Metamorphosis

I worry. No one knows what is happening to me.
No one has noticed I am changing.
I read kafka's metamorphosis once. Wrote a paper on it too.
Something along those lines, but my worry is less existential and symbolic.
It's mundane.

Am just worried about things like my hair colour.
I wonder if anyone noticed that its different.

My little friend noticed a mole in my eye the other day.
I was glad. It's new.

I wonder if I should point out
that I am wearing a new eye shadow or perfume.

I worry people will forget that i love to be cuddled to sleep.
More worried that I am too.

I have already forgotten sitting on laps, breakfasts, being called silly names.

I don't think anyone has taken a picture of me in a long time.
Not even on new mobilephones.

I am being lost.
Fading into the background.
Obliterated by dancing figures in the profit sheets,
the din of local train, by alcohol numbness and cigarette haze.

Focus now. Zoom in please.
I am here. Hold me. Don't let me go. In the corner of your eye. Don't blink.
Just behind your back. Turn Around.

A little to your side.
Here I am ... a gaze beyond your deaf stare and a sweet nothing whisper beyond your blank ear.

Part of all the bad things you don't want. Scandals. Guilt. Mistake. Moneylessness. Homelessness.

Part of all the good on your backburner. Your welling love. Your poetry. Your madness. Your passion.

I am worried.
You are losing yourself.
I see from the corner of the eye. The sofa between us growing.

On laziness and sloth

I have not been writing. I don’t know why. But I have resolved to get the better of myself. It’s the old game again. No. :-) Not meeting meeting.  That one I play at work. It’s the other one. It’s Rachanah v/s Rachanah. Well, no one can get the better of me but myself. Bet you are thinking you can. Well of course you can, if ‘I’ let you. :-)

There are so many things I want to write about. Every night between that magical state of half waking and half sleep … when I am happily relinquishing the day, smiling at small jokes, reliving small moments of tenderness, making little notes for the next day, forgiving anger in me and others, and generally cheerleading myself saying ‘you did good girl’ … this is the time when I get most of my blog thoughts. But I have been lazy. I think to myself ‘Man this one is so good … I will never forget this.’ ‘Or this one is so close to my heart, I am bound to get it right.’ I wake up in the morning. I remember I had a great thought but damn if I could remember what it is.

Now I should hardly be uploading this. But I better. As a lesson to myself. At least that will spur me on to ‘write’ something real the next time. Sorry for cheating you though.  If its any consolation, this is real too.

A woman's random thoughts

If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it will always be yours. If it doesn't come back, it was never yours to begin with.
But,if it just sits in your living room, messes up your stuff, eats your food, uses your telephone, takes your money, and doesn't appear to realize that you had set it free....... You either married it or gave birth to it.

Insanity is my only means of relaxation,

A friend of mine confused her Valium with her birth control pills. She had 14 kids, but she doesn't really care.

Reason to smile: Every 7 minutes of every day, someone in an aerobics class pulls a hamstring.

One of life's mysteries is how a 2 pound box of candy can make a woman gain 5lbs.

My mind not only wanders, it sometime leaves completely.

The best way to forget all your troubles is to wear tight shoes.

The nice part about living in a small town is that when you don't know what you're doing, someone else does.

The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight because by then your body and your fat are really good friends.

Sometimes I think I understand everything, then . . . . .I regain sobriety..

I gave up jogging for my health when my thighs kept rubbing together and setting my pantyhose on fire.

Amazing! You hang something in your closet for a while and it shrinks two sizes!

Skinny people irritate me! Especially when they say things like-"You know, sometimes I just forget to eat." Now, I've forgotten my address, my mother's maiden name, and my keys. But I've never forgotten to eat. You have to be a special kind of stupid to forget to eat.

The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing and then they marry him.

I read this article that said the typical symptoms of stress are:eating too much, impulse buying, and driving too fast. Are they kidding? That is my idea of a perfect day!

If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties?
How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a noose around your neck?

Did Krishna ever call Radha a 'psycho'?

Or Meera for that matter. Well, he should have. He would have been correct in doing so.


Suzanne

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she's half crazy
But that's why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.

- Leonard Cohen



I Am Mad

I am mad with love
And no one understands my plight.
Only the wounded
Understand the agonies of the wounded,
When the fire rages in the heart.
Only the jeweller knows the value of the jewel,
Not the one who lets it go.
In pain I wander from door to door,
But could not find a doctor.
Says Mira: Harken, my Master,
Mira's pain will subside
When Shyam comes as the doctor.

- Mirabai



I would die for you. I would die for you. I've been dying just to feel you by my side. To know that you're mine
See your face every place that I walk in. Hear your voice every time I am talking. You will believe in me. And I will never be ignored.
I would burn for you. Feel pain for you. I would twist the knife and bleed my aching heart. And tear it apart
I would lie for you. Beg and steal for you. I would crawl on hands and knees until you to see. You're just like me.
Violate all the love that I'm missing. Throw away all the pain that I'm living. You would believe in me. And I could never be ignored.
- Crush, Romeo and Juliet



Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”
Neil Gaiman (English born American Novelist, Journalist, Screenwriter, Children's author and Comics writer of American Gods, amongst many others, b.1960)

WITH THAT MOON LANGUAGE



Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise
someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a
full moon in each eye that is
always saying,

with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in
this world is
dying to
hear?
Hafiz



A man was wandering around in a field, thinking about how good his wife had been to him and how fortunate he was to have her.

He asked God, "Why did you make her so kind-hearted?"
The Lord responded, "So you could love her, my son."
"Why did you make her so good-looking?"
"So you could love her, my son."
"Why did you make her such a good cook?"
"So you could love her, my son."

The man thought about this. Then he said, "I don't mean to seem ungrateful or anything, but ... why did you make her so stupid?"

"So she could love you, my son."



“You know that when I hate you, it is because I love you to a point of passion that unhinges my soul.”
Julie de Lespinasse


“Love me when I least deserve it, because that's when I really need it.”
Swedish proverb



Love and madness not that different?


To be madly in love might be exactly that—madness. The term “lovesick” is surprisingly accurate, claims a cover story in this month’s National Geographic magazine, citing research published over the last several years.

People experiencing romantic love have a chemical profile in their brains similar to that of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, noted the author, psychologist Lauren Slater.

Research has begun to illuminate where love lies in the brain and the particulars of its chemical components. Key points covered in the article are as follows:
• Love lights up areas of the brain linked to reward and pleasure, the ventral tegmental area and the caudate nucleus. It releases chemical messengers such as dopamine that, in the right proportions, provoke intense energy, focused attention, recklessness and exhilaration.
• Doing novel things together triggers dopamine in the brain, stimulating feelings of attraction. So first encounters that involve a nerve-wracking activity, like riding a roller coaster, are more likely to lead people to pursue a relationship.
• Love also could be as simple as following our noses. Swiss researchers asked women to choose which T-shirts worn by a variety of men smelled the best. They found women preferred the scent of a shirt worn by a man whose genes were most different from their own—genes possibly linked to an immune system that has something theirs does not. In this way a woman may boost her chance of having healthy offspring.
• Love and obsessive-compulsive disorder could have a similar chemical profile: low levels of the brain chemical serotonin. Thus, love and mental illness may be hard to tell apart.
• For those wishing to escape the grip of runaway passion, there is hope: Prozac, the medication that increases the amount of the serotonin available at the junctures between brain cells. Prozac jeopardizes one’s ability to fall in love, and stay in love, by dulling the keen edge of love and its associated libido.
• Studies around the world show that passion usually ends. Biologically speaking, the reason romantic love fades may be found in the way our brains respond to the surge and pulse of dopamine. Perhaps the brain adapts to the excessive amounts, and the neurons become desensitized.
• Anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., suggests relationships often break up after about four years because that’s how long it takes to raise a child through infancy. Fisher is the author of Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, a 2004 book.
• Oxytocin, a chemical thought to be plentiful in long-term couples with warm, comfortable relationships, is a hormone that promotes feelings of connection and bonding. It is released when we hug our children or our long-term spouses or when a mother nurses her infant. In long-term relationships that never get off the ground, chances are the couple has not found a way to stimulate or sustain oxytocin production.
Fisher has also proposed that human romantic love evolved out of an “attraction system” shared by mammals and birds.

“Mammals and birds express mate preferences and make mate choices,” Fisher and two colleagues wrote in the Oct. 27 issue of the Journal of Comparative Neurology. Data suggest this attraction system is linked to reward-processing brain areas that use dopamine, as in humans, they added.

“We propose that this attraction mechanism evolved to enable individuals to focus their mating energy on specific others, thereby conserving energy and facilitating mate choice.”



Love and Madness

A long time ago, before the world was created and humans set foot on it for
the first time, virtues and vices floated around and were bored, not
knowing what to do. One day, all the vices and virtues were gathered
together and were more bored than ever.
Suddenly, Ingenious came up with an idea: "Let's play hide and seek!"
All of them liked the idea and immediately Madness shouted: "I want to
count, I want to count!" And since nobody was crazy enough to want to seek
Madness, all the others agreed. Madness leaned against a tree and started to
count: "One, two, three..."
As Madness counted, the vices and virtues went hiding. Tenderness hung
itself on the horn of the moon, Treason hid in a pile of garbage. Fondness
curled up between the clouds and Passion went to the centre of the earth.
Lie said that it would hide under a stone, but hid at the bottom of the
lake, whilst Avarice entered a sack that he ended up breaking.
And Madness continued to count: "... seventy nine, eighty, eighty
one..."
By this time, all the vices and virtues were already hidden - except
Love. For undecided as Love is, he could not decide where to hide. And this
should not surprise us, because we all know how difficult it is to hide
Love.
Madness: "...ninety five, ninety six, ninety seven..." Just when Madness
got to one hundred, Love jumped into a rose bush where he hid. And Madness
turned around and shouted: "I'm coming, I'm coming!"
As Madness turned around, Laziness was the first to be found, because
Laziness had no energy to hide.
Then he spotted Tenderness in the horn of the moon, Lie at the bottom of
the lake and Passion at the centre of the earth.
One by one, Madness found them all - except Love. Madness was getting
desperate, unable to find Love.
Envious of Love, Envy whispered to Madness:
"You only need to find Love, and Love is hiding in the rose bush."
Madness grabbed a wooden pitch fork and stabbed wildly at the rose bush.
Madness stabbed and stabbed until a heartbreaking cry made him stop.
Love appeared from the rose bush, covering his face with his hands.
Between his fingers ran two trickles of blood from his eyes.
Madness, so anxious to find Love, had stabbed out Love's eyes with a
pitchfork. "What have I done! What have I done!" Madness shouted.
"I have left you blind! How can I repair it?"
And Love answered: "You cannot repair my eyes.
But if you want to do something for me, you can be my guide."
And so it came about that from that day on, Love is blind and is always
accompanied by Madness


:-)

You call my love madness.
And look at it with disgust and doubt.

It's the madness I picked up
after you gave it up for lost.

All the madness you don't miss.
Don't enjoy.
The madness I treasure
is the one you forgot.

Epitaph for a Jar of Honey

There was a man living a life
content and ordinary.
One day to his surprise
he received a jar full of magic honey.

A label on it simply said,
‘You are blessed with magic today.
To keep it sweet and unending
Just send some honey regularly its way’.

Now he was an ordinary man.
He did not believe in luck.
And like any ordinary person would, he regarded the gift
with complete mistrust.

At first taste, he loved it.
He dug in for some more.
The yielding jar joyously poured
Honey from its store.

The man enjoyed the honey to the bottom of his heart
but soon yielded to misgivings and serious doubt.

"How could I be so lucky?
The honey must be drugged.
It will make me behave like a monkey
and look like a lovestruck schmuck.
Why is it pouring out so willingly.
It must be a ruse.
So much honey
is surely more than I deserve."

The honey jar was sad,
but didn’t know what to say.
It hurt to know that he thought of its giving
in such a belittling way.

So the jar did the only thing it could
to calm the man.
And stopped the honey from flowing
Faster than he could understand.

The sweetness getting lesser did not seem to help.
The man just went out of control and he yelled and yelled.
"Take off, get lost, I don’t want you honey
you won’t get my words, my heart or my money."

The honey jar was puzzled.
And worried for its life.
All it needed to keep going,
was a little honey to survive.

But the man did want the honey you see.
He really did not want to give the jar up.
He wanted to keep yielding its sweetness
Without the honey giving it involved.

Now every time the jar poured,
The flow stemmed and dried.
With no honey coming its way
The sweetness slowly died.

The man he got sadder,
But did not show what he felt.
Rigid to the end,
No honey he did send.

If you don’t understand my words, You will never understand my silences.

What should we talk about?

What makes for an interesting conversation? Captivating, even.

Someone told me the other day that she likes my blog.

She looks forward to my posts and has even noticed that they have been coming at longer intervals.
(Guilty as charged Maria aunty! And thanks for pointing it out.)

But I thought my blog was mundane.

About everyday things.

Small things that have happened to me or people around me.

Little things that should be interesting only to me, right?

Little things that make up a day. My day?

Just a thought. Just a glimmer. Just news. A small new dream. A hare brained plan of escape that Monday morning will drag you back from. Or that you will discard the next hour. A joke someone told. Or that you made up, like my Jack and Jill one.

Is that mundane?

And if it is, is the mundane ridiculous?

And even if it is ridiculous, so what?

What should one do?

Stay silent? Hide the mundane? Wait for a momentous happening?

And when that does happen, will you remember to talk?

Will you remember how to share? Will you even feel like doing it?

When I am lost

In the pitter patter of the rainfall

In the ‘insane' cuckoo’s call

In the gulmohar carpeted on the street outside

In the gay, twinkling Diwali lights

In the bright orange on my wall

In my doggie's punctual 4 a.m. call

In the boat at Allepey lazying downstream

In the myriad colours of the Tiomann sea

In stupid giggles echoing around

In Leonard Cohen’s growl

In every swig of Glenmorangie

These are the places you will find me

- November 9, 2004