Holes in the sky

Remembering that summer at thatha’s terrace where I saw shooting stars.

Lying down on a straw mat on the warm terrace floor of thatha’s house, let’s see the stars and talk about our plans for breakfast.

We gaze at the sky, counting the stars, looking for the ones that don’t twinkle and the ones that might fall.

As thatha’s raandhal (hurricane lamp) calls in all the bugs to party and tortoise coil creates the ambience of a midnight fog, Paati’s palm leaf fan is all we have to fend off the thirsty mosquitoes.

When sleep teases the eye lids, we give in, floating amidst the stars till a mosquito sings a lullaby into the ears and brings us back to the ground. And when the summer rains start to drizzle down, we scram and head back down home and sleep till the morning power cut makes us break a sweat!

I handmade a bunch of post cards last May in collaboration with @shuruti and @make.mail. But unfortunately, they all got lost in transit. Luckily I had scanned them.

The series was titled “summer nostalgia” and included a bunch of things us 90s kids did over the summer break. 🍉🍹🏖️

Still a Pirate Bae?

I have been using my old laptop from my graduation days and today I just ventured into the bookmarks tab to see what all I had dog-eared thinking I’ll need some day. A tiny part of me hoped for a small “Letter to the dear 28-year-old self” that I had stashed away and possibly forgotten. Instead, I stumbled upon links from a few years ago that I had bookmarked on my browser as go-to for downloading movies, songs and software like Pirate Bay, fourshared, songs pk etc., And as a girl who belongs to a respectable family (read wuss, scared to shit about getting caught) downloading adult films was a no-no. I also remembered the various torrent hubs, peers, the IsoHunts and the how we use to work our way around the college’s network policies to find a way into pirating things. I was really proud of how I could find any song on the internet with just a few clicks (them good ol’ days!). And that thrill of doing something illegal, mixed with fear of hitting a malicious ware and the guilt (that, not so much right?) was priceless! Frankly, I felt like the world of internet owed me that much, a student with a meagre pocket money slogging my way through graduation. Well, on a side note, this did continue until I landed a corporate job, startups don’t really pay that much and duh,  they can’t afford a fancy firewall protection either. So Yay me!

Remember when we google the names of movies, we automatically click on the suggestion that says “…download for free” or even “…watch for free”. Whatever happened to that? I had a boss who used to buy movies from Amazon US store cause he does not believe in piracy, I for one did not adhere to such labels, actually, the correct term is that ‘I cannot afford to adhere to them’. I guess one could argue the same for vegans – they are those people who can afford to load up their refrigerators with soy milk, tofu and almond butter and I will never be one until Amul, Nandhini or Hatsun starts making them, at the same throwaway prices as their regular milk and paneer.

So, where did this transition happen and when did I change into the consumer who pays for everything and watches, reads and listens to music legally? As I question myself, I realise that now I have an app which helps me search and see which of my other subscribed apps have the movie or shows on. I even prefer paying a monthly subscription to iTunes to be able to download songs offline. Pfft, worse, I even have a bunch of apps, I paid for on my phone! Why did I never wonder why?

Did it stop when I no longer had movies to offload from roommates’ hard disks? Or when I no longer had to share my music library with someone? Did I just plain stopped having time to hunt for things online? Oh, is it because of the cheaper internet options available at our doorstep with so many gigabytes of data that beg to be used? That should actually make searching for pirated stuff faster. Right? Or, did the government put us up to this? One more question that I put on the back burner for a while now is – Have I stooped so low, letting these endless subscription-based apps gain access to my personal data, by happily signing up with my Facebook and Google credentials? All that so I can watch a censored yet legal GoT episode with in-built subtitles? In other words, have I started putting my privacy at stake over non-piracy? Well, I don’t know.

No one can actually put a date on it but I guess maybe it started when the corporates you work for put a bug on your computer to make sure torrents don’t work and encrypted your USB drives. Possible right?. Mostly, I believe it is because I started earning. A mere 500 rupees a month for an app you use everyday seems so affordable. Think about it, that’s how much you spend on just one drink when you go out with friends – that’s what my stupid brain said! But these 500s and 1000s add up and that’s when you realise, the cost has snowballed just like when you have over-shopped yourself at a Decathlon! You know that feeling!

Nevertheless, I am glad it happened. I do feel disconnected and wonder if the kids of this generation actually do have access to free range pirated content. Do they? ‘Cause I feel like they should realise the painstaking process of hunting for things in a massive pile of data, getting perturbed when they get to an empty zip file, to be able to finally appreciate how well designed and user-friendly these paid apps are and how they have made your life so much easier to well, waste more time online. I know you might judge me for saying this but, I enjoy this hassle-free and guilt-free entertainment I have gotten myself to like. As far as piracy vs privacy is concerned, I guess that’s a long debated topic, so lets doggie ear that to a later date. I’m glad at least we are aware of the possible dangers lurking behind those little blue thumbs ups.

And as I ponder, I wonder if I would ever be able to go back to those days of sourcing entertainment, assuming the torrents and pirated websites still work, savaging through endless lists of malicious ware… I highly doubt it. Would you?

Drama queen saga!

Me: You’re so cute. It’s sad that you’re single!

S: Meh… I’m all ready to die alone.

Me: I won’t let you die alone!

S: *Smiles*

Me: See I’m such a nice person and I definitely don’t deserve to die alone

S: Everyone dies alone.. its just that people fool themselves.

Me: I don’t wanna leave the world without a witness. That’s better?

S: Yes, that’s perfect!

Me: I’ll see you die.. I’ll watch you squirm with pain on the bed or even better, on the floor. I’ll watch you and smile with a glass of single malt on one hand and a joint on the other. I’d not take a sip, not a drag of my joint, I’d not miss this sight for anything on earth, not even the momentary pleasure of the bitter sweet liquid or the tar in my lungs. That’s how strong my promise is. I’ll not let you die unwitnessed and I’d do a pretty darn good job at that!

S: *pokerface*

Musings

I’m a little torn between what I am and what I want to be. Sometimes I catch myself staring away into nothingness, dreaming about things that I’d rather be and would someday be doing (Obsessive compulsive optimism). That’s when I realize maybe; I should stop dreaming, turn around and take a step towards the vision of my happier future, where I’m happy doing what makes me happy. Then I sit and wonder what if I keep chasing one or another dream and keep running away from the present to catch hold of the one glimpse of future that I see? What if my life is nothing but a chase?

And then, in a weird way, it makes me happy. I don’t wanna settle down with what makes me happy momentarily. I wanna keep moving on. Like a flowing river. Just that, I’m not the river. I’m that something that floats on it, jumps off to roll down the rocks, into the deepest woods, gets gushed by the floods, fly with the wind and dies peacefully in the arms of a passing cloud just to get carried away into the nothingness yet again!

Riding the rainbow

Dissecting a perfect rainbow ablaze,
On a clear sky I’d otherwise found solace,
Pull it down, haul its tether,
Thread by thread, one colour from the other.

Melting pigments into my palette;
Monochromes fail to be true defiant.
For it wasn’t a bunch of hues in glut,
it was a human flesh and blood.

A knight in a shiny armour, a lore-
only she’s never seen one before.
Stabbing through with a sword adrift,
painting colours in her ashen crypt.

The red of the rainbow, fades the last.

A solitary sunrise

Though this may not be the first sunrise she has witnessed in the new city, there was something magical about this particular dawn in the making.

Everything that looked dark and dismayed in the night, look bright and welcoming. The sun rose up a few degrees only to hide and snooze into the dark clouds. It seemed like the rain drops were out to do their jobs like some disciplined chores of a factory employee.

She stood there, lit the first cigarette of the day and looked at the golden lining behind the clouds which looked more mesmerising and magical than the silver linings of the past.

Sin Instance.

I had a crush on him, ever since the day we met, back in school. We were good friends, but at that moment he wanted me just as much as I did him. It was pouring rain and we were drenched to the skin. He inched closer, I took a moment to think, and muttered, “Anything we do now will change our lives forever”. He paused and said, “So be it!” and brushed his lips against mine. There was so much to ponder upon but too less time to process, and with his breath warming my cheeks to a deep pink, too less a space to argue the right from wrong, the good from the bad and the want from the need. I reciprocated and kissed along side, half a decade of friendship swallowed in the rush of our lust. We parted ways. I took the love and the memory and he, the thrill!

 

* Image courtesy: some random girly things blog.

** Spoiler: not a real story.

Love?

Love as a fantasy, as a bed full of roses, the butterflies and the mushiness are so passé and they better be, I’m almost quarter to a century now.

I came across a quote on a random someone’s page today, “Love rescues you from reality” it read. If it was a few months ago, I would have liked it, shared it or even tagged a bunch of other love sick people I know, tossed in half a dozen hash tags and topped it all with a “True that!” status update. Somehow, things are not the same anymore, may be I’ve seen too much, known too much or whatever be the case, I was tempted to contradict. To comment on that page would have been a disaster with almost the million hate messages and advice saying, “you might be going through love failure” and some on “how to fall in true love” etc., So here I am, expressing my way of looking at love and it’s ways.

“They talk about the love that rescues you from reality. I believe in the love that walks with me hand in hand through the reality of day today life. Down the crowded lane of work stress, the loud family market place, vengeful dark alleys of burglars and wafting smell of freshly brewed coffee in the neighbourhood street. Love is not about the butterflies that tickle you in your stomach, making you forget the reality. Love is that whiff of fresh air at home and those timeless moments gazing at the butterflies that dance around the flower pots in your balcony garden.”

Circus under the sun

But we’re only the clowns
In this circus under the sun,
Trying to win the hearts of everyone
Yet really impressing none.

We walk around in groups
Winding words in hula hoops.
Holding hands and swaying hips,
And the truth never grazing the lips.

Spinning word webs in gossamer,
We wait for a fly, a passer.
Catch a prey we think, we might
Soaring high, never alight!

Never ask a question why you’re so true
Surveillance injecting venom through a sprue.
Purling up an invisible lens in your head,
Scoring you instantly on each deed

Words you hear, none you’d heed,
Stacking up treasuries, none you’d need.
Pushing your smiles wider than ever,
For impressing those you don’t care, never.

What is this being “good” anyway?
You catch yourself pondering in dismay.
Am I being good because I want to,
Or is it ’cause someone’s peering, ado!

What is this “good” in the first place?
And why is it always setting me ablaze.
Just not doing bad, as good will do,
Then isn’t not stopping bad, a bad too?

And when was it the last time you asked yourself this,
Would you still be good if you dint have karma’s surveillances?
With not just one answer to keep or take,
I put this up for my own good’s sake!

 

The Volition

How did you feel when you held that weapon of destruction in your hand,
looked all around and, What did you think?
Did you just even for a moment out of curiosity consider,
Of using its vile superpower against someone or the world…
Did that thought even cross your mind that power gives you immense freedom?
The power in your hands to create or destroy
To nail it down or to compromise,
To stay there and witness or to bailout and shiver!