books i will read before the New Year

Strange as it may sound, I have always been a "simultaneous reader"... I usually have 3 books that I'm actively reading at ANY given time, spread across the house so whenever I feel the urge, I don't need to exert my lazy bones too much.... I also can't resist buying books that I "have to have" and each time I walk into a Crossword or Om Bookstore, I walk out with a couple of books and a cheshire cat grin... the strange kick I feel while standing at the billing counter, the anticipation of penning down the date and place of purchase on the first page as soon as I get back home is incomparable!

I usually read each night until my head starts bobbing and eyes get droopy... sometimes I fall asleep with fingers still curled around the pages, wake up an hour later and continue from where I left off... at others, a kind soul switches off the lights and removes the book from my unconscious clutches as discretely as possible... nonetheless the time I devote each day to such leisures is never commensurate to my speed of impulse buying and hence, my backlog of "things-to-read" has increased exponentially.

The reason I'm writing this down is so that I can no longer make excuses to myself and/or fool myself into thinking that I'm doing justice to my bookshelf! So here's my list of "backlog books" that I shall finish before New Year (it sure helps that I have holidays from 19th Dec!):
~The Agony & the Ecstasy by Irving Stone... am exactly halfway through this as on today!
~Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky (umm... a lil spellcheck there would help!)
~Collected Short Stories by Anton Chekhov
~Indian Fiction vol 1

Also, I must begin reading these books before I usher in the New Year:
~Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
~Ground Beneath Her Feet by Rushdie
~Feluda vol 1 by Satyajit Ray

Whoaa!!! Check ME out getting all ambitious and "organized"... it's strange to have a list for recreational activities but somehow, this is a reassuring list...unlike my 10 AM task-list on the right-corner of my Outlook window each morning... it feels warm and comforting to know what a blast I shall have in the next one month... and now that I've written my "list" down, I'm gonna quickly hit the publish key, lest I make any changes...

the vicious circle of karma (and my roundabout crash...)

The last aspect of my personality that I would consider "holy-stically" developed would be the spiritual one... I've always had a strong aversion to rites and rituals... born Hindu in a moderately modern-conservative family, there have always been people who told me to sit in the puja room, bow my head and shut my eyes for a few moments before the seemingly-catastrophic exams... I always argued that it was I who was filling up sheet after sheet of logic, math or language, not a man/woman/deity from up-above-the-sky-so-high... the answer would always be the same "it's supposed to calm you down, give you fortitude, help you breathe easy... not to make you recall the answer of question # 14 faster"... so I would take deep breaths, shut my eyes tight and just let go... somehow it always helped release some of the stress present in my panicked mind and palpitating heart!

Fast forward to 2008, working-post-a-masters-degree, living life "fast-and-furious", running faster than the seconds to transform 24hr workdays into 34 and 48hr weekends into a whole lot more... squeezing the "life" out of my bitter-sweet-orangey life and savouring every tangy moment before it oxidizes with age! In the continuous process of getting where I want, how I want to at the most convenient time to me, several people from my past are left behind, strewn carelessly across the path traveled... hurt, maybe...ignored, for sure... some realize it and detest my very callousness... others are equally (if not more) unaware that our lives' orbits were spread at random right angles, intersecting, perhaps even co-inciding for a little while and eventually distancing away at varying speeds... friendships lost across distances, soured relationships, awkward relations with cousins, acquaintances whose faces ring a vague bell... so many equations of the past come crawling back in the rare moments of loneliness, some that leave me warm and fuzzy, rounded around the edges... others that are still sharp, edgy and prick my heart, mind and even my confused conscience!

"what goes around comes around" is a concept that freaks me out and at the same time pleases me tremendously... karma is a strong theme in Hindu religion, I've always believed in the religion of "doing good" as much as possible, rather than the merely mechanical agarbatti-lighting-sanskrit-chanting school of thought... some might seek salvation in these routine "cleansing" chores of the day... for me, the circle of karma is what keeps me going... it's as logical as the flow-chart diagram or the decision tree, only a lot more subjective... what's right and what's wrong depends on a multiplicity of factors and I'm no one to judge their weightage or relative importance... nevertheless it is extremely comforting to know that the guy who smashed my poor innocent lil car from the rear at the Asoka Hotel roundabout today would suffer adequate retribution, and I sure as hell (pun intended) hope that it happens sooner rather than later and I'm in the vicinity to witness it...
@_@

the angel and the soccer team...

So those are the images that were tattooed yesterday on the ink-virgin skin of the two beloved loves of my life... one was a black and white, abstract, flowing form of an angel in take-off stance (sounds like a cross between a Boeing and a boxer, but looks phenomenal!!!) on the inside ankle (doesn't wish to flaunt it... told her it was called, "being a tease" hehhehh)... and the other was the logo of a favorite soccer team... the love of his life for a decade now... bright, vibrant, red-hot... on a flexed bicep...!

I managed to stay in the room for the entire duration of inking (2.5 hrs plus 1 hr)... couldn't see the needle, OR the flesh being pierced, so it just seemed to me as if a Thai guy with straight-black-long-waist length hair and a goatee was filling in a coloring book...

Quite an eye-opener to realized how awesome it actually feels to get it done... maybe someday in the future... when I find a pattern that I just HAVE TO HAVE on my skin, I'll act on that impulse... :)

weekend pain

The weekend is here... yayyyy... I'm waiting for the water to heat up in the shower, sipping strong steaming hot coffee, and with NOTHING to do for the next two days except watching a long-overdue film (fashion... just to feel great about NOT being a model) with my favourite people in the world, and getting two of them inked on Sunday afternoon... :P... and while they're in spasms of pain for body-beautiful, I'll slip out and save myself (and them) the panic and misery of my fainting at seeing syringes cut in and out of skin... the last time I actually SAW a syringe do that was in 8th grade, and I wanted to know my blood type (just for kicks... I'm a universal recipient by the way, talk about freeloading!)... my cousin was delegated the task of letting me know when I can turn back and check out my forearm after the whole nerve-wracking process is over... highly amused, he told me to look 5 seconds too early... syringe stuck in my forearm, cutting through my skin, standing upright perpendicular to my arm while the doctor was looking for cotton on his worktable... was devastated and when we walked out a few minutes later, the image swirled around in my mind, arm-syringe-perpendicular-piercing my skin-veins-blood-arm-syringe-piercing-slicing-cutting... it wasn't the pain so much as the image... it spun around at 10K rpm in my mind until the hospital gate was a distant blur, my cousin's voice faded into the clinical background, buzzing somewhere too far for me to decipher... and I fell...

Tattoo parlours, piercing studios, hospitals are my perpetual nightmares... my strange phobia has been with me ever since 3rd grade, when my mom was teaching me about the cardiovascular system (heart pumps blood, there are 4 ventricles, aorta, arteries, the works!) and I started hyperventilating, knees went weak, eyes went blurry...so I'm going to have quite an eventful Sunday :)

(ironic how all this freaks me out so much yet I got my eyebrow pierced in college... maybe I can justify that by saying, I never really HAD to look at the needle there since it was right above my eye!!!!)

"How To Save A Life"

Too much history behind this poem... the end of a super-long-term-perfect-relationship... betrayal across long distances... denial of a cheater's follies (by EVERYONE in the relationship except on-lookers)... wrong decisions... siding with love that deceives rather than honest, protective, open friendship... no more contact with either of the people involved (yet!)... trying so hard to reach out, and she's just shrinking in a dark corner with the "love of her life who can never do anything wrong"!!!

How To Save A Life?

There's a little bit of me
In the world today
It's dreary and blue
And gloomy-grimy-grey

Clouds of destruction
Loom threateningly over her head.
Shrugging off friendship & honesty,
From the scene we could have fled

Friendships could have remained...
Sustained & strong & still intact!
And we could have picked her up
After she fell on her face flat.

But we wanted to prevent
The agony of a future with him.
She deserved so much more...
And the chances of his obliging, were slim.

He let her go so callously,
And she wasn't even aware...
She looked up to him, stars in her eyes...
He looked down, condescending, never even there!

If there was an open manhole,
I'd push & shove him through it...
Slap him & swear & glare at him,
Manoeuver and make his giant frame fit!

I'm filled with bitter cynicism
Surely true love doesn't exist...
It's all a glassed illusion
Everything shatters- love, peace, bliss...??!!!