with eyes closed

With eyes closed
look inside your body.
Run along the coiling veins and muscles
like the roots of an ancient tree
twisting and reaching.
Sense the weight of our skin
thick and thin, a dense coat of rubber.
Shifting organs, bag of fluids
tossing like a ship in a storm
full of life
or like machines pumping blood.
Hear death in our joints
a heavy bag of bones
and a house of cards.

Nothing is straight about us.
Or square.
Not much is close to comfortable even.

Yet we believe in an expectation
that happiness is normal,
straight is who we are
and life is organized.

with eyes closed,
look inside the body.

things I noticed while doing Suraag's somatic meditation practise.

Chamking Express

At times when I feel most uncontrollably moved and strangely uncomfortable yet unable to locate the source of the uncomfort.. I find myself missing something. As if a part of myself. If I must be clear, it usually occurs while watching a film. (Sim's school work.)

When I hear a foreign language, feel the displaced emotions of those in the film and see places that connect to my past. An uncontrollable urge takes over, the urge to be at all places at all times. Or to be at more places some times.(May be this is what the internet satisfies for so many of us) It seems so much of a possibility, so physically possible, but i'm not there yet, and there is its accompanying frustration lingering in the background.
A kind of frustration that you wont notice and the kind that can't be compared to what we call frustration the real life, in the everyday, nothing like waiting for public transport in the heat or losing a job. This frustration is hidden somewhere, not in the muscles, not in the brain, not in the organs even , if you have ventured in time to feel them, but somewhere hazier in the nervous system.
Watching Chunking Express was like seeing one part of me in a film. Well, perhaps it is something about the House of the Cult or it's inhabitants that brings forth my Inner Amelie Poulain and Inner Faye. I found myself folding clothes, sweeping, moping, washing dishes, arranging beds, cooking, (which I would do anywhere I lived) getting hair out of bathroom floors, buying a men's shirt for the first time in my life and managing to keep one of the few surprises I've kept in my life, handling stinky ash trays, suggesting non-smoking activities, advising more water than tea as staple drink, replacing supplies (very rarely though because there wasn't much of a need) falling sick and not being cared for, so much so that I decided to move to my family. Well, there are and must have been more reasons for the move but this was the last straw and I'm happy it was. Farewell Arches, Crazy Landlady and Mrs Marina who owns a beauty parlour couple of buildings away. Farewell home delivering Coconut Water Boy who got yelled at by Crazy Landlady who thought peeping into tenets houses is ensuring their safety. Goodbye never-ever seen Mughal Garden on rooftop, a strange park that is afraid cows will raid the premises and library.

Chamko Rani and the Travelling Studio: We have moved!

As you may all very well know, Chamko Rani has been travelling in between the lines of the universe along with The Travelling Studio. At times The Travelling Studio is a pen and book, an ink pot, dip pen and sheets of paper or at fortunate times, a scanner, editing software on a functional laptop, a camera and the whole army of watercolours and brushes. An extremely important member of The Travelling Studio is an old leather make-up kit which I believe/intuit belonged to a British stage actor who lived in Bandra.

(inspiration yantras : asymmetrically repetitive floral patterns with names of people who send inspiration to the Chamko Rani Travelling Studio.) On ending his career and finding no successors along with the crunch of space in Bombay this actor must have decided to give it away in recycling... where you find, entry stage left... Chamko Rani promptly making a purchase. The make-up kit was transformed into a stationery kit. A founder of the House of the Cult, Mr. Tee Ru unknowingly and perhaps unwillingly

and in fact unconsciously donated another inseparable element to The Travelling Studio. Which is the No. 1 Galvanized Trunk. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictorial documentation to offer on this marvelous subject, because both these inseparable elements rest in the House of the Cult. We at Chamko Rani Art Periphery (as opposed to art centre) hope that they will find their way to their rightful place, aka The Travelling Studio in the very near future.

Hence, apart from the above mentioned elements of the past, following our Documentation Policy:

One,
1. has to document every trivial detail of one's life inorder to make it a collection of collectibles.
2. and then, by the sheer number of collectibles collected, would One have achieved commendable credit.

I would like to use this space to document the recent states of Chamko Rani and The Travelling Studio.

(the studio at the House of the Cult, Blr.)(current studio state at Dilli. west facing window, cooler, extended table space.Laptop, scanner, speakers and sister not in picture.)

PS: Chamko Rani has decided to move The Travelling Studio from Bangalore and it now rests in the heart of the country- Dilli.