Why don't you just kill me?

I sometimes covet phronesis. Wishful thinking, perhaps, to assume it would temper my sudden griefs. I shy from using the term “violent griefs” because my mind is still ripe from the pounding it received at the meeting. Luke’s paper on violence seemed just an excuse to drink the Corpus Christi wine. But all these digressions distress me so. Am I not capable of discipline of any sort? My tutor has decided to take draconian measures to keep my wild and untamed metaphors in check.
I want only that my grief be checked. The grief that in quite an admirable display of coquetry coaxes me to lie like a turquoise in the depths of the Teesta. The dream, the triumphant return of the exile weighs on my soul. The need of more beauty than mine is required to sustain you, him, a grief.



(Niggling passages. Albee's latest wasn't impressive.)

I doubt I shall be writing much for the next few weeks. The weeks past have been far too interesting for me to do it unnecessary violence by recording it. Oxford's been gentle so far; I have managed to write perfectly sensible essays without really reading the texts. That makes me happy. The ciabattas (excellent ones found in almost every shop) make me happy too. I am in love again. The tutorials once a week have softened the scars left from the numerous hours of being in lecture halls. Mike, my tutor of Ancient Philosophy, talks to me about coconut climbers and crocodiles. I am going to watch a silly musical in London, dance on a boat the same weekend and visit old friends.
Now is not the time to mull. I shall have my share of fun and frolic. I shall sing.

Augusts were glorious when I was in school. It was the busiest month for me in terms of quizzing.
This August I come across this church and a plaque so small one would never even notice it and ruefully acknowledge the three Augusts I have let pass without awakenings.

Question: We are celebrating the 70 year anniversary of which popular board game?

My answer, ludo, was wrong.
My indignation was wrong too; 2pac did sing "Missing You." His, I doubt, was dedicated to the memory of B.I.G.
My apologies to the Master.

Struggles could have been a dog I
Make houses shrink
And trees diminish
Marauders' eyes and one anna hats. By going far; my look's leash
Maiden's hair and shoe lace traps. Dangles the puppet-people
Actors' heath and bamboo rings. Who, unaware how they dwindle,
Coffee spoons and fake fish scales. Laugh, kiss, get drunk,
Laura and Lizzie dream ten times tonight. Nor guess that if I choose to blink
They die.

- Sylvia Plath

And now for some frivolity.

Waugh

I have desisted from writing about the immense pleasure Evelyn Waugh’s writing has always provided me with for various reasons that need not be recounted here. However, a recent re-perusal of Brideshead Revisited seemed to agree with the prevailing mood of hesitant anticipation of the year I shall spend in Waugh’s alma mater. So much so that I think it’s only right I share my new found state of warm waiting with the four (?) people who read this blog. Infact it even brought about strong bouts of giddy whoops when I successfully pulled out it’s tableau. I have one for every book and it is with some amount of pride that I say I could recall quite a few minute details. For example the strange turn of fancy that made me model Sebastian in the image of a young man whose picture I’d found in a book; Delinquent Chacha, I think it was. I also remember how I’d decided to name an ugly neck-less stuffed toy “Adrienne” much in the same vein of Sebastian’s “Aloysius.” I suppose this will disappoint some but my reckless christening of all objects dear is to be credited to Waugh and not Murakami. Yes, myths do edify quickly, do they not? And Stephen Fry hovers in the horizon for some strange reason. Awful isn’t it?
Any which way I shall promise some other time a fuller account of my Waugh-picaresque when I am settled in a ground floor room in the front quad - happy coincidence permitting . At present a very short snippet from Brideshead ought to do:

It was not until I was within a fortnight of going up that he mentioned the subject at all; then he said, shyly and rather slyly: “I’ve been talking about you. I met your future Warden at the Athenaeum. I wanted to talk about Etruscan notions of immortality; he wanted to talk about extension lectures for the working-class; so we compromised and talked about you. I asked him what your allowance should be…”

A good friend tells me that I should leave out the last line. But I insisted that it be included.

In a failed defense of the text and other four letter words

I’ve had to dive deep and long into that long forgotten, itinerant form called memory to be able to continue with my study of literature. For months I’ve been abandoning, little by little, plucking and casting away tools that I have been handed with purposes of dismantling; and reconstructing on the other hand the idyll, memories of which result in whimsical and ill advised (academically speaking) papers entitled “Bringing Lit back into the Crit.” What was supposed to have been a defense of the text has metamorphosed into a wobbly articulation of the bewilderment, resentment and loss that stabs incessantly, the intensity of which increases when having to write analytic papers longer than 7 pages. Negotiations and attempts at reconciliation have been numerous. A recent one being slicing the work into 1) the text and 2) the eminent progeny of the author - each existing independently of the other. I undertake this splintering in as non-Barthean an approach as possible. I encountered some resistance in putting forth the last stipulation and so am prepared to encounter some more from you. Although I do believe that some of you misunderstand me. I acknowledge the inescapability from the Barthean approach when I limit it to the realm of possibility. Oh, the joy that we are taught to feel for the endless possibilities within the chalked lines. This last half-hearted reconciliatory effort will not see further elucidation because I fear it borders on the plain ridiculous. Yea, I’ve always been aware that I did not possess the peasant-variety bullishness required of an academic.
I have decided (and perhaps the most important of my decisions stemming from my reconstructive phase is) not to deny having read the various pieces of literature that I had lovingly perused in days where I referred to everything as “stories.” You see after my first year in college I had determined to sift through all works familiar and then conclude if I had indeed read it. If I could not tease the work into a satisfactory state of having-been-read-ness I refused familiarity. I hadn’t the epistemic access then to comment on the amorphous nature of meaning (or the ability to toss about other such terms in the same way I did the Nepali-fied bong I interspered my discourses with back in school). Had I access to it I would have atleast written a humorous “Autobiography of a Word - Read” much like Pamuk’s little tidbits about coins and horses and colours. Epistemic access - I’ve been chided by several for using this phrase so flagrantly. So, it is only right that I leave you with a defense of sorts (how fitting to end it like this, no?). I use the word just as Monsieur Foucault is wont to use it; with all of its breaks and warts and moles.
Thereby I absolve myself of all guilt.

On a totally unrelated note I ask that you listen to Steve Reich’s music and read this. I have fallen in love with Reich’s music. "Check it out."

I am very very happy. Strawberry happy. Yellow happy. So happy I am not afraid to write it down. I told you I was on the brink of something, didn't I Sannie?

In Memoriam : The Spectre in the Mirror

What foolish pleasures I derive from myriad sources,
Have you any inkling of?
If only I could have read to you.
Why are all blown into closures as I walk and walk?

Non, je ne regrette rien. C'est vrai.



Discarding winter dourness and the accompanying maudlinism with the inimitable Edith Piaf.

darjeeling

I will be going home soon. I shall have to settle for "happiness" to describe what I feel, failing to find a word for the cool vapors that tickle my insides and make me cry with the relief I feel when I get something I want. I don't miss Darjeeling. Darjeeling is too large for me to miss. It embraces hamlets and pockets of human habitation I have never visited or even known to exist. What I miss then are my own experiences and darjeeling. The darjeeling I drew; the map of darjeeling with short cuts marked out by me, the people's houses I traversed impishly and the stubborn resistance of the flights of stairs to being quantified. Every time I have thought about darjeeling these two years I have never failed to conjure first the image of the "70 Steps." How many places, I wonder, have as many "stairs" as darjeeling does. When coming back from school we would decide if we wanted to climb all four stairs. Sometimes we would count the number of steps as we climbed up. The number always varied. I had a favourite, the stair leading up to Tara Hotel and leading down to Rink Cinema Hall. Rink Cinema Hall no longer stands, they tell me. A multiplex has been erected in its place. Does it sadden me? No, it doesn't. The Hall was ugly and smelt of piss. I just feel a little betrayed by the tiny cottage that served as a homeopathic store. For years they had held out against the builders. They sold out the year before last. I am angered too. I had never been inside the store and only knew of it as the purveyor of tiny white pills that my friend took for her moles to disappear. I feel deprived of the long-warranted visit. I just hope the tiny eateries are not bought by contractors who come back from the "plains" with dreams of making Darjeeling into a gaudy little outpost of mindless consumerism. Be that as it may I shall now talk about the flight of stairs I mentioned earlier. It is untidily set between rows of buildings. Climbing the stairs on our way home made us all happy. The exhaust fan of Washington (?) warmed our cold stockinged legs. We would linger on that step and hope the warmth would fortify us for the 15 more minutes of walking up the hill. The stairs are privy to countless stories. Stories I told them, stories I was told. It was also the stairs I climbed with a sharp and a then new awareness of occupying an other's map. When we reached the top my friend and I had to part ways. I would have to turn right and she left. I would walk past chai dokaans that sold chai, jalebis, rasogollas, shingaras, ladoos and other forbidden delights. We were forbidden to buy anything from shops like that in uniform. Sometimes I took a chance anyway. All of this reminds me of my school uniform; grey and shapeless; it made me feel secure in its lack of colour. Ah, but I fear I prattle too freely. Let us leave my reminiscences at that. I shall come back to it again soon. I still have Chowrasta to talk about and Daara, Oxford, the only book store in town, Bholaa's aloo, Kev's...

Pro~po~gundah



I found myself singing about ek ghilahri, anek ghilahriya for my Russian friend just last night. Therefore, I am pleased and bewildered at having come across the video today. The strangeness of its materialising is further compounded by the intertexuality of it all. You see, my week -long nocturnal jousting with Said ends today.
I am happy.

At 3 in the morning I realize how much time I have wasted.
I will waste some more.
I look at pictures, mine and yours.
I can always slice away at un-selves caked onto me, in the mornings.
I want to wail.
I rise.
Laconia.
My brilliance, they tell me, will never let me be.
But, but, but.
I don’t want a Gala.
All fall down.
Distend.

Effrontery

It isn't very often that I despise a book. Accusations of e~l~i~t~i~s~m rising out of my instinctual dislike of bestsellers, and harbouring a profound distrust of anything that has been inscribed upon by the Women's Era-type book clubs I have tried to quel. Exculpating onself is so hard these days, especially when one happens to be a scholar of Literature. But before I start writing about the perils of being a littérateur (I promise a post about the perils after my duel with the exams) I shall make known my views of a certain Danielewski's "House of Leaves."
I dislike the book.*
Nothing about or in the book has any redeeming qualities.
I feel I have been basking in the warm ambivalence that my present phase has been emanating for far too long. Therefore, no wishy-washy 10-page paper about latent/hidden from the untrained eyes of sophomores/possible greatness of a text this.
*This...a one sentence bilious verdict.

Malbouffe

Various pieces of music I have been listening to and have been made to listen to have put me in a particularly gravid state where it sloshes about (not unharmoniously, though). Writing about it appears to me the only way to help settle this pabulum. It will take time but here's what I will be writing about in a notebook that has already seduced a page and two quarters from me:

Descent into the Maelstrom - Philip Glass (apropos Glenn Freeman)
1000 Airplanes on the Roof - Philip Glass ( " " )
Soli e Deuttini - Milton Babbitt

Babbitt I listened to out of pure narcissism. But that too shall be explored later.

The Pastness of the Past or Notes taken in English 225, Am. Lit 2.

I see a speck of dust walking between the blue lines.
If you meet a Buddha, kill him.
If you meet a patriarch of the law, kill him
The jerky realization of a motif is remarkable.
Freshly washed hair helps the broodiness I have accepted as an integral part of my existence.
Views askance.
Let’s begin then, with vulgarization. Muddying the past and pinning hopes on Naipaul’s “The past is deep.” A line a day for me.
I hope you have fish tonight.

I
Swim in limp
Break me- you
Stick making, sick mating
Aah, Aah, Eee, Eee
Ooh
Rap! Clean streaks on
Dusty mats.
Sifting through texts
For ridicule, like
Monkey backs.
Exes
Fly and settle down
Heavily
And then I
Colour.

I have a paper due tomorrow and a viva voce. They call it an oral examination but I shall call it a viva voce because I have been accused, not unfairly, of displaying belated signs of delinquency and juvenency. I have a perverse desire to go to class and tell the teacher that I didn't write the paper because of lingering over the caput mortuum of last Spring. The bile inside me isn't worth writing about. Instead, I've copied the poet's verse.


The Scholars

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way?


And I shan't leave this open-ended. I will tell you what I think. I think it's all futile, all, as Auster calls it, "magnificently useless."

Playing my part well

The snow is mounting outside. I have readings to read, paintings that lie unfinished from last August want my indifferent strokes to cross them out. I have emptied a cardigan full of chocolates.
A song makes my flesh tingle with desire again.
I wish I cared.
I developed a condescension for everyone and everything when I realized I knew. I was ten when I found I could separate myself from my body. It scared me and I only did it consciously when I was sad.
Brilliance is so deafening. At 16 when my parents would introduce me to people who were identified as intelligent I could smell rot. Lost limbs,organs,lives for this brilliance. I let them break my heart. It amused me.
My condescension lets none peek into the self that has been nurtured so lovingly by the un-self without.
Poem-penning, Barthes-spouting, communal loneliness evoked camaraderie makes me act with the same flourish as does a lover who saves me for the wedding night.

I do wish I cared.

For he who showed me beauty.

www.artinexile.blogspot.com

You asked me to write and I did. I thought of copying down a verse but I realized it was in one of two books you'd promise to read.



I see
Tea leaves lie
Gazing upward
From the sink
In the same likeness
We used to lay
Uneasy in our sweat
Damp clammy calls
In the evenings
You would like to
Think
I am emptied
I wrote about us
On paper that smelt
Of balm and tiffin
Three years ago

When you pointed
And I could not name
I knew
You would wait
Squatting near my home
Convinced
In our circumambulation
I even repeated
Insouciant
A secret I
Remembered
Marquez you refused


You were ill
And I
Lay with my blanket
While the city
Cried as if slain

We mark
With the unearthing of
A rhizome dictator
An hour earlier
I should have left
Pulpy guavas
Were all I had
That day and the next
And next

We both wear
Goggles now
And I flounder
When the darkness
In the pipes
Fail to make
These moths
Foolish and desirous
Of the callous heat.

Halla Bol.

Work on cadavers of sorts for a week. Respite brought only by snatches of Baudelaire. Warm, iridescent pain glowing on my back. Ambivalent longing dissolves in the heat of my zeal. I will sleep tonight. Drink long and deep from the elusive brow of the night.

I absolutely refuse to comment on this and this.

On Power

This week has seen me in the University bookstore almost every day. Independent Studies entail having to order books myself. It is a pain. Picking up books for my regular classes are almost...fun. In a portentous way, ofcourse. I found myself, just yesterday, looking at books selected by Professors for certain English classes and despite myself burst out laughing. It was remarkably comical, this circus of an exhibition. I could almost picture these Professors take out their selections from their sulfurous cupboards, wiping the dust off them with their sleeves and handing it to the secretary with a mad glint in their eyes. Yes, they must, they could subject their wards to an unending list of obscure literature. Obscure did I say?
A certain Professor seems to have a more discerning bend of mind and has included a Divakaruni (?...alright I do know her but have they exhausted all possible choices when it comes to World Literature or have they started assuming that all students in their classes are going to be like me and simply need to be brought in contact with bad literature so as to toughen us up) in her World Literature class. This was the same teacher, I am pretty sure, who insisted on telling us that one of the characters in Vikram Chandra's (yes) short story had a name-sake in Bollywood. I remember being so mortally frightened of being asked questions on Shahrukh Khan that I immediately started on how Vikram Chandra co-wrote the screenplay for a popular movie called Mission Kashmir and from there eased the class into a discussion of the then upcoming Academy Awards. I shan't get into that right now because I fear I digress too much. Yes, she had her mandatory Morrison too. There are others who have mandatory DeLillos and others who demand you buy Gaitskill. These Professors I call non du peres. For all his presumptuousness Lacan can be pretty useful. Which reminds me of one of my classes. I think I shall drop it for the DeLillo. Why? I was asked to buy a David Lodge. And also because his ugly bowties distract me awfully.
Oh, to be sixteen again and under the sway of Derrida. I should have just taken the advice of my senior school English teacher to heart and turned my nose up at Universities.
Well, Said had called it one of the last remaining utopias.


I also remember feeling slightly nauseous when I thought I saw Kite Runner in the English section. Fortunately it was in the Liberal Studies section. Fortunately. Ho hum.

Excerpt / Abandonment (In the Heideggerian sense)

“How short do you want it?” Making a plane with her hand she showed the woman how short she wanted it. Enjoying the cold edges of the scissors on her nape she saw herself after the woman would finish with her hair. Success was two steps away. As always. Two cuts away, maybe less. Shy, because she had wanted to look at herself in the mirror longer. The folds under her shirt were visible. Gently undulating. Mrs. Lawny had asked them to learn the phrase by heart. They would be asked to match the phrases, in one column, to a set of words in another. She could feel her face growing red and asked how much she owed. “You can pay me fifteen.” Low voice. Co-conspiratorially. She thought the voice demand her face be scrunched up into a grateful smile. But who were they conspiring against? It was her shop. Perhaps, against her patrons? She paid.

Charlie Chaplin had once taken part in a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest. He had come third. When asked about this he said that success was just two steps away. Or something like that.

She had always remembered this anecdote from the numerous that the quizmaster had expected them to know. Sometimes she doubted their truth. It was the way he recounted them, she thought. His cheeks whose firmness seemed to disappear when he told them these anecdotes and the viscous anticipation that clung to his arms, the anticipation of appreciative clapping that dulled the sharpness of truth.

Walking back home was always difficult for her. While working for Makhmalbaf she would recognize the chair as hers. It was the one she had always carried home. It had to be a chair. Somehow she was convinced of its functionality. But she couldn’t have thought that then. Then, it was just a misshapen bundle: the contents were hidden by a floral sheet. The chair would be recognized only a few years later. The edges of the seat that were polished by her back. She asked the actress if she could carry the chair so that the edges of the seat were resting on her back but was told that it would be extremely wearisome. Were they looking at her clothes that were so badly mismatched? Regret at having put on her father’s woolen cardigan crystallized into little red spots on her cheeks. Thank God her cheeks did not look like those of the kuccha children. They had always been described as rosy by her father's unnaturally gleeful students. The lines that seemed to run across the rosy patches and form a peculiar patchwork made her want to brush her fingers over them. Ruddy was what she'd wanted to call them. But they meant almost the same thing, didn’t they, asked her brother. Are you going to tell me you’re going to choose ruddy over rosy because ruddy has “rougher edges” around it?