I can open my eyes, and see so clearly~

Friday, Aug 5th, 2011 -- You are tempted to throw all caution to the wind and risk your current security for the possibility of greater pleasure. Unfortunately, your eagerness to experience something wonderful can lead to an awkward situation when you realize that the fulfillment of your desires won't necessarily bring you long-term satisfaction. Instead of taking a chance for a fleeting moment of fun, concentrate on doing something that will last.

Yann Tiersen:
I can open my eyes
And see so clearlly,
Flowers on the curtains and
The old days to come,

Anyway it's bubbles in brain,
It's mossy under the rain,
I'm wandering in some endless fields of goo.

From the book I'm reading: ' A person may choose what he cannot see', he said as if explaining something to a very obvious to a foolish individual.... To give a thing a name, a label, a handle: to rescue it from anonymity, to pluck it out of the Place of Namelessness, in short to identify it- well, that's a way of bringing a said thing into being.

I'm having my time wasted by a Disconnector Thief who will not trust in what he can't see. How much have you seen, eh, Thieflet? Africa, have you seen it? No? Then is it truly there? And submarines? Huh? Also hailstones, baseballs, pagodas? Goldmines? Kangaroos, Mount Fujiyama, the North Pole? And the past, did it happen? And the future, will it come? Believe your own eyes and you'll get into a lot of trouble, hot water, a mess'.

(I'm adding this to my favourite monologues)

see with eyes shut.

photograph part of the Diana F+ series.

life's like that only... what to do?

You know sometimes you are just thinking about somebody. Ok, not just anybody it would have to be somehow a special somebody. You could just go on and on. You could have an imaginary conversation, in the dark reflective surface of your laptop, in the bathroom, in broad daylight with no one around, which leads to my point - then you pick up your phone and as an extension to your silliness you text them. Something totally not related, totally off-topic and absolutely 100% loony. I will refrain from giving you an example. Now, I have spent several times in different phases of my life -from the time where there were no cell phones and landlines were used to give blank calls, and then in college when lame conversation was the norm to now when everything you want to do, say or seem has got to be intelligent or somewhat double meaning. All this time I was wondering if I'm the only woman to do it. (yes, it seems so men rarely do things like this, or at least it wont be the man you are thinking about, but some other who is thinking about you)
I am, very much, aware that this such an escape route from a boring present- painstaking page layouts or hours of transcription work for example... but why? Why do we do this endlessly? In a loop again and again and again?
And this morning, in one long session of transcription work, it came to me. We just have to be in the present. I know, I know, we have heard this, seen it, attempts have been made to stuff it down our throats but we've been too busy talking to ourselves through all of this and not felt it. But this morning I did. It just felt right, every little peice of the room I sat in, was suddenly brighter, clearer and nothing outside the room was important. I did, however, at this juncture take the oppurtunity to have an imaginary conversation, with an imagined female tarot client and tell her about leaving her cell phone, forgetting her facebook, twitter, what-not and all these escape routes and doing the stuff she needed to do.Face the boring room, the dull laptop screen and then making time for that glorious sun set hour Tai Chi session on the sea side.
phew!
Life's like that. Up and down like a wave. Even the sun isn't spared. Up and down. Morning and Evening. Day and Night. Clarity and Confusion. The wave of life. Something surely stands constant though we think, the witness of these waves? perhaps the particle and the wave?
... they say light is both particle and wave...

and then I finished the first tape of my transcribing assignment

That which is and has been and will be in full detail with dates...

Bandra is where my life meets its end- that places that blurs and becomes the beginning. Not a day is spent here without bumping into somebody I knew about 6 years ago. School friends,people from college, people who wouldn't know me anymore, people who wish they didn't know me. Perhaps, this is just that time of the year, folding over, creasing into the pages I was turning 6 years ago. The last 3 weeks have been the most peculiar. Not that life is ever boring, or empty- juiceless, but this is the simplest most honest proof that life is only spirally deeper. It is the same circle moving a level lower into itself with mild increase in understanding perhaps .(or not!)

Collecting here, classic Chamki style excerpts of the Daily Babble, the stream of consciousness writing:
1. Beware. Extremely long and fragmented.
2. For best results read in bite-size portions.
3. Hello my friend Adrian Mole. we be alike!

1 June 2011.

On Moving to a new house and setting up today said the I-Ching:

The cooking pot symbolises nourishment and rejuvenation. Sooner or later, good comes to those who bring humour to others, oppurtunity comes to those who persist in their dreaming. Rejuvenation is a returning to innate desires- and a re-charging or batteries through the fulfilment of these wishes. Only when great vitality is present can a breakthrough be achieved.

2 June 2011.

Today, came the sweetest email in my mailbox since email was probably invented.(And it was from a woman!) I will cherish this as inspiration and a pat on my back for life, to trust in the things I do.
excerpt:

Dear Chamko,
You might think this message is weird but I will write it anyway...
I have known you since you were 16. The first time I met you, you were wearing a dress and had a flower in your hair. I was struck by how attractive you were but dismissed you a pretty young thing at that time.
But over the years I got to know you better.. On those bus rides we talked and you told me very personal and intimate things and I remember you said you wanted your own house someday and were collecting things to put into that house. You used to collect them under your bed. The story amused me no end.
I have a demon memory... and I just looked at some of the stuff on facebook and realised you are living your dream, of that independence that you yearned for in Bombay. That home you wanted with pretty things that you had collected, is a home you have discovered in so many different cities and countries. And, I'm really happy for you. Your sense of freedom and passion is palpable. Keep it going :)10th July 2011.

Not much was written, since the HOUSE WARMING WEEKEND was happening with Jitu and K. We spend several days warming this new house I have. Actually, warming is not something it required. Jitu had to get on the roof and I handed him buckets of water, so cool the walls. Several tarot readings, power cuts and even Osho and No-show videos later, the house began feeling like a home.

12th July 2011.
Relations. Fondness and Attachment.
Our lives have their own paths and sometimes they meet, intersect with the path of other people, institutions, groups but essentially our journey is our own. There is great joy in crossing paths, meeting friends again and sadness in leaving them but one must remember that none of this is who we are (wholly) or what life is.

13th July 2011.

Waiting till Tuesday for electrician and plumber and holding the dream of a kitchen garden. Waiting is only listening, while someone else is busy, talking.

26th June 2011.

Subject : On the lines of - Don't laugh.
But I believe I'm on the path to enlightenment.
WE ARE PARTICLES
We are as free as an atom is, as an electron is. The other day when I said this to a friend, he said even electrons have personalities - it is in their unique number of spins.
WE ARE PARTICLES growing aware of other particles - wondering what they do and how they behave.The Earth's unique rotation governs our time. Perhaps the earth is just another electron. It is where the minute meets the gigantic perhaps where the trivial becomes the fundamental. The electron and the earth. And I thought, this thought made our social life sort of purposeless, meaningless. A huge waste of time. But perhaps, just as an electron must life a lifetime in a hundredth of a milisecond of a reaction, just as the house fly does in a day, we live our lives in what we can perceive. ( this we have begun to call time?)

28th June 2011.

The smell of olive oil reminds me of the time spent in Ibiza and spanish love. In all its myopic difficulty, it was a great experience of freedom and solitude. Love blossomed with the sweetness of the melocoton and turned sour with the fruit.

30th June 2011.

Today, while working on the illustrations I played Mercedes Sosa songs that the Spanish gave me. But this one song, seemed to have a special pull, a spiral tugging me deeper, so I put it on repeat. I understood some of it on the first hearing, not all.

2-3rd June 2011.

Yesterday, whenever that was, has been 4 days in one. flight. migraine. a part of me long frozen and blocked, just melted. new ways of remembering past memories. just like everything else memories are also constantly transforming. One is remembering and forgetting details within the same memory, and something that happened a good 6 years ago in a 24 year old life is a good 1/4th of that life. The file of such a memory long sealed and closed, sat like a rock, part crystal, part love, part rock, part block of hurt. Stirred.We inhabit similar spaces, once again. It would be surprising if we are not stars which circle the same sky together and then grow apart only to co-exist, and inhabit a close space, a ceremony of a performance that stirs our hearts in unison.
We are all one.
On returning home, I realized a hurt long crystallized makes no sense anymore. I should have spoken to them after watching Blue Mug. Perhaps they don't know where to start. Neither do I. Feels strange to write their names, even say them aloud in my head. Well, if we don't know where to begin, we could begin with a hug. An embrace.
Perhaps, there is a reason for this delay in closure. A time to consider, to relish and understand finer meaning.Its far too easy to apologise on an impulse. One must nurture this feeling of openness and acknowledge that we are truly stupid and will always be.
Met another time, the beautiful soul I long cherish. Let peace replace fear within him.

4th July 2011.

Tarot reading for performance reveals love.
cards: Ace of Cups. The Hierophant - for raj. The Sun.
Ace of cups: love. That which inspires us to create and share, that very essential beginning of life.A cup full and brimming. Liquidity- that which is fluid and flexible.
The Heirophant - for Rajyashree: Rockstar. Position of influence. Knowing one's forte using it in this time of need.
The Sun: The joy of victory. An innocent joy of a baby. remember that. (may be I'll need it) All is full of love. Fullness, acheivement, beauty, accepting gifts.


5th July 2011.

Childhod conditioning "Chee chee"
GOOD GIRL - BAD GIRL.
The kind of stuff that takes years to unlearn. The fat earth isn't suddenly sitting on a tortoise. 360 degree- ness of things. Gravity, a subtle wind that surrounds us always.

6th July 2011.

Gracias a la vida. Thank you life.

10th July 2011.

On leaving Bangalore by sunset flight.
Watching shadows of clouds stretching endlessly in space. A shadow is in some aspects like water that takes the shape of its container. A shadow must fall on something. Soft white clouds and shadows stretching back into oblivion, vanishing point of time.Neither in earth ,nor in sky, in a thin membrane of an air bubble, life breathes life.
In slices of the night hours, one fights the ego in correcting old games and mistakes.
A think blue fog. As if, nothing exists. There is no distance in the heart and the body doesn't end. There are no borders, yet there is a box. You have made a box and put your name on it. You show me this box once again, but never let me open it. You keep it shut. From time to time, you pull out a cap, a pair of glasses, put back your lenses but it is yet concealed what you really feel.
I attempt to leave a bag of hope in your heart. I know that box will open and its contents you will share, someday. That bag of hope is love and in the simplicity of a rose love triumphs.

11th July 2011.

कहीं तोह यह दिल कभी मिल नहीं पाते ,
कहीं से निकल आये जन्मों के नाते ।

12th Jul 2011.

Remember Humility.

13th July 2011.

This trip to Bombay is to give shape to the work I began with Suraag. An understanding of myself, my truest desires, my values and how I confront conflict, how I stand up for myself and my beliefs and reconcile with my family in the larger sense. All through this paying attention to my artistic voice that is my truest desire in tangible form.
To solely run after any man isn't the balance of life - such severe outward movement only drains that which is within. Hence one has to move slow and find a meeting point. No chasing. The wait is far more challenging than the chase. Hang in there. Do what the moment requires. Love and respect yourself and trust that the situation, the man, the place will show up and meet you. Amen.

14th July 2011.

Spoke to Yusuf. He reminded me and this I publish for the whole of humanity:
You are a diamond in disguise. Let not immediate temporal pleasures muddle your light.
Men can be hunters fired on instincts, women can be seductress fired on instinct.
Keep working on yourself and delve deeper each day.
The saying of the old Shaman who shared it with Yusuf -
Love, is how you feel inside when you are with the other.
A million dollars!

15th July 2011.

Just like a flower opens and shuts as soon as its purpose of attracting pollen through the bees is achieved. We could as women too wilt away and let the bees that are our men running on instincts and hormones run till their seed dies out. An unconscious evolution would continue till the end of time. We are such particles with our fundamentals locked inside us as our instincts. But that isn't the sole purpose of our existence. We share our capability with the star dust that is us. (remember become aware of your possibility, your potential and limitation)

16th July 2011.

Horns induce a state of emergency. Exposure to this on large basis put us on a crazy buzz.

17th July 2011.

Everyone has a weakness. The universe found mine - You.
This wouldn't have happened if it was anybody else.
We can only think back and forth, but the universe is the thinker and the thinking - knowing all at once. Synchronising.
I wonder how much of this- I may be brave to call it - LOVE is between you and me, and how much is between me and the universe.

24th July 2011.

Astrological influence of eclipse on 1 July 2011. from a website. Interesting to observe in hindsight if these correspond to the changes happening.
Sun: Stay purposeful. Be yourself and appreciate yourself.
Moon: Use your intuition and heart to guide you toward what you want.
Saturn: Keep working hard, even when things are discouraging.
Pluto: Use your will power to let go or transform what is no longer serving you.
Uranus: Use your inventive mind and never be afraid of change or being different.

I- Ching: Consistency is important in matters of mutual attraction, for this is what separates courtship from seduction.

25th July 2011.

To which my friend Suneel says : Bring on the inconsistent seductions anytime I say. Consistency is for chocolate mousse and mashed potatoes.

xxx

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.

Just a little prayer. Oh blog!

Hello again. Perhaps, I was being overly critical or I meditated so much that I reached stages where I didn't need to talk anymore. The latter being highly unlikely, I was prevented from writing about what I felt, what I thought and what I did.
I don't really think I've ever written on this space for others as much as myself. What I've shared has been extremely beneficial only and mostly for myself. By seeing what you spew out, loud and clear one can witness oneself and hope to edit.
I know this might actually be of little use to the rest of society but it makes one person in the chaotic hippie-lands or crammed cities a little easier to deal with. That person is me.
Yes, in this way I love myself.

In the last year I left my job, the closest I had to routine and wandered in emotions of hormonal happiness, impulse and desperation in Goa and Ibiza. This year I feel a little more open about Bombay again..

Bandra, where I grew up, to return would complete a circle of sorts.
I wake up and spend the sunlit hours debating the good and bad of Bombay and Bangalore.
One offers a fresh fast moving active population, inspired and creative in their own street smart ways, entangled and pouring out of trains, while the other offers a laid back crowd, greedy autorickshawalas and a sense of comfortable confidence of living in a small town (yes, I think social life here is small townish) . I almost know everyone in Bangalore.(at least it feels like it)
The 2 people who inspire me (unknowingly) to come to Bombay again are Paro and Suraag, (also nice to visit home once in a while). As for Bangalore: Shilo, Tapas and a long list of friends similarly confused and jobless.

Perhaps it is easy to be creative and playful as a student bent over homework. The kind of lust for the newspaper and sketches when one should be preparing for the geography exam. It can be very different being your own boss and tiffinwala.

I've been excited by projects and saddened and blocked by myself too many times this year. I've been surprised many times by the sudden marriages of my friends. I've questions my choices watching the progress of others.People have called my life "the dream life" too easily and far too many times recently. Equal number of people have called me flaky, scattered and distracted. I've changed 8 telephone numbers and a part of my hair has turned to dreadlocks. I've swam naked and danced for a music video, danced on the streets, attended an ayahuasca ceremony, sold cold drinks on beaches, given massages professionally, danced in water, made my first choreography, been a non dairy products person, received bio-magnetic therapy, attended tantra workshops, cut my friend's hair, performed in 2 international dance festivals, taught English to Spaniards, screamed in foreign woods, half way illustrated a children's book, learned to speak Spanish, had a decent conversation with my ex, bonded with my family, woken up in different beds 7 days of the week (alone), had a pet pup, lived in a hut, taught Hindi to the Dutch, been shocked to silence for 2 days, been part of past life regression therapy, family constellations and somatic practices. I've noticed my pattern with men and male attention. I've grown my hair to the middle of my back. Changed my mind far too many times. I own 2 cellphones with 3 numbers of 3 different cities.

Now, I want to make informed decisions. Drink coconut water and swim everyday. Draw and dance consistently. Rent a space of my own, which I transform into a studio-temple and love myself.Amen.

this is why we dont have an equivalent of "bon appetite" or "bon profit" in hindi.

for best results: read aloud in sweet and sour sauce.
don't forget to relish and garnish.
bon appetite, bon profit

An afternoon trip
to the wholesale vegetable market
in North Delhi,
could be more adventurous
than looking down at the earth and
finding uncharted plastic islands.
On the carved wooden floor of the local bus
stand many more doers of anatomical grafitti,
than all of the sufis everborn combined.
At the red light
jumps in a man,
in police uniform,
a policeman with a walky talky
antenna raised.
He claims in perfect rhyme and urgency,
holding a cut-out of Krishna from a greeting card
pasted on a beach-ball racket
"a 3 yr old has gone missing ,
and he who finds him will be awarded fifteen thousand."
for a minute you buy into his story
as the new street theatre
but then you hear the bus conductor
talk about his diligent dementia.


At the blessed market,
seas of sweet smelling
rainsoaked
mashed and soiled vegetable spares
await your arrival.
Table fans drying onions of the colour of brinjal,
are being sold at the price of gold.
On such a day,
everybody is looking for onions.
Men lie on mounds of cauliflower leaves
tossing soggy tomatoes into the sea
of uncooked vegetable curry,
splashing sprinkles on your back.
Some claim with all their pride accumulated
that the spinach is hybrid,
joy as wide as their pan-stained smiles.
You decide to alter your menu and leave
out the saag.
Dreams and bubbles of seasonal fruit,
fresh green vegetables,
Gajjarella, sweet carrot halva
burst for ever and ever more.

You return to stitch your grandma's
old and tearing saree into
tiny bags of glee.
tiny bags of lentils
stay
soaking
and
sunbathing
and
sprouting
against the larger picture
of the highway traffic
at Mangolpuri.

feeling good?

Somebody asked me to list 20 things that make me feel good..
when I think about them, talk about them or do them.
Just as a resource. And I began.
But what is 'feeling good' to me? What is the feeling of feeling good.
Perhaps, it has many colours.
Feeling good doesn't feel alone any one of the following:
Feeling good isn't just feeling happy or feeling pleasured.
feeling desired or inspired. feeling cared for, or satisfied.
not anymore.
feeling good isn't being in a good mood. in a state of excitement,
or thrill or emergency. a hint of feeling good still exists in surviving a mess.
or solving a puzzle i battled with. but just a hint.
feeling good isn't about success, popularity or even creativity anymore.
not in the dance performance or the applause after, not even the drawing.
feeling good is not a heightened state of being anymore.
feeling good is not about winning, conquering, progressing, or succeeding despite the hazards, risks, or hardships.
a good feeling not in successfully convincing anyone, selling or marketing myself either.
a good feeling isn't when people think i'm good at what i do, or judge me as good.

a GOOD FEELING is something more constant now. in the plain moments of the day.
when nobody is even there to notice it. or appreciate it. a good feeling is subtle and constant.
i associate a good feeling with nerve impulses firing themselves to be alive. just like when you get a chill down your back. a good feeling is alive, pulsating and so very personal that love even is distant. a good feeling is so natural and so uncalled for, yet constantly present as if it is the very nature of my being. this good feeling, when i understand it in language is just two words, alive and true. this good feeling is a combination of alive and honest, true. and everything can be true. love, emotions, happiness, cities, civilization, money, psychology, family, events, and everything can also be untrue. to itself.
notice your good feelings. is it in chocolate milkshake or lemonade or with lying in the sun with eyes closed, or in reading and gaining knowledge, in a task or in meditation.
what do you associate with feeling good. how does feeling good feel, taste and smell.

recent thoughts

1. Unlearn.
Unlearn images and identities
benevolently gifted as education, as culture, as cuisine, as entertainment.
even love.
See with eyes shut. With eyes own.
No newspaper, no television and no google.
What is it that we know without any learning
How is the baby taught to breathe and cry
unlearn.

2. There are no pegs, no dots.
You are floating about aimlessly.
resting at unmarked spots.
momentary homes.
and then the womb opens and you fall out.

3. conversations are futile.
what the heart speaks, the ear cannot hear.
and that which the ears hear is the word of the art.
that which the skin feels knows no rainbows
and no deep blue sea.

just today.

Today,
I'm coming back to that part of me in the spiral that began writing this blog. But this isn't a circle, so it isn't exactly the same space. The universe is always expanding and so has my horizon of understanding, my collection of clothes for myself. Just like understanding can collect and direct you to knowledge or cause conflict by bringing together two conflicting opinions, I've battled against the seas asking why I wish to write on the sand. And today, after many hours spent in this dialogue, I suggest to myself to enjoy the grains and the waves . I'm back to this writing, because what I truly love is just writing. The pure act of scribbling, no matter what it says, where it comes from and to whom and how it goes. And yes, I admit, that I like if it goes somewhere, in letter, in words, in voice, in visuals and in movement.
Today,
was spent trying to maneuver handwritten words into an email and collecting words of poets in all shapes and sizes. And Today was hence much enjoyed, now Today can rest in peace and return when the sun does.

a dreamed world

Love. Courage. Little courage.
Little moments of courage. Little tiny moments of courage and truth.
Those we live everyday. Thats what makes love.
Not great poetry, or inspiration,
not a menagerie of muses or
paintings of crushed desires folded as flowers.

love is a kiss,
a soft cloud on lips,
a fleeting feeling so real,
so temporary
that it isn't real today.
just a rich memory.

Just as much as i wish
my words,
these words, would carry what my heart does.
you in the dark.
bottles being passed.
it isn't real today.
just a rich memory.

why live a dreamed world?

after watching Atonement.

strange but predictable

3 years ago I spent a summer in Delhi, deliberating my next move in life and roasting in the heat.
Many battles with family and fate made quick concrete roads leading to Bangalore under the pretext of Aerosmith's live concert. A tiny suitcase and air ticket later I was in his arms listening to "Dream on".
Time passed. In a few months we parted ways because my tooth brush seemed to be sprouting like Jack's beanstalk to the sky and occupying too much personal space in his bathroom. Sure..
Work was found. I danced. I drew. More friends. Dear dear friends, more partings, more love later.. frustration with job become the humm of my life. Another trip to Delhi was made.. next step deliberated. This time, I got a call from work sending me to Korea. I got onto that boat and sailed away for 6 months.
Now, I'm in Delhi again. Deliberating. My heart is in Spain.. a lover on the shores of Catalunia. I've been studying Spanish. Crying at Visa offices. Telling them the truth. This is a question of my marriage.. well, it could lead there, if you let me go. But what is a faceless Visa system? Where is the slot for love on the Visa form? Where is the space for poetry to my lover? Can I sign the dotted line in blood? Is that enough of a motive?

will this lead me to Spain now? Will it ever happen!
I've decided trouble is not worth delving into. Of course when it comes with all its strength its best to surrender and cry, but at times when you feel helpless, its best give up watch a movie or something. Gone are the days when I could dive deep into depression, swim in self pity to find an oasis of friend's help. I'm much more optimistic. Now its the universe alone that can help me. . or not.

it has no real choice

hazey jane.

How many voodoo dolls would I need to make to kill civilisation?

I'm exhausted. Just tired of all the round about ways of living we have created to call ourselves progressed. The amount of barriers to our essence, to simplicity and love frustrate me. I find myself uncontrollable hot in the stomach as soon as someone pushes me to get ahead in the metro, visa office made me cry and phone calls disorient me. I think a world without the notion of "impossible is nothing", "if we can reach the moon, we can go anywhere" would be far more satisfying.

but impossible is nothing.. but the way there is hazey.

This is an open invitation for an invitation. I want to go to Spain. If you are from Spain or know people in Spain.. here's an artist (dancer, illustrator, tarot reader, hindi- english language teacher and a good learner) who will work for you, free of charge. All I need is a letter saying you want me to come to Spain and work for you.

thats all.
Ive sent this message now, into the universe. something will bounce back.

giant thank you in sand.

Today is a giant Thank you
scribbled in the sand
of my heart's beach.
A thank you to the angels
sitting at angles
of the universe, waiting
to help those who ask for it.
Thank you for friends, for hugs,
for the new people I've met.
Thank you for the freedom to bend days
and meet departing friends before they head home.
Thank you for sudden connections and possibilities
in a big city of dust storms and unbearable heat.
Thank you for the music and dance and
metro feeder buses.
Thank you for Paro and her great friends,
her love and inspiration.
Thank you for Abhilash and his openness,
and confidence with help.
Thank you for Chris and Christine's generous
love and care, for the illegal three on a bike riding all over Goa.
Thank you for random hugging people,
conversations in the dark,
and Krishna, the Kerela massage teacher.
Thank you for all the russian massage clients,
and Chris of Ashiyana and Roger of Watsu
for the great discounts at learning and sharing.

Thank you to the Spaniyards
for spreading wings of love,
providing shade
and nurture to the young sapling
of trust in me.

Thank you Xavi,
for trusting my process
while I trust yours.
For being accepting of my love and hate.
For the light and the shadow.

Thank you family,
for being yourself and giving me a little space
to be me.

Thank you osho
for leaving so many of your words in neat recordings behind
for me to listen to.
Thank you old job,
for letting go of me and giving me a new life.

Thank you deybu,
for being around on sad days in Delhi.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

i really want to draw
upload something,
specially to go along with this
but I have no means of doing so,
with me!

today-today

Today,
was filled with long talks about
love and marriage and visa,
sleepy metro rides on seats reserved for women,
and odd-houred naps with the light on.
The tarot card said receptivity,
listen to whatever life brings
without a busy and aggressive mind to hinder
the pure receptivity.
fill, overflow and empty yourself.

reality is what dreams are made of.

Today,
was many small volcanic eruptions of emotion,
shutting down inner airports.
grey mushroom clouds were
pressure cooking my heart's desire,
garnishing it with guilt.
I think I fed it all to my sleep.

your body, my body

the body is a message from the universe.
a quiet message waiting to open up and share its fingers.
a naked voice of smile and cry.
your face is not your body.
your body is your face.

Only love.

5 years ago an astrologer predicted everything about my life.

Pretty much everything, accurately. Not things about the future but about the past. She said I had been betrayed in love and tried to kill myself.. things you couldn't say to everyone. She told me the dates when I would be influenced to do this. She suggested me to avoid all meat, non vegetatarian food and contact with men, no kind of alcohol. At that age this meant no parties, no boy friends, no friends who were men, no late night and a huge amount of tasty food out of my range. Not to mention the amount of guilt this filled my mind with. She added that everything I ate influenced my father's health. Every time I ate chicken, my father would wake up sick. She said there are different types of people, some are solar people, people who should eat satvik, vegetarian, organic food that is light and there are people who can benefit from eating rajsik or tamsik food.. food like meat, fried and tasty.
I trusted her. The state I was in, I could have either trusted noone or barely anyone, but I trusted her. She has large beady eyes and was fairly young and unmarried. I thought astrology was a bold carrier choice of a woman in delhi at her age and family background. I noticed there were days when I went weak and ate a peice of chicken tikka. I'd wake up the next morning and find my father sicker than before. It all made sense.
2 years went by. My friends ate in front of me at places that served non-vegetarian, which was non-vegetarianised by pinchful sprinkles of shredded meat and I would refrain. I wouldn't have money enough to order something by myself, so I'd starve because I couldn't share their food, wait till I got home and eat hours later.
It was good. It was therapeutic. I felt that I had a will and I could exercise it. Then many good things began to happen.. we started to share other things. We began to read tarot cards, play paper games and make art together. Vegetarinism carried on. Friendships grew, blossomed and Mahima invited me to Nepal. I was thrilled. In Nepal, one day before the new year she said to me.. Isn't it strange that you can tell people about their lives by looking at a card and you abstain from things you want and things you like because some bright-eyed lady said so? How is it that you trust the words that come to you when you look at your cards, but can't trust the truth of your own desire? It made me reconsider. I said, once again I will come to a life of living and leave behind this life of abstinence. I will risk my father's health, my final big burden of guilt and eat that juicy peice of meat for it is my hearts desire. We clicked our glasses of Tia Maria and welcomed my new life.

I was never into large amounts of meat, but that occasional chicken I enjoyed very much. Now 4 years later I've been to Korea.. consumed all sorts of seafood, octopus, raw fish, pork, even beef which I didn't like very much.. part of my Hindu soul probably doesn't appreciate the sensation of the taste itself. We haven't let food go clean from moral implications.

A few days ago I found out- just like I had found out then, 5 years ago- falsities of my life.. that this astrologer was paid to tell me all this. All the guilt that I went through,the fat pearl ring that I wore, all the abstinence that I pursued as a proof of my will was all another big lie told to me to deal with the other lies of my life.

Right now, I'm jobless. Most of my male friends are dropping one after another because they believe they "love" me and that I, in keeping them as friends am not valuing their emotions. Which is basically that I should sleep with all of them, or give them all a chance at it, even when I clearly tell them that I'm not attracted to them. I've tried to mend this pattern. Its happening for the 3rd time now and honestly, I'm giving up on male friends, on the concept of gifts of love and the like. A used to like gifts.. sending random postcards, receiving letters.. these are gifts enough. Based on the events I've witnessed I'm beginning to think gifts are ways of saying I like you, I'm giving this to you, so you like me and then I want something back. If you accept it with a smile and the thought that this is what the universe wants you to have, you are a fool who will sooner or later get hate mails from them. and as you can see here I'm not the only one saying this.

Work projects with friends have all been shelved. People are excited by the blog and the drawings and my low financial status. But nothing materialises. Either I do the work and don't get paid, or even before I can do the work people stop answering or returning calls.

At this stage, I'm back to I don't know whom to trust or what to trust. Part of me wants to enjoy life, accept pain but no part of me is able to neglect the big bold bullseye on me and repetition of the patterns.
Meanwhile, love awaits me in Spain. With no visa, not much money, and the guilt of having to take it from my father, I wonder what is possible.

a tiny voice in me says LOVE. only love is possible.

I feel different everyday.

I notice in your silent stare a question and a blame.
For surely, if i feel truly everyday my changing feelings,
you can call me flaky and fickle.
I notice in my changing feeling a quivering shy need to be true.
And this truth is not in any alignment with any idea, a mental vision of what should be, what must be.. or a judgement.
Not an idea of truth, but the feeling itself, a physical feeling of knowing, of not knowing so much as much as being. May be its as simple as feeling comfortable, having no doubt, or a just an impulse.
And right now, for some given reason that changes everyday.
Just as every breath leaves us and another breath draws in a different breeze, a different scent, we are constantly moving.
To believe I feel the same way everyday about the same people everyday is probably close to living small lies. Why don't we refresh our love everyday? We don't need an old memory to justify why and how we feel for a person. To figure, to calculate whether they deserve our trust or love or company. Why don't we live a string of moments reacting instantly, living ourselves like we want to be, in every little slice of today.
Noticing things around us, knowing and accepting them, living them wholly.
Surely there is something innate about him or her that every changing feeling will also find constant. May be just saying I love you (today) is enough.
We pull the reins of our free feeling horses
to control and predict our feelings every moment, to live as the same person we were yesterday.
To maintain one soul through the many years we live, to keep one identity perhaps.

what is this worth?

**

I think I meet great people, even intelligent and talented. The problem is that they meet me

in the heart of the seed.

I want to say a lot of things that may not sound best when written as they are. But this is what my mind wants said so I shall say them . I wonder how important attraction is in our interactions with people. Why it shapes our love and why hormones play such an important role. Why is it that somebody I think extremely precious and close I am not attracted to, as if there is a purity of the love I have for them , like a sibling I want to share all my time and energy but may not share a bed. And those who I very willingly undress for are not the best of people, but their simplicity and smallest effort are enough to convince me.
It is as if someone who is closer to goodness I expect more of, and someone who is closer to a world of immediate gratification can make the slightest effort towards good and be appreciated by me.
Who am I ? some sort of judge or queen?
Why is it important for me to be possessed by you and you alone and why is it that we cannot be individuals who learn from each other each day. If you give me, my free will, without pressure there is no limit to our love and more importantly our friendship. I hope you still think of friendship as a word of value. Why is it not enough that we learn our lessons from each other?
I see love and lovemaking are equally important. I see that attraction is a sign that assures us, or the lack of it is a sign that says something is not as it seems. What the mind doesn't know the body knows. Then why can't we just hold hands and watch sunsets for a while, not expecting a postcard of lovers at the horizon, romanticizing ourselves. Wouldn't we be more true to ourselves and the moment if we let it tell us who we are than defining it ourselves?
I know this is of little consequence when compared to the worlds problems, but this is at the heart of many things. This problem of playing roles in peoples lives, defining how they should function or how we should function in theirs, creates a distance and takes away from the honesty we are capable of.
why can't we speak again and grow old just as we are?
a step ahead of each other, never together.

the learning matrix called life

You can be a fighter. I can be a dancer.

you can be a writer. I can be a singer.

you can be a poet and I can be a cook.

you can be a gamer and i can be a sports star.

we're here to learn our lessons and we'll learn them anyway. together or away.

What you learn as a CEO might be the same as the security guard.

and thats all that matters - the learning.

in the process, you may create beauty, you may rebel against injustice, you may fill the world with love, feed people or save lives...sometimes I wonder what is the right thing to do. Does filling the world with beauty and saying something about something else qualify as a job? Yes, it may be inspiration, yes it may make life more interesting for people, make us a better civilisation, but does it really matter if I'm a dancer and you are a poet fighter writer cook?

sometimes, i think I rather own roadside cafe, or restaurant and feed people till midnight. where i read tarot and talk to people about things they have given up on.anyhoo, a dancer i am now... so my learning lies here.