Unfinished

Years of standing on the precipice
Looking on to a view that didn't exist
A fragment of memory, a bleed of dreams
The need to dive, a tempting song
But out of the ashes of those charred remains
The phoenix of our love flies stillborn.

The hours fly by, the moments still
Daylight erases all manners of sins
Receding footsteps echo off the mirrors
That reflect strangers' faces back at us
We wait a few breaths, drink a few glances
And wait for our unending swan song.

Movie Moments

So we've all done it - fantasized about bumping into an ex at a time when the stars mysteriously align to make sure that you are in a happy place, in a room full of people who love you, that you look good and couldn't give a damn what he thought about you. You've also imagined the various things you would say to him - mostly revolving around what a total asshole he was - but the words would flow from a perfectly scripted place and you wouldn't be tongue-tied or nervous; where you got your entry and exit cues perfectly, where laughs came from rueful mirth and not a desperate cover-up. And the final movie-ideal of actually getting an apology (gasp!!) and being able to genuinely say that "it was okay" - and know that when you said it, you really had forgiven two flawed people and the shit that happened.

Movies and books talk about these kinds of moments. I'm here to tell you that when it happens in real life - and shockingly, it does! - it's much more satisfying.

The Memory of You...

I just heard that the perfect relationship comes from the right mix of chemistry and timing. Someone I dated briefly in NY - Josh - can be described as someone with whom the chemistry was interesting, the timing not. Recently, he got in touch with me and I think I almost wept with the relief of exchanging a few properly spelled words with a man who could make me grin and my knees quiver... a little. As we were talking, I realized what a horrible feeling it was to not be able to share my time in NY with anyone here.

Why not? Because few people get it.

New York isn't just about the bright lights and frenetic pace. For me, it was the ability to step out of my house, grab one of the many convenient trains, go to any part of the city, walk into a bar or a cafe or a diner, chat up with a few friendly strangers there over coffee or a drink, walk down to the Village, stop off at a store and pick up cheap and good wine, watch dancers on stilts performing in Union Square, pull out a blanket in a park, settle down for a picnic, log on to the net from the Park itself and look for things to do the next day, head to Soho for class and stop to pick up a grande from Starbucks, chit-chat with the girl who takes my order, catch up with cousins and friends in the evening, return home to the antics of Cookie the Labrador... and on some days, head out again later to be wrapped in warm fuzzy feelings with my date.

(Looking back, I think my relationship with NY is also one where the chemistry was good, the timing - not so much.)

The few people who perhaps DO get it? They are the people with the faraway look in their eyes when the subject comes up, the wistful smile of remembered happiness followed by "Yeah, New York's great...". And then, a quick but decided shrug to shake off the nostalgia laden dust of that city in favor of all that they have here. And indeed, there IS a lot.

Just... not THAT.

The Year of the Dragon...

... is supposed to be one of many new things for my Chinese sign. Yes, I do read that stuff, and honestly believe that the Chinese have nicer things to say about me than the rest of the astrological nonsense floating around. So, in my infinite wisdom and hypocrisy, I choose to only believe what the most complimentary have to say about my future.

Justifications aside, I have to admit that this year has been full of new things for me. For one, I was around for various family events that I haven't been a part of for years - my father's b'day, the cousins' bday, rakshabandhan with my brother in the same city, 3-month holidays in a different country, being wined-and-dined by three very different but really nice men, showdown with Mom, the earthquake-hurricane-tornado trifecta in New York, starting the editing assignment with a publishing house, writing classes that could be the first step towards a possible life with words.... and finally tonight, meeting with VJ outside the confines of my home with his friends!

If this is how the year's going to be, I'm sold!

Step Away from the Light, Dammit!

Just yesterday, I got into a shouting match with my Mom. Yep, the same lady I've been patiently hearing out about her failed marriages and how various people keep letting her down, while trying to constantly reassure her that I'll always be there for her, etc. All this, in the hope that one day she will get over it. Because, after all, in this Age of Aquarius (or whatever we choose to call this particular Renaissance), Healing is Everything.

However, in the midst of tears and accusations, slammed doors and flying snot, she told me clearly that she has no intention of getting over her internal drama, but that I did have the right to not be a participant to it.

Wow. I wish she'd informed me of that hidden option 17 years ago. That way, I wouldn't have indulged her for the last 17 years in the hope that someday, it'll be my turn to talk to her about my relationship with my Dad without her jumping in with her crap of marrying and being abandoned by the same asshole. Someday, I always imagined, 'll be my turn to spew venom about the years of being torn between Dad and Mom and being the perfect daughter so that they wouldn't have any other complaints in their life. I thought that someday, I'll be able to talk about all of that and hopefully, heal.

No such luck, clearly. And here was the shocker: the minute the words came out of my mouth, I saw the flaw in my reasoning. You see, I finally wrapped my head around a simple truth: My mom owed me nothing. Our parents owe us nothing. Just as they didn't intend to screw us up, they can't intend to fix us the way we need to be.

But there's a real lesson in there - and it's not what you think. While I heard myself talk to her, and marvel secretly about how mature and calm I was (almost detached), I realised that everyday we make a choice about how to live our lives. And the choice we make is whether we:

a) Decide to get over all our crap in your life and lead contented, unruffled lives or
b) Decide to hold on to all our crap and use it as material for fulfilled creative ambitions.

And while my whole life has been geared towards getting over stuff, I somehow think my mom has it right. She - with all her carefully nurtured psychoses - has written an entire book (which some people say is really good), while I write blog posts.

And the irony of this particular revelation? The minute I realised that my mom wasn't going to be the source of my healing, and that Dad is always going to be the asshole, I had no choice but to deal with the fact that my Life and all I make of it is going to be my choice. Yes, I know it's common knowledge, but you'll be surprised how much of a distance exists between common knowledge and relevant wisdom.

So now, I'm more well-adjusted than I was yesterday. And I probably have lesser things to write about.

This healing business is sucking a bit right now. Not to mention the kind of havoc it's playing with my ambitions. Dammit!

Love Letter to a Poet and a Stranger

Is it weird to have fallen for words that breathe and leap off the page
like harsh poetry in the middle of a sun-dappled afternoon
where the smell of death competes with the grasping pull
of sex reminding the breathless that air is superfluous
and the gluttonous that food is in plenty
enough to have you choked on it
unable to swallow and destined
to consume for the rest of
your insipid life
all the while hoping
that you could see me
through the looking
glass, misted
over with
your
breath?

Maybe it is.

Just had to put it out there and hope that perhaps you read it.

To Frankie Leone

How do I miss thee?

Wine in the park, walk down Madison Avenue, flea market in Hell's kitchen, barbeque festival in Union Square, forever 21, Shakespeare and a picnic, secret bars, crowd around Sunflowers, that quaint shop in the East Village, the subway map that took me everywhere, sandwiches packed with meat, making out under a drizzling tree, eyes meeting on the train and becoming a missed connection, Andy Warhol parties, coffee and free wifi, walking, holding the hand that wore the wedding ring under the watchful gaze of Bettie Page, high lines and sunsets, Christina Perri and Bebel Gilberto, the city winery and its 400 wines, talking on the corner of Houston and Greenwich till 4 am, Soho-Noho-Out-You-Go-Ho, words on a page that had a life of their own, Sidney Poitier through the rain drops, the strung out poet and his tryst with Alcoholics Anonymous, classical quartet at Washington Square, children dancing in the fountain, dinner and a show in the theatre district, blind dates and Times Square, clubs, broken high heeled shoes, movie dreams with friends under Washington Arch amidst brightly colored umbrellas, traipsing through Chinatown, the Family Guy with the family, waiting for the rain to stop with the certainty that it won't take longer than a few minutes, Atlantic city-Pennsylvania-after-hours-beer-shopping, step-family, the Borough of Lost Boys, concerts on the pier, pets, laughter and love...

But I'm home now.

And it's different. It's all very different.

Natural Disasters

Americans are known far and wide for over-reacting to everything. With Irene making her way north up the east coast, the amount of panic that is showing up directly through the air-waves and into the homes is increasing on an massive scale. People are protecting their over-mortgaged homes with sandbags and prayers, before putting their favorite things into their fuel-guzzling vehicles and heading off to higher ground.

Except of course my dad. He, in all his wisdom, is planning to drive INTO the evacuation zone for a family lunch. Yep, he is going to get into his tiny car, with his wife and daughter, and drive right into the middle of the place that everyone else is leaving. Or supposed to.

It's likely that everyone is over-reacting. But do we really want to examine what it would be like being stuck in a tiny car, on a packed road, with just the three of us inside it, without lunch and the huge sign on our heads that says, "Morons who travel into the hurricane and are the first casualties in the beginning of a disaster movie"? Does our relationship really need that?

On to the Next...

Today I blew off a rather attractive and highly prominent lawyer who seems to like me, so I could watch the final not-the-best-film-ever-made Harry Potter with my brother and his wife. A few days ago, I stopped emailing a cute, interesting, self-aware doctor who made me laugh. A few weeks before that, I kissed a sweet investment banker goodnight, while I framed a Dear John letter to him in my head.

Okay, so none of them was perfect. Who is? The lawyer is in the middle of a messy separation, has two kids and a domicile in South Africa. The doctor is going through some weird finding-himself-through-tantric-sex-with-anything-that-moves phase which, so long as it doesn't affect me, is quite hilarious. The investment banker is just--lonely. But none of these were the deal breakers so much as the fact that I inexplicably lost interest.

Clearly I have a blinking light above my head that says, "All ye lost and weird, come to Mama!" which, in the weirdness capital of the world, I have been getting my share of. But losing interest... now that has been the stumbling block - and not just here. I've been in NYC for two months now, and right from the start, when I began meeting these really interesting men who had more to their lives than movies and TV shows and media jobs, the expiry-date status of my stay was crystal clear. So, we just spent time getting to know one another and things went along swimmingly. We went out, saw concerts, went to the beach, visited some really cool pubs and bars, picnic-ed under the trees.. all the fun stuff. And we talked. Sometimes late into the night. And then suddenly... there's attraction.. and in my case, a sudden pull-back.

Anyone who has been reading this online diary for any period of time knows that sexual attraction - for better or worse - hasn't been scary for me. Indeed, regardless of what the future holds, sex has mostly been about fun. Now, so many years down the line, I have to ask if my previously fought for standards have shifted and is it possible that I'm genuinely looking for something deeper... In which case, do I have to start saying no to all those potentially fun encounters?

Back home, I have a ton of loose ends that need to be dismissed. A major portion of this trip is about waiting for those loose ends to wither into nothingness in the absence of proximity. And about discovering what it is that I want. During these three months, only three men have stayed in touch with me, who have missed me and made no secret of that fact. Only with one of them have I shared a sexual history with - and that was a disaster. Without going into too many details, let's just say that none of these men is comfortably right for me...

Which brings me to the question - If I'm saying no to "just sex", and none of these men is right for me in the "something deeper" context... what's next?

Dancing in the Dark

I don't trust my father.

These five words have come to define my entire relationship with men.

Sitting as I am these days among complete families - dysfunctional sometimes - I see so many young women who adore their fathers. I see so many fathers who are irritating, embarrassing, even downright silly - but undoubtedly deeply loving of their children. And in the midst of all that, I see in their relationships the confidence that regardless of what life throws at them, fundamentally nothing really can go wrong.

It's likely that I'm crediting healthy, normal father-daughter relationships with too much value. For anyone who has been in a family where the only communication between dads and moms has been screaming and anger, the biggest wish has always been that the parents will separate. I want to clarify here that this post isn't about mom and dad relationships but about parent-child ones.

The other day, I celebrated my father's birthday. It's rare that I get to see him that day, and my brother and I decided to take him and his wife out to dinner. I walked into the restaurant, late as always, and he gets up off his chair, happy to see me. He takes me in his arms, and we dance a bit of a mixed up waltz together to some honkey-tonk music.

It was one of those perfect movie moments that show a deep and real relationship between a father and his daughter.

And all that time, I couldn't look at him. It was such an alien feeling to have my dad hold me. And when he pulled me into a dip, I let his shoulder go, to hold on to a nearby bar stool for support, making him kind of superfluous in the situation. I trusted a piece of furniture to hold me up better than my father. I could just as well have been dancing alone.

Which is what I think I end up doing anyway.

My dad told me a long time ago that I should stop being this cliched "child of broken family" and hanging all my issues on his shoulder. The thing is, I don't care about the fact that mommy and daddy couldn't stand each other. The real betrayal, I want to remind him, was the 5 years of emotional and mental trauma through disappointment-filled letters and phone calls exchanged between the two of us - a 45 year old man and a 15 year old girl. Each painful exchange chipped away at the fundamental belief that nothing could possibly go wrong so long as daddy was around.

Maybe I've been singing this song for too long already. But I can't help but think that if perhaps I'd gotten used to my father dancing with me over the years, that if I'd seen up close and personal that despite the mistakes one makes while learning to dance, one still sticks around to finish it, that dancing is about learning the steps and not everyone is a perfect dancer to begin with but they do become better with practice - it may have been easier for me to accept a real-life imperfect partner.

Instead today, I don't go dancing unless I have a handy bar stool nearby. Often, I just sit on it and watch and wonder at the ability of the people around me to trust another human being to not drop them. And usually, even in a crowd, I dance alone.

Oh man.

Bound By Contract

I'm beginning to suspect that Sheldon Cooper wasn't all wrong when it came to having a roommate agreement. I think all relationships should have a written contract. In marriages, the pre-nup is becoming quite the norm, but what about boyfriends and living-together-ness? In India, more than anywhere else, where the whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing is still quite nascent, given the background noise of "arranged marriages', it becomes of even greater import. Also, I'm sure it would be easier to navigate a relationship if there's a clearly set down roster of needs and expectations.

This entire thing has come to the forefront of my thoughts because I currently find myself in an un-relationship. The truth is while there's nothing really going on, this un-relationship is showing all the markings of something that could possibly strangle it.

Take for example the idea of space. In my life, space plays a very important role in my well-being. As a writer, I need a certain amount of space to think, stare at my ceiling in contemplative silence, listen to my fan as it turns creakily, watch mindless TV shows, etc. But mostly I need solitude.

Now insert into this picture, a boy apparently with a lot of time on his hands. To this time, he brings an almost continuous conversational chatter, the demands of "what do we eat / drink / watch / play / do?", the sweet yet cloying amorous advances. Add to this the demands of my regular day of meetings and deadlines and friends... I don't have a moment to myself!

Don't get me wrong, it's all very sweet and incredibly flattering. But I do have moments of supreme irritation. Like today, when he told me that he was going to meet some friends in another suburb, I found myself changing my going-out plans because i'd finally have the house to myself! I won't even talk about the number of times I've stepped out of my home simply because he was there, and I needed to get away. And I'll never breathe a word about the amount of that getaway time I've spent driving and making phonecalls. What a train-wreck!

Which brings me here. If having a relationship is about adding value to your life, and not just about driving you up the wall, then one needs to look at things which make your life full of value. In my case, it's my work.

I love writing. And reading. I like to watch films in the comfort of my home. I like to eat when I'm hungry and not so much otherwise. I like my glass of wine. Sometimes I have a lot of it. I love to hang out with biggish groups of friends. I like having independent and complicated relationships with people. I like giving all the people in my life one-on-one time. I like the fact that I'm not accountable to anyone. I enjoy sex but some days I'd rather read a book before i sleep. I like the freedom to not do something including opening the door or wearing clothes if it's that kind of day. I don't love having to keep the contents of my life a secret from my friends, even though it often works out that way.

(Yes, I can see why I've been single for so long.)

Notice the absence of "I love the way a man looks at me when he loves me" and other such lines? I realize it could be a result of having been single or in complicated scenarios for the last five years, but I find myself anti-mush. And in the spirit of Anti-Mushness, I feel there should be certain guidelines for every relationship to follow.

*Replace what you finish, fix what you break.
*Stay over only ____ number of days a week, and only ______ number of days back-to-back.
*If you're living together, make his-only and hers-only inviolate spaces in the house.
*Spend atleast 6 continuous hours away from each other during the day. This does not include sleep time.
*Spend time together outdoors.
*Make time to meet your pre-relationship friends as a single person. Don't hide away your partner, but don't be surgically attached either.

This is clearly a work in progress. While I work out the other details, maybe I should just have quoted Kahlil Gibran.

Gasp! Look at this!

It's different, yes. But the reason I decided to change the look of my blog was because I saw another one that looked exactly like mine. It's disconcerting to look in the mirror and then not see yourself.

Also, after five years or so of blogging about my life, I feel better about looking at things differently.

And, I have about 20 pages of writing to do, so what better way to procrastinate? :)

Tiny Explosions

He walks unperturbed through the landscape of my life, stepping on little minefields, while I watch open-mouthed wondering which one will finally tear him apart. But he continues regardless.

"So will you come over home and we could hang out?"

"Maybe you should spend a few days with me at my place..."

"Let's plan a short trip together."

"I love you."

"Baby, you have to stop saying that, it's just scary..."

"I know, I know.. even I wouldn't know what to do if you said it back to me..."

"I'm not saying anything back to you.."

"I know."

The background track changed to "Something Stupid".

He smiled at me as I wondered why I wasn't panicking.

Hello You

I want to write something about you. I want to tell someone how different you are. I want to chuckle with someone about the fact that you think you're too honest for your own good. I hope you never change that about you. I want to tell you that when I smile at you, I'm actually marveling at your ability to wear your heart on your sleeve, and have arrow marks pointing to it. You seem fearless and vulnerable, a potent combination that makes you charming beyond belief. You make me want to not be cynical... to believe for just that one minute that pigs do fly and that the phoenix is born out of its own ashes. I want to explain what making someone feel beautiful means - and I want to invite you to the front of the class for show and tell. I want to tell everyone about you. You, my little secret.

That Time of the Decade Again...

I'm considering chucking up my life here and heading to New York. The excuse is a 10-week writing course. It's a good excuse because there is a germ of honesty in that. The course will help me structure my writing better. It will give me a fairly objective perspective when it comes to the qualitative analysis of my writing. It will tell me how to get out of screenplay writing mode and attempt prose. It will help me find my voice... and tell me how to hold on to it. All of these are very good reasons, enough in themselves.

But the real truth is this. I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted by the constant struggle my writing is becoming because I don't know whose opinion to trust. I'm exhausted with the mediocrity of thought and action. I'm tired of constantly re-evaluating my friendships and tired of finding myself dispirited. I'm tired of seeing the same faces, having the same conversations, the same irritations, the same view from my window. After days of being alone at home, I'm tired of stepping out, only to discover that I haven't missed anything. I'm tired of asking myself the question, "Is this really as good as it gets?"

Thirteen years ago, I'd had the same feelings and they led me to pack my bags and leave a city for good. I haven't looked back even once. Is that the same thing that's happening now? I don't know. I have many more things holding me here than I ever did there. There's love linked to this city, which is a big difference. And it's only a question of 10 weeks give or take.

On the flip side, I will be missing from my job market here for almost three months. At a time when I've started to build an independent clientele who are quite happy to return to me, disappearing on them for three months is not the smartest move. Also, this will be an expensive ten weeks, and I shall return to a bank balance that will not be as much in the black as I'm accustomed to. Then, there's the question of what I shall be doing when I'm not working 12-hour days (almost 60 days) in a city which is unfamiliar at best. The answer, I'm hoping, is not tearing out my hair out of sheer boredom.

Almost everyone I've spoken to about this is extremely supportive of the idea of me going. The thought of getting away for an appreciable period of time makes me happy. To be able to live and work on my craft in the creative center of the world is delicious, even if I get told that my writing sucks. But I'm also wondering if this is my version of a Porsche to ride out my mid-life crisis.