As I am in the middle of yet another phase, yet another corrosive and emotionally vicious cycle of happenings where I cannot decide whether to completely lay off from the situation or just go with the flow. 

And that is something which is not making me feel very happy. I had a resolution this year to just be selfish and stay happy. And as it is already Feb and the point where most of us break our resolutions, I see mine going down the mula-mutha river too. 

So maybe some other time and day of a different point in my life, I would like to complete this post. Hope I reach a decision. As I had told Pa last night, that there is no good or bad decision, but the lack of one is what creates the fuss.