Acrid Inspiration

Kari And Ruth

2010-08-17T08:09:00.000-07:00

When I'm with you, it feels so wrong, it feels so right
When I'm with you, I feel what you say, I say nothing at all
When I'm with you, I want to remember, I want to forget
When I'm with you, I want to surrender myself, I want to be free
When I'm with you, I reveal myself, I hide their true lies
When I'm with you, you understand, they interpret
When I'm with you, everything's clear, reality is blurred
When I'm with you, I rise in love, I fall from grace.

Images In My Mind

2010-07-05T08:34:00.000-07:00

A magician conjuring up a bird from a handkerchief and then, the bird flying off into the air...like our thoughts...

Me and Shreya in a box labeled "Unbreakable"...like our friendship...

Of Cab Drivers

2010-05-06T03:39:00.000-07:00

You know how, in movies and music videos, cab drivers are always friendly? Well, that’s what’s on my mind right now. In the video of Dido’s song ‘Let’s do the things we normally do’ the cab driver in question is a woman (ka-ching!) and not just any woman but Shahana Goswami (once again, ka-ching!). She happens to be a witness to the lives of all her passengers. When one of them gets a call confirming a job that he had applied for, Miss Goswami joins him in a little jig of joy on the beach. In another instance of cab-driver-friendliness she leads an old woman into a coffee shop whose trail is littered with memories.

In the movie ‘Bong Connection’ Parambrata Chatterjee – the latest Sector V employee to be shipped off to ‘Aamerika’ – befriends a Bangladeshi cab driver who, despite being an illegal immigrant, gets to sleep with a bevy of gorgeous women. His story is supposed to be heart-breaking…He’s always on the run from the cops and all he really wants to do is earn a living ‘honestly’ so that he can go back to Bangladesh and see his daughter again.

But in real life cab drivers aren’t anything like that. They never tell you that life is a loom. They only play stupid bilingual Punjabi-English rap numbers when you’re desperately unhappy, dying to get home and take a hot shower and craving for some time to be alone with your thoughts on the way. It just breaks my heart.

Happy Ending

2010-03-24T10:35:00.000-07:00

“Don’t tell me of love everlasting and other sad dreams,
I don’t want to weep.
Just tell me of passionate strangers who rescue each other from a lifetime of cares.” - Joan Baez

They met like any two strangers. She decided to close her eyes on the world that she used to live in. They built an alternate reality together. She found reasons to smile about. It wasn’t love. It was the satisfaction you feel in knowing that someone will be there to bear witness to your life, laugh at your jokes, make you dream.
Then he moved away. He lives alone in a forest now. He misses her. She lives in a world where, everyday, someone wants to serve her oblivion on a sugar cube. She misses him. She knows that life is beautiful – as beautiful as teardrops on a pillow in the light of the moon. She still laughs. Lately she’s been restless. She’s been muffling the screams that almost escape her lips when she lets her guard down.
A month more must they keep the matchstick alight. A month more. And then they can bathe together under a waterfall as if they’re free. Then can she be who he wants her to be again.
Oh, Time! Listen to the silence. Let not the west wind rise yet.

Of 'Iris'

2010-03-19T11:38:00.000-07:00

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to forget yourself? To forget what you do? Forget who your friends are? Forget what a spoon is? That’s what Iris Murdoch dealt with in her struggle against Alzheimer's disease and Judy Dench brought it to life beautifully – so beautifully that it hurt to watch it. The scene that particularly touched me was where a postman came to deliver letters and Iris had forgotten what it was that this man who brought the letters was called. When John Bayley (played by Jim Broadbent) reminded her that he was called a postman, she followed him around listlessly saying, “It’s only the postman. It’s only the postman”.
After her friend Janet’s funeral, while she and John were driving back home, she got restless and panicky and threw herself out of their car. John immediately got off to look for her and ended up falling as well. While rolling about in the dirt, he bumped into a heap on the ground which turned out to be Iris. Iris then laboriously said, “I...love…you”.It made me laugh.It made me cry.And that’s what makes a scene truly powerful.
Iris wasn’t your conventional novelist-and-philosopher. She was openly bisexual. She believed in free love. She was fiercely independent. She didn’t care what people said. In one particular scene, John woke up in the middle of the night and asked iris who she was with then. He claimed to hate her. Iris just touched him lightly on his upper arm and he calmed down.
John always remained in awe of Iris (like the rest of the world) , even when she died a peaceful death with him at her side.

If you're asking me for help-

2010-03-06T08:09:00.000-08:00

It's hard for me to save you when I can't even save me from myself.
I'm still pretending to know the answers to the questions that people ask.
Well, I'm only deceiving the flowers in the breeze.
I'm nobody's true north,
nobody's reason to change,
nobody's season to change.
I'm only the blind man's blackness,
the deaf man's silence,
the sick man's cancer.
And one day when I don't roll anymore
I'll reach that place no one knows how to find on their own
and I'll know how I gave forever to the ones I touched and kept.

POEM TO AN ALMOST BOYFRIEND

2010-02-15T18:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was everything it promised to be-

I saw you again accidentally.

You called out to me with that voice I once knew

And it brought back memories hidden from view,

From the farthest spaces of my mind-

All the thoughts I’d left behind.

I thought you’d always be there to catch me when I fall,

You’d always be there to answer my call

But when I wept for you that night in the dark

And I realized all of it was falling apart,

You closed yourself up like you always do

And I knew for sure I’d lost you.

You never touched me, I don’t know if you wanted to

But as to what it is you wanted, I hadn’t a clue.

You gave me so many subtle signs

But the truth is you failed to define

What you wanted me to be for you.

You weren’t perfect but I can’t blame you

I was too late; we both know it’s true.

You screamed out when I hurt you, but I turned a deaf ear

Now all that is past, it’s been about a year.

I still think of you suddenly in the middle of a crowd

And back to haunt me come all my doubts.

But I steady myself; I’m not as weak as they say

We’ll always have our memories; no one can take them away.

If we meet again, say, ten years from now

(I don’t know where that might happen or how)

I promise you this; once again we’ll find ourselves-

The way we used to be-on memory aisle’s dusty shelves.

We’ll make those moments special and they’ll get me through

The rest of my life without regretting my encounters with you.

P.S. You punctuate me!

HUNGER

2010-02-08T20:08:00.000-08:00

(Inspired by the movie 'Blood Diamond' and the Live 8 concerts before the G8 summit)

After a hard day's work at the diamond fields,

they come home and this time they won't yield

to their mother's lame excuses,her borrowed time

"We want food!",in unison their voices chime

"We don't want hot water with shards of wood.

We want something to chew upon,mother,we want real food.

You can't tranquilize us anymore promising food when we wake,

The hustlers down in the fields have taught us,it's all fake.

They've taught us-if we want our bread,we have to induce fear

into the minds of those who claim they love us and they care.

So here we are,back with the Master's gun

Let us know when your cooking is done.

To our hearts' content,we'll have our fill

and then we'll go back down the hill

to the river where our sweat and blood flows,

where cruelty speaks and anything goes.

Your fairytales never taught us how the real world works

Only the hustlers' ambition could do that,for in our nightmare lurks

the mad cracking of the Master's leather whip

and if you ever wondered,that's why we scream in our sleep..."

If asked to give an acceptance speech

2010-01-16T06:54:00.000-08:00

Inspired by a sequence in the movie 'Capote'

Awards do not make life worthwhile but I’d like to live a few years more to see how people react to my receiving this one. Crazy is each of us, amplified. I’ve been near my highest truth for as long as I can remember, only I haven’t known what that means. I would like to thank everyone who has handled my Veronica-isms over the years. I wouldn’t have, so the fact that you did means a lot to me. This is my chance to be heard and I’d like to say-don’t believe the truth and make the world a simpler place. Goodnight.

Of 'The Catcher In The Rye'(ignoring the digressions,of course)

2010-01-04T18:34:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading ‘The Catcher In The Rye’ by J.D.Salinger. I don’t see how it could have made anyone want to kill anyone else. Supposedly Lennon was assassinated by someone who read it and wanted to preserve Lennon’s innocence. I can’t, for the life of me, remember the name of the movie I saw that in. All I know is Philip Seymour Hoffman played the killer. He was fantastic in ‘Capote’ too. I really wanna call old Phil up and have a conversation with him. Somehow I’ve been trying hard to understand the inside workings of psychopaths’ minds since last February. I guess it’s just my way of trying to figure out what I have in common with them. They’re special. I wish I was too. I wanna read the lyrics of ‘Creep’ by Radiohead. It all makes sense now.

I can’t really identify with Holden Caulfield too much. I mean, I get the fact that he finds almost everything boring. But other than that, there’s not too much in common between us. I wouldn’t want to have a conversation with him. He wouldn’t wanna have one with me either, I’ll bet. Hell, he doesn’t even exist! But it’s nice to be naïve once in a while and think about non-existent stuff. Non-existent people too. Sugata Da, I miss you. Did you know that? I bet you think I’m lying. I wish I could have caught you when you jumped off the edge. I wish I could’ve been the catcher in the rye. I wish I’d known how to save a life. Those Monday night conversations keep coming back to me. And your five-word suicide note. It was so you. It’s been 13 months. I’m still angry. There may be just one good thing that came about because of your not taking me along-I got to read ‘The Catcher In The Rye’. It made me realize stuff. I don’t wanna say what. It’ll depress you. Anyway, it’s been nice talking to you after so long… One last question: Were you the one who made my head spin in bed last night?

New Neighbours

2009-12-22T07:34:00.000-08:00

Today a new family moved in next door.So here's a list of what's out and what's in at my place now because of my new neighbours:

OUT

1.Showering with the bathroom window open.

2.Listening to Limp Bizkit's expletive-laden song "Hotdog Flavoured Water" at noon.

3.Saying "No one lives next door" as an excuse to my friends' allegations of me not taking enough of an interest in getting to know my neighbours.

4.Making loud orgasmic noises while having sinfully delicious chocolate mousse for dessert.

1.The pitter-patter of little feet next door and also a hell lot of juvenile gibberish,I suspect(not to mention the overwhelming fear of being woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of the baby crying its lungs out).

2.The irritating prospect of my nymphomaniacal friends asking me to rate the hotness of the alpha male figure next door on a scale of 1 to 10,1 being 'sad middle-aged sleazeball looking to get with a sixteen year old' and 10 being 'hot enough to be way out of the average girl-next-door's league'.

3.The even-more-irritating prospect of the alpha male's wife coming in every second day to borrow sugar or detergent or whatever else it is that women seem to run out of at crucial moments.

4.Waking up to the sound of noses being blown(instead of birds singing)on chilly winter mornings.

After writing out this comprehensive list,only one question plagues me-Am I becoming a logical negativist??

Alternate East Side Story

2009-12-19T20:38:00.001-08:00

Every Sunday for the past two years I have been travelling in a certain bus at exactly 9 o'clock in the morning and every Sunday I have been noticing a certain woman on that bus.She isn't very beautiful.She isn't tall.She doesn't have an hourglass figure.She doesn't wear designer clothing.She doesn't carry an expensive handbag.She doesn't put on any make-up.But I never fail to notice her.She's a middle class woman in her early thirties,dressed modestly,who always has the exact fare ready for the conductor.There's something about her that makes her seem sincere.

Last week,I finally struck up a conversation with her to satisfy my peculiar curiosity.I asked her where she goes every Sunday.She told me that she takes the same bus to the same place every single day of the week but I only see her on Sundays because I happen to take that route only on Sundays.She goes to a beauty parlour where she works.

In every conversation,there's a talker and a listener.In most of mine,I've been the talker.But last Sunday,I became the listener(not because I had to,but because I wanted to).This woman,who had fascinated me since the very first day I laid eyes on her,told me the story of her life.She had been orphaned at a young age(she couldn't remember how old she had been) and had grown up in many foster homes.As soon as she turned eighteen,she started working at this beauty parlour that she went to everyday.She had learnt everything-from how to cut hair to how to give pedicures-at that parlour.Steadily she had saved up money and made a life for herself.She didn't have any living relatives.She had very few friends.She hadn't met the right guy yet.But she was happy with her life.If she died tomorrow,she would have no regrets.

I don't know her name.I will never even ask her that.Only her story is important to me.You,dear reader,may have seen it all before on TV or read it in a book,but I'm proud to say that I met such an independent woman in real life.She is the inspiration for the person I strive to be.I know she will never read this and she probably has no idea that I've been noticing her for so long.But I guess that's the way I want things to be.

Escaping The Institution

2009-12-15T20:58:00.000-08:00

I want to walk away,

Away to a place where all the colours are kept...

To a place where everything is red,

where I have the courage to press down on the blade

to remind myself that I'm alive and people care...

To a place where everything is blue

and everything that I do reminds me of you

and your significant other...

To a place where everything is green,

where people still envy me...

To a place where everything is grey,

where sanity is virtual

and there's no need to fit in.

Untitleable Musings

2009-12-10T21:03:00.000-08:00

Today is a weird day.A friend kept talking about how,at this time of the year,you can't find melons anywhere and I kept thinking of how delicious a slice of lemon pie would be right then!Rhetorical question:Can you develop dyslexia at the age of eighteen from reading too many boring,crappy theories about mass communication?Plus I'm going through this Lenny Kravitz gaga phase but "Are you gonna go my way?" doesn't seeem to garner any affirmatives from anybody...Doesn't anyone else see what I see in this frizzy-haired,woolili-loving freak?The randomness of my thought process is scaring me now as I engage in a discourse with myself on whether joining Atheist Nexus recently seems like a skeptic's misguided attempt to convince herself that she isn't envious of the believers.Another random thought-How is Sylvia Plath's poem 'Daddy' about Electra Complex?

A Call From Anonymous

2009-12-06T19:20:00.000-08:00

He came into my life like the winds of september

I swayed back and forth like a branch in stormy weather

Should never have let him in through the door

But I ended up crying for him on the kitchen floor

Things were moving too fast but I was immobilized

I gave out,I gave in and then I realized

that there was life inside of me

and time seemed to crawl on endlessly

It was barely a month but it seemed forever

Then he said,"We can't be together.."

It thought it was safe in me

But my torment wouldn't let it be

It never put its fingers in mine

I never sang it a lullaby to stop it from crying

It never smelt the wet earth after rain

Never moved when i was sober and sane

It never slept in the light

'Coz I decided I couldn't be a mother last night...

A Poem I Posted on AHM

2009-11-24T21:33:00.000-08:00

http://voiceofjude.blogspot.com/2009/11/who-i-am.html

This poem is very close to my heart...So please check it out and do comment on it.

P.S. If anyone could explain what deeptesh's comment meant,I swear I would be eternally indebted to you!

Lessons I've learnt in life(for a few laughs)

2009-11-22T21:29:00.000-08:00

1. Saying "My life is an endless purgatory interrupted by profound phases of misery" doesn't make you popular.

2. The most absurd lyrics ever written by Guns 'n' Roses has got to be "Take me down to the Paradise City where the grass is green and the girls are pretty".My guess is that they were writing about an environment-friendly whore-house.I may be (and probably am!) completely wrong.However,writing songs that no one understands might make you popular.

3. Asking your parents for a snake-skin skirt on your 16th birthday will only elicit unfavourable responses.In my case,it was a stern-sounding "That's illegal!"

4. Reading a book entitled 'Psychiatry and Homeopathy' on the ledge of the english department at JU will certainly get you attention but it will leave most of those who pass you by incomplete shock.Seeing their animated features will get tiring after a while.

5. "The gestation period of an elephant is 22 months"-You can go the rest of your life without knowing that...But if you do know it,you might win a few quizzes along the way.

6. Good debaters can be hypocrites.

7. Jane Austen probably didn't intend to put us to sleep with her novels.That she did manage to do so must have been an occupational hazard that she was unaware of.

8. Teaching five or six-year-olds is as exciting and as painful as dental surgery.

One Aspirin Away

2009-11-16T22:37:00.000-08:00

My words aren't even mine anymore

when I say I made the same mistake

again.

I played and lost myself

again.

I loved and I died

again.

I lied and kept the faith

again.

I misunderstood someone

again.

Now i'm one aspirin away

from release,

one aspirin away

from company,

from another mistake.

I know it will be a mistake,

but i can't be alone tonight,

lonely,but not alone...

Thoughts On A Rainy Evening

2009-11-16T07:33:00.000-08:00

I'm surrounded by crazy cloud shapes and false promises.Amidst it all,I strive to find peace of mind.I hope it'll stop raining soon but I know somewhere deep down that it won't.I try not to see my possible futures-they all seem dull.I see myself sitting in a kitchen facing a living room with a glass wall,taking off my apron after putting dinner on the table,undoing my hair and waiting for the phone to ring...I see myself working away in an office built by people whose hopes have turned into fears and whose dreams have turned into plans(just like the song that makes more sense than it's supposed to),working away with a fifteeen minute break for coffee and contemplation...I see myself at an after hours party full of people whose lives are so empty that not even smoking up on the roof alone seems to fill up the torn spaces...

DISTANT DREAMER-That's probably what they call me now.Yet I can't decide what to think of and I always end up thinking of things I dread.I think of the day when all the friends I thought worth keeping will be gone,when I'll say "Good luck to you all and goodnight" and fade into the background,when the rain will go unseen and unheard.