Regretted?

Today, for the third time, in two weeks, I conducted an unsuccessful search for "Ramya.K" on the placement notice board.That's a nice euphemism for rejection. While Shell took two weeks (while I was engaged in an enthusiastic preparation of a Goa itinerary) to figure out that my application wasn't worth a second glance, UOP actually got me calculating how long it would take them to despatch the offer letter.

IOCL, the intended saving grace, taken for granted for confident three years ("If nothing else, IOCL." ), scorned at, mocked, and yet secretly vulgarly desperately desired, finally had the last laugh. Denying me the luxury of rejecting a PSU career proffered on a platter must have been sweet revenge for that invisible traitor in my head who's been heard me rile all along.

Prolonged rant for missing out on a job I wanted solely for egoistic reasons. My dualite friends, either from naive empathy or detached saintliness have been resisting the urge to point out that my placement woes when narrated 26 times in various states of fatigue, sleepiness, through just-rejected-smses, oh-this-company-tomorrow-i'm-so-getting-the-job-and-chucking-it announcements sound err repetitive. Placement woes? I've been placed in a likable firm that I'd never intended to apply for. It's not my job status itself that bothers me, but the uncertainty, the bullying, the unfairness. What's been my undoing are my "But I've always...." thoughts. But I've always been the best. But I've always laughed at people who believe in luck. But I've always predicted my chance of success with accuracy and sense.

1. Is it overconfidence, thinking highly of yourself and constructing lofty ideas of your worth , because the world has always agreed with your standards while rewarding you?
2. Is it stupid to believe that you'll get everything you want just because you've always gotten everything you've wanted?
3. Is it arrogant to be justifiably cocksure and then dream big?And stare hungrily at what you might never possess, what might not be right for you? And spurn what you've already got?

I wish I knew.

Of thoughts and translations...

My uncertain mumbles drip all over our conversation, a leaky fountain pen over blotting paper. Not comprehending the thickly untidy words that I've scratched, frowns spread over his face as fast as those ink stains on my blotted consciousness. He looks at me impatiently before seizing my hand. Like a child being taught the script, my hand is enslaved within his larger steadier hand and we traverse the page together, my pen at his command. Straight parallel ruled lines, wide even margins, underlined sub-headings, small regular letter formations, cursive convent-school elegance. No trace of my exaggerated loops, my flatly rounded vowels, my undecipherable dots and crosses, my illegible scrawl. I don't thank him for the forgery and his eyebrows shoot up scornfully at my ingratitude.

I don't want my heart de-cluttered of its fears, the broken furniture of my judgment rearranged, my under-the-pillow secrets to be lifted, folded neatly and hung in glass-doored shelves and open showcases, the broken windowpanes of my perception replaced. And definitely not the way he intends to spring-clean my space. But he does exactly that. No wonder I approach confidences with the confident dread of being misunderstood. A confidence becomes an invitation to vacuum-clean my soul and suck it clean of the dust that my life has collected. Every cobweb sliver I lose is a mutilated memory, a betrayed love and a disinherited lesson.

I weave the gossamer of my sudden smiles and warped recollections, the association I make, the symbols I venerate, my inexplicable tears and intangible longings into a magic carpet that would transport him into my head. But he tears it apart it strand by strand into disparate threads of coherence, snips them into uniform lengths, stuffs them scientifically into separate postmarked envelopes and mails me through every conversational post-box we encounter on the way. "There you go.” he says. "This is what you should think." I want to fling those lying envelopes at his face, unopened.

When I speak to him, I'm instructed to pack my thoughts into batches of toilet paper-tightly rolled double-layers of gentle cellulose, unprotestingly adsorbent, evenly perforated sheets that are torn, soiled and thrown thoughtlessly back.

Outgrowing that hungry-eyed desperation to be understood is painful. Every intimacy is a tour of my self for the other person. But it’s not a guided tour. Nothing in my control. I want to show them around my world- its gates and walls, its pleasures and perils, its sights and sounds at my own pace. But they make their three-day package trips with their self-authored guidebooks for company. I want to walk them through my gardens and fall asleep together under boughs and vines to the songs of my night birds, but all they care for are neatly arranged preserved flowers and baskets of fruits to take back. I want to take them on walks along my beach and get them to paint my sunsets in their favourite shades. But they go on all-expense paid cruises along my coasts, never setting foot on shore, and carouse through the evenings, oblivious to my sunsets. I want to accompany them on star-lit treks throughout my forests, valleys and mountains, tell them about the landscape, the skies, the trees and the beasts that shape my existence. They visit zoos and throw crumbs for the caged beasts of my pretenses. I want them to be an insider to the stink of my drains, the seclusion of my deserts, the grime embracing my slums, the bumps on my dirt tracks, the costs of my living, the smog in my air and the poverties, glories, secrets and spaces of my life. But they return from their slapdash tour, smugly seat belted in the business-class illusion that they can claim to know me now. Completely.

I don't have to translate my thoughts into words, expressions, and sentences to make my mind see what my heart knows. I don't have to shake my mind by the shoulders and cry out unhappily "But you don't get it. I feel this way. There is no explanation. No reason." Obviously I'm no tourist to my self.

Why do thoughts need to be expressed at all? Some thoughts are serene jetsam. They are happy being the ocean currents of my mind, treading the same paths, caressing the continents of sleep and rest, floating joyfully among the unconscious seas of my mind, dictating the cyclones and monsoons of my moods, eternally alive yet unexpressed. Some thoughts drown and disappear into the whirlpools of forgetfulness without resistance while some dematerialize in the salty spray of growing up and learning.

Some embark on a quest of expression, holding on to the flimsy logs of feeling, oar-less and wordless but not sensation-less.
The course that a conversation takes can either maroon them in tongue-tying islands or provide sea-faring winds for a safe and quick passage. Bias unleashes gales, the storm of contempt punctures leaks and upends the raft, icebergs of silent neglect make noisy dents, and a mere smirk becomes a squall.

Finally the shipwrecked arrive naked, thirsty and still-sea-sick on the shores of speech, having experienced the grief and joys of entire lifetimes through the rough and tumble of their 5-minute voyages. Birth. Death. Love. Loss. They aren't the same thoughts that had set out clinging to the logs of now-meaningless sentence-skeletons that had begun the marine dialogue. What is done to them? Held at the harbour and imprisoned as illegal immigrants. Pulled up roughly and questioned. Accused of identity theft or taken for somebody else.

My pen offers asylum to these ineffable, undefinable, and fragile castaway thoughts. It doesn't demand identity papers and passports, doesn't deport them to their unreal homelands or sentence them in courts. It accepts their stateless state,feeble incoherence and the amnesiac silence of their youth. My pen averts its eyes from the wordless nakedness of my thoughts and offers them a choice of clothes. Every word I write is a wondrous robe. Wondrous because my thoughts have chosen the perfect cut, colour and fit every time. Whenever I read something I've written, I know that these erstwhile hollow-eyed refugees are now drawing premature pensions, leading lives of middle-class contentment and fully-clothed dignity in their single bedroom apartments of posterity .I know that they are finally home.

I write because it's the purest composition of what I feel, the form transmuted by nobody else's responses but my own. Sympathy matters more than syntax, acceptance more than agreement, respect more than reason. And only my pen knows that.

She never lost the habit of muttering to herself. When you set out to be perennially inaudible, your efforts will be as awkward as those of the moist-mouthed straining to restrain a shower of spittle with cupped hands. Afraid of her words flecking people, she dreaded the way they would be wiped away in that conspicuous yet wordless gesture of annoyance that created a wet embarrassed silence in its wake. Only, they took saliva more cheerfully than vagabond words. There were those self-embalmed whispers that nobody bothered to excavate with an exasperated "What were you saying", then those perfectly audible words orphaned in conversational holocausts called arguments. And there were words that got left behind. Like a child is led by hand towards a crowded train only to be left fearfully clutching the hand of a stranger instead. Or the words that actually succeeded to fall in step with the militant march of a discussion. Those words hurt the most. She'd always sweep the floor furtively behind those footsteps, dispersing the defeated dust of her trampled words away from her asthmatic being, struggling to breathe in the clean air of feeling. Or the words that simply got lost. Wandered off into the nothingness of providentially incompetent tongue- tips, choosing it over the nothingness of human ears and hearts. Drowned in those narrow rivulets of clarity separating the wilderness of being misunderstood from the greater wilderness of being understood. Went on indefinite exiles to faraway forests where they wouldn't be dispossessed, dismissed or disowned.

When you spend a lifetime being unheard, you know that all those words don't just melt into silence. She knew that. Memory accounted for each and every stray sentence- uttered and bitten back, shouted and apologized for, constructed and broken down, stored and formatted, typed and backspaced. Memory maintained ledgers, conducted roll calls, and extracted penalties from the truant thoughts. After a lifetime of losing thoughts, she understood that the chaff of that memory-sieve would be tossed into that ever-present black hole that ripped them into forgetfulness.
But sometimes they escaped whole. Sometimes. Stayed behind within her. Lingered. Befriended memory enough to come out of incognito. Then befriended memory so well that they went out for a stroll together sometimes. A jaunt with the jailor. First the words would come out in an astonished breath, astonished at the audacity of infiltrating voices. Then they would recruit question marks into their forbidden ranks the way you spell out a foul word politely instead of enunciating it. Then their daring grew, the questions became increasingly insistent, assumed the tone of assertions and dropped their inquisitive masquerade. Replaced the question mark with the full stop, the "couldn’t"s with the "can"s, the "wouldn’t"s with the "will"s, the "might not"s with the "is"s.
Sometimes they bid for the freedom of validation with their repetitive lull. The final words that were puked into her tear-drenched pillow every tea-stained night.
The first words that etched themselves on her soul during the acid attacks of love.
The words that betrayed her exhibitionist streak when she muttered to herself in solitude, working hard at looking drowned while trying to jettison her true self that she had mistakenly unearthed in a sanguine farce of a treasure hunt.
Words that went around her head like a self-righteously orbiting halo propping up the demolished remains of sense, defining anew the topography of her sanity, where gagged exertions eroded her truths into monosyllabic scripts and well-rehearsed dialogues.

And she lives on, proofreading sent mail and deleting sent messages, rephrasing others’ sentences and reliving others’ lives, memorizing silences by the second and pounding all-night conversations to a forgotten pulp, embracing the anesthetic simplicity of slang and eluding the aesthetic aptness of words-those words, unlike wisdom, that would never give up on her. Ever.

Chasing Mirages. Again.

I belong to a generation of students (defeated and victorious) who have been through the IIT-JEE grind. Despite two years of punishing coaching schedules, my peers’ fascination for competitive exams and “premier” institutions hasn’t dimnished.

Déjà vu is unmistakable – engineering aspirants who, three-four years ago had devoutly attended JEE coaching are now filling up benches in CAT classes. It's easy to see parallels between IIT and IIM, charismatic brand names that are venerated in India. Ignoring the inherent contrasts in the nature of CAT and JEE, their resemblance is strong in other respects - intense competition for limited seats, loads of feverish applicants struggling through endless mock tests and three hour classes, anchored by visions of hefty paychecks and jobs abroad, and the escalating success of the coaching monsters spawned by these exams.

There is nothing wrong in the pursuit of a successful engineering/ management career or in aspiring to enter elite schools. What is troubling is the unthinking way in which we make the leap, heedless of aptitudes and needs. We owe it to ourselves to draw our own maps rather than go astray, following signposts.

Enough has been said about the evils of our education system, the distressing effects of coaching on learning attitudes, parental pressure and the lack of awareness and imagination that characterizes most career decisions. It’s not awareness that we lack, but courage to see our selves, our dreams, and our abilities in a truthful way and do the right thing. Soon, the quick-fix dogma of “Choose science stream, get an engineering degree and then an IIM MBA” will be elevated to commandment status. We end up chasing the same mirage on every road.

What's wrong with Dasavatharam?

Distributors would say, "nothing at all". Opening with 29 shows a day in Mayajaal and Sathyam, 10 a day in INOX, subsequent shows of the movie managed to attract second-timers, third-timers, with voices turned hoarse with second-guessing inspired punch lines and fingers numbed with applause (Gult-bashing and Bush-bashing are united by the unanimously enthusiastic response they provoke. Even weak jokes are heartily humored with bursts of laughter.)

An unpretentious commercial movie that never made any brave promises of providing an uplifting intellectually stimulating movie experience doesn’t deserve criticism. Especially if you, like myself, do not require uplifting intellectually stimulating experiences to make your trip to the theatre worthwhile. It cannot be crucified for falling (significantly ) short of genius when it only set out to be a formulaic mass movie saturated with sure shot attention-grabbers - Mallika Sherawat, a sensational opening sequence that can chill the blood of any fanatic Iyer/Iyengar, a gargantuan star cast with a crowd of uselessly recognizable faces littering every frame, yawn-inspiring action sequences, “excellent” (I wouldn’t know the difference) camera work, and passably peppy (and from what I hear, popular) tunes elements that are sure to get the average Tamilian to gloat over 120 well-spent bucks. It cannot be hailed as one of the best things that have happened to Tamil Cinema, nor is it a Kamal Hassan Masterpiece.

My enforced ignorance of the aesthetics and structure of Cinema and theatre isn't going to make my first attempt at a movie review any easier. Dasavatharam is only the third movie I've seen in 2008 (after some forgettable RAF movie (the only surviving fragment in my memory is a conversation about Chinese gang wars that followed) and then Sex and the City). That should give you an idea of my cheerful indifference towards visual arts in general and cinema in particular. My infrequent excursions to movie theatres (I haven't watched a single movie on my computer) have been dictated mostly by the force-fed inclinations of my companions, with my non-existent taste in movies reluctant to raise even perfunctory protests.

What I liked about Dasavatharam was that the makers stuck to their vision of the movie throughout the three and a half hours- An unembarrassed Pot-boiler. It never betrayed its genre for even a second, though offering a self-apologetically atypical (of commercial Tamil cinema. ) script, it resorted to tried-and-tested gimmicks to ensure that the treatment of the script is conventional . Of course, the heroine has to be insipid, irritating, and absolutely helpless. Of course, the audience should stifle cries of “What else?” And “not now” when the guy and the girl discuss wedding plans immediately in the wake of a chase (that would have drained superhuman reserves of stamina and wearied the most romantic “maid-in-distress-gallant knight” inclinations) in the backdrop of death and disaster. Healing properties of Misfired bullets, opportunely switched luggage, serendipitous tsunamis, and extremely predictable co-incidences (fancy a Japanese martial arts master screaming “Tsunami” on some TN beach and rushing to guide the guy and the girl out of trouble with the adroit boat-handling ease of a Jap fisherman who’s outlived five tsunamis), miracles pulled out of thin air and deep seas and lazy scripting minds in search of shortcuts, super-conscientious, super-brave super-lucky hero, a super-bad killing machine for a villain, and the audience-favorite game of “spot-Kamal-there’s Kamal”- come on, if this isn’t classic commercial cinema, what is? I found out to my amusement, that Most of the pre-release buzz about the movie being off-beat (with some hyperbolic reports going as far as to use the term science-fiction to describe this attempt where science is just another bit-role, a neglected extra) was unfounded. His "multiple avatars" sparked reactions from the audience that can be compared to the recognizant sighs of an indulgent parent cooing over an overexcited child's capers in a Fancy dress contest.

An unwillingness to resolve the issues (I hate it when people ask questions during the out course of a movie/book only to leave them in the question mark intact at the end. Why talk about Science vs. God, faith vs. reason, mining vs. Mother Earth as a mere gesture of lip-service to the supposed theme? ) that the theme (s) of the movie raises can be traced to indifference. A callously knitted meandering patch-work script that glories in being hackneyed (like XXXL sweaters that sacrifice snugness to live up to a mistaken measure of the right size) for the sake of accommodating as many avatars as possible. Hastiness in developing a screenplay that strives to be clever, only to appear contrived. Fighting dreadful fears of straining the scant capacity of a mass audience to comprehend science while exploiting their infinite capacity to appreciate infusions of morality, entendre and appeals to religious sensibilities.

Other Voices might praise research (?), production values, attention to detail, screenplay, and cinematography, whatever; there again I wish to desist from ignorant misuse of cinema jargon hence my voice will not join this chorus. Rare instances (that evaporate as quickly as your impressions of Kamal’s fleeting attempts at acting) of original humor, delicious timing and the occasional lines of sensible dialogue can redeem the creative conscience of the movie. Your disgust for the movie will only intensify at the sight of the Director’s victory-dance and the accompanying self-glorifying hero- song(a la Rajini, except that they got the order wrong. It’s at the end rather than the beginning), the pointlessness of which will only serve to remind you of the more maddening pointlessness of other scenes in the movie.

In the end the makers of the movie will get away with their not-guilty plea.If you accuse them of breaking promises (that were never made), creating unrealistic expectations (that obviously weren’t have been fulfilled) , it’s time you reviewed your subscription to whichever magazine carried that reverent review/impressive report/ glowing preview. Commercial cover-page-exclusive-scoop-sneak-peek journalism and commercial cinema make a very potent cocktail indeed.

The excuse of having lost steam is ridiculous when you’ve been systematically dismantling the engine. Finally I have reasons. A) I forgot what it felt like to write fearlessly without fearing the merciless self-flagellation I’d subject myself to when I read my work again B) Words C) Heartbreak

It's been a year since I've written .No; ignore all the posts that happened between August 2007 and June 2008. I believed, till an hour back that writing for me was finished, in its dying throes. I dreaded turning into those adults who’d read my stuff admiringly just to add a wistful "Ah, I used to write too. That was so far away. I've never been able to do it again."

All these half-hearted posts and hesitant stories that I've referred to were failed resurrections. Bleak attempts at resuscitation. I was convinced that I'd lost voice, and that my fingers would never again tauten gratefully in that uniquely pleasurable way whenever they pressed Ctrl S or clicked a ballpoint pen shut. That I'd forget what I was like to settle down oblivious to discomfort with pen and paper, stained fingers, cricked neck and numb bloodless legs (the immovably weighty excitement of orchestrating a genesis in my head.) Memory is the most vital thing for a writer, and I don’t mean factual and list-like memory here. I forgot. I forgot everything. I forgot the high of writing a story just to get to an ending, not caring whether it was good or not (Later in the barrenness of my third year, I'd keep rereading the stuff I had arrogantly laughed off as "amateurish" and wish I were 17 and writing ten-minute stories again.)

Like most Madras households, we use mineral water (in cans) for drinking. A vessel, perilously placed between the kitchen and the fridge, exposed to the potential onslaught of hurrying maternal feet, was a constant presence under the unpredictable tap of our can for a long time. Sometimes it would be a mild trickle that tricked us into forgetting to replace the vessel every now and then, sometimes a regular drip-drop that kept us awake at night, sometimes when the fatigued tap unscrewed itself loose under ungentle hands, and the water would shoot out in a long-repressed jet that would drench the knees of every trouser in the vicinity. Finally, tired of waiting for those maintenance guys to replace the tap, we tied it up with a cloth and the tap was finally silenced. EPC Secretary ship nearly did that to my writing style. The prospect of writing Editorials for a newsletter, which had definite precedents and policies for every single thing, but what constitutes an editorial, is no ointment for a bruised uncertain writer. Except for five editorials, none of them gave me the reassurance that I had indeed said what I'd set out to say.

I knew I was in trouble when I started turning my nose up at the appropriateness of "of" in the place of "in" and "at" and whatnot. When I started sneaking in spelling corrections and suggestions on improving grammatical constructions under the pretext of posting comments on the blogs I read. When I stopped seeing the soul in a piece and mused instead, about his choice of tense and the hurried termination of his sentences, wondering whether he lacked the mental capacity to keep track of long sentences.

Words words words all over again. I set too much store by them. Expected to come up with the perfect words, the perfect sentence every time. It never happened. I'm no human dictionary. I forgot that I was writing, not solving The Guardian crossword. Words, how easy, how treacherous, how mutable, how insignificant. When something's bursting inside you waiting to erupt in a scream, it chooses the best words, the best form for itself. Have you noticed, people rehearse speeches, punch lines, proclamations of love, lies, but they never ever rehearse for abuse?

You have neither the time nor the opportunity to decide, in the heat of writing (or yelling) you’re just lulled into believing that you chose all those words. The words chose themselves. You don't need a great vocabulary or that glorified "writer's instinct" for coming up with the perfect word. The perfect word doesn't exist. You rake the driveway of your consciousness for that long-lost key of that perfect word, the thought, a traveler in a hurry has walked, sometimes never to return.

I had a brilliant time as Sec, but when I started playing inner editor to myself, I censored, gagged, cramped and nearly killed my writing. I was scared of being clichéd. Of sounding unoriginal. Of writing anything that didn't have the confident imprint of a "mature" writer. Anything beautiful and sacred ceases to be easy when you strip it of spontaneity, trust and simplicity to reduce it to technique, rules, jargon. Like Sex. Like intimacy. Like Art.

Earlier, I’d wait till I was all alone at home to write, I'd dream of beautiful secluded retreats where I'd be "inspired" to write. I'd protest while being served food, fretting over that tiny flickering light within me that would be extinguished by the lazy satiety of a full meal. Over how I wouldn't get back to my computer with that fever of finishing what I’d begun. Right now I'm painfully within earshot of an extremely loud television playing a rerun of an exciting Ind-Aus match. And the distracting thuds of fours sixes wickets and the pasted afterthought of post-production commentary didn’t have me groping fearfully at dark corners of my mind for fragile web-spun silvers of ephemeral thought, and hoping that they haven’t disappeared in the vacuum-cleaner drone of everyday life.

I write the way I love. That has been my undoing. Scores of people before me have used the pliant convenience of a romantic disappointment to explain away a variety of things from imprudent decisions to messed-up grades to depressed “phases” to suicidal and anti-social inclinations. I’ve said something in the context of a break up . “Sometimes you spend a long time typing a sentence, but it just doesn’t turn out right at that point of the story. Your fingers loathe every stroke of backspace because you’ve worked so hard on that sentence that you’ve fallen in love. But you know exactly what the story has to attain ultimately and that the sentence will not take you there. So you close your eyes and delete it. Perhaps, it would have fitted well within a different kind of story.” My story has suffered so many false starts, so many run-away sentences, and countless backspace strokes. I’m writing this in the wake of a deletion of a couple of long sentences. I might rethink the flow and plot of the story;but no blundering sentence can mess around with my mood or my ending. My story will end the way I want it to, irrespective of the whims of irreconcilable sentences and if they don’t blend well with the rest of the dough, you open the oven door, scoop out the hardened portions, mix willingly sweet ingredients instead and put it back in. Yeah the cake will take longer. It will get there eventually in spite of power cuts, improper ratios and bad eggs. And it will be a cake worth waiting for.

Evidently, my fixation with words has destroyed some of my relationships. Expecting people to use words in the tactful, sensitive (and sometimes absurd) manner that I did probably made life very tedious for my literal-minded friends. They never understood nuances, relied on blankly precise dictionary meaning and have always disagreed violently with me on the potentially offensive impact of our clashing definitions. Meanings. Whenever they would say something that contained even a single offensive word, I’d unerringly skip the undying layers of positive sentiment, mood and unmistakable affection straight away and take umbrage at form. I’d seize a tiny reference to the past, the most unconsciously inserted abuseTo my credit, my temper tantrums have always been quelled by even the most indifferent, reluctant apologies. I’m the most forgiving person I know and I have a very good reason to forgive easily too.

“How could you say something that hurt me?” has always meant, “How could you use the kind of words that hurt me? You could have said it in a thousand different harmless ways.” The Quarrel, for me instead of concerning itself with what he/she said focuses on the words they chose and the way they have said it. Of course, people lose patience with me- I get hurt all the time. After all they are playing an endless frustrating game of Taboo with me where the length of red listed words exceeds their capacity to remember what went wrong, to love me, and to choose. Every word they choose, every attempt at expression is strangulated, “taboo, taboo”, I keep crying incessantly and then the inevitable- they are left fumbling for the right words, which never occur to them. Because the first word that enters your head usually stays and their first words always, always gets tabooed. Vocabulary language mind your language choose your words, echoes both well-bred and boorish behavior, with temper and tact, and unfortunately for me words echo intentions. I’ve been accused of a variety of things from being touchy to acting weird to missing a sense of humor (Am I supposed to laugh with the rest of the room when I’m tripped and I’m lying face down and crying on a hard hurtful floor?) to showing off and seeking attention. I suppose I can’t let their opinion become my perception of my self. I stick to the Dreamy Idealist (read previous posts) picture of myself, rather than believe what I hear from others.

During all these furious futile battles (with warped love and twisted sentences, with empty unyielding hearts ad obstinately blank stretches of paper, with teary incoherence of unsaid things and meandering paragraphs) on the blood-splattered grounds of perceived meaning, intended meaning, and literal meaning, I forgot that it’s feeling that matters more than meaning.

Curtain

The brutal pants of the sea drifted into my ears as that inevitable silence crept into the conversation, like an awkwardly hungry stranger waiting for you to leave your seat in a restaurant. She looked at me fondly for a moment and then encircled her arms around me. “I might never see you again.” That was it. Goodbye. I stiffened instinctively within her warm embrace, like blood congealing within a throbbing bruise. The trailing red tape of Goodbye was gagging me shut with its usual armory - indefatigable silence and an overwhelming blankness. It was the certain consciousness of drowning as your arms flail about, painting desperate survival strokes that tar the canvas of Goodbye. I stuttered, waited for her to complete my incomplete sentences, and to mouth the inanities of Farewell. With a perfunctory wave the embrace broke.

I’m bad at Goodbyes. They remind me of those fancy scissors with jagged zigzag edges. “They lend a nice look to the edges of decorative paper- patterned and rhythmic.” My sister used to defend their use while making charts. “Why don’t you snip the paper of in one go, with regular scissors- you don’t need to waltz around with that plastic nightmare.” But the world, like my sister seems to prefer the latter.

I leapt into the bus at the last minute, as the signal flicked from red to green in a casual instant. I was leaving another friend, after discussing the possibility that we might not meet in a year. At least it’s better than “I might never meet you again.”

Goodbyes are like earthworms- every time you get done with the decapitation of one parting, a different head emerges almost instantly. Though it doesn’t actually have multiple avatars, this sneaky little earthworm has burrowed so deep into my mind, leaving behind earthen suds of phantasmal fears, the fear of separation being the least monstrous. And its sting seeps in long after the actual moment passes, when you’re bereft of words and tears. It hurts in the most improbable places, at the most improbable moments.

In the raspy creak of a broken-down bicycle. In the casual reminiscence of the everlastingly inexplicable tears of a hot dusty Sunday morning. In the wrinkled disgust of my eyelids when I screw my eyes shut while making my way through the debris of a demolished intimacy (meaning: hesitant glimpses of heated e-mail tantrums, tears, threats, conversations from the past.) Or was it an intimacy that was demolished before it was born? Right now I’m building a econd castle on the rubble of the first. Its certain collapse lies in my muted compliance with the uncertain terms of torture that intimacy establishes.

Goodbye, till had been the intermittent glip-glop sound of hesitant water drops making their leap into the communal safety of a bucket from a metallic cliff. Now it seemed like an incessant rush of water from a conked-out tap that I’d to have deal with. A presence that would henceforth be a constant, like a sporadic spook becoming a full-fledged ghost.

The muck- green colored ticket hopped across a multitude of coarse alien palms before landing gently into my pocket. It was just a tiny piece of brittle paper dripping with the dilute ink of economized printing. Rs.4.50. Goodbyes extract more punishing tolls. The change went into the other pocket with a jingle- it kept clinking throughout the journey- the insistent protests of unshed tears, the frozen tears of Goodbye. I remembered a conversation with my mother.

“Goodbyes seem to be cascading on me in multi-packs, Amma, like Pears soap, you get more than you actually bargained for. I don’t know how to handle it. I have very little time to negotiate terms of peace with these transitions. And it takes so long to get rid of that unending plastic packaging. ”

My mother dismisses my maudlin leaps of self-pity with a tact that doesn’t leave me feeling sheepish.

“Listen people will keep entering and leaving your life. People you know will leave college. You’ll leave people you know behind when you graduate. It’s unavoidable.” And after an inspired pause. “Have you traveled on a 29C?”

I was bemused. “Obviously.”

“How many people purchase tickets from Besant Nagar to Perambur? The full stretch? Two? Three? If people get on at Adyar, they might leave at Sterling. The people who sat through the Mylapore Stretch might be missing while the Bus passes Stella. You’re the bus. Remember that, you cannot control departures, you’ve just got to keep halting at places to watch periodic reshuffles in the positions and numbers of passengers happen.”

“That’s depressing. But you know what, it isn’t that simple. Sometimes they deceive you. They purchase four rupee tickets for Adyar to Chola and then they get down at Mandaveli. Or they jump off the stairhold when then bus is still moving. Or they vanish without warning before buying tickets. Or they make dents on the body of the bus, they plug the grooves on sills so that the windows stay open forever, they cover every inch on the walls with the permanent scars of graffiti. Or they puncture the tires so that bus deflates into diseased immobility. Or they burn down the bus.”

“Addicted to melancholy. You sound like you’ve had a romantic disappointment.”

I resisted the ribbing. Some disappointments run deeper than the shallow distress of romantic caprice. I wonder why that’s everybody’s favorite form of tragedy. Romantic disappointments are err… well romantic. The rites of a break-up have a certain beauty. Ever since I’ve read Helen Spalding’s “Curtain” (blame CBSE.) that clichéd dream of youth- Prince Charming-coming-down-on-his-knees-with-a-ring assumed second place (where obsessive might is concerned) to that dark brooding possibility that I might be one of the “Two Hamlets? Two soliloquies, Two worlds apart? Tomorrow” Ah. I’ve been under the spell of that impossibly romantic break-up fantasy for ages. Sigh. But then you have to fall in love first. This must be the most-repeated sentence ever, with its clauses, order of words, tense, everything intact. But then, you’ll have to fall in love first. That’s probably why half the shelves are filled with romance-self help in every book store/festival I visit. This is probably why awfully repetitive books like ‘Osho speaks on love.” “Osho speaks on intimacy” are stocked in hundreds while the two sole copies of "All quiet on the western front" have to be hunted down from the bottom of endless stacks on Kekan Dajuwala or whatever that astrologer's name might be.

I’ll post the poem here someday.