Warps of Living.....

Note to self:
I will not live in contradictions and dilemmas
I will not run after answers to looped questions.
I will not look for traces of times and people gone by.

From the failure and futility of this...these systematic 'notes to self'

11 months into my return to this god forsaken hell hole of a city and while the heat blisters and weaves itself into shimmering waves outside and runs in endless loops inside my head, I eat, sleep, sweat, curse, lament, think and well...exist.
Time flies...its been one year come and gone already.
Time runs and crawls at its own pace..what's one year in the many to come and go?

What have I done in these 300 odd days? A little bit of this, that and the other? Much as I love the sound and play of these words, they really tell all and say nothing. I thought then, that I should attempt a list of things I have done in this year...things done, seen, thought of and learnt too? A list like that and a blog post on that are a cliche I am told. Damn right its a cliche. But then what in our lives is really new? Where we have been living for eons, overlaps and repetitions are but consequential aren't they?
And so, for the list in random non-sequential and un-patterned thinking.....

A return to the city is a return to its people.It was a sudden (in the truest sense of the word) decision to leave the city and then to return. The city changes and stalls at all times. It traps and releases...at the end of each day, it just is there..silent yet loud. My people here....yes they are my people, the very coordinates of daily living...well my people here are as caught in the flux of living as I am..some more than others. Forms and shapes have changed. My space is ever widening and shrinking daily. Old associations I carry along with fights, cursing, laughter and love. New ones I try to fit into this pattern. I returned to the city and my people. Some took me right back and some...well some left me behind and walked away.

People will ask for proof. Numbers, facts , figures, dates, definite instances...actions and deeds..that is all that matters. Our cynicism is not limited to our selves. The essential doubt extends to all beyond us. Nothing stands outside its purview. What I work hard to believe in, will be questioned at every word and every comma I use. And then I am told that in my being questioned and ripped apart, is the truest test of my belief. Is my failure proving your point well enough for your cynical satisfaction? Words and ideas loose force.....I say its over...I am done with bits and portions of my past floating in and out of this present life. But I am told, its not over yet. What do I believe? A simple notion held in the heart or another's conclusion premised on analytical objective observations? Its proof you want. Its proof I don't have.

The idea of abstinence is slightly warped. Its delusional. You can get rid of the things and habits in physicality. I do not doubt that. But can you divest yourself of the idea? Can you abstain from the idea of it? Nothing ever leaves us does it? People, places, things, habits...tangibility alone is transient. Whatever remains beyond that...is there...just there..The tail ends of a flash of living...

I live in a world of morbid distortions. Having said that, I wonder what example to give...which part of my life do I throw open by way of proof? I am thinking now whether its the morbidity which has increased over this one year or the distortion. Or perhaps its just the active awareness of these that has increased....Does it even matter?

The year's made me high on existential angst. Then yesterday I figured that there is an existential boredom too. I have fallen victim to both I think. I believe I have done almost everything I could to release myself from this stupefying slumber. I have stopped at nothing (by my standards of course). I have even gone and spent time in shopping malls. Where my first five and a half years in Delhi were a record of not going to malls (other than that one time at the end of the first year when my parents and their friends dragged me to one...), this second phase in Delhi has seen me tripping over to malls across the city (actually only to Select City Walk) with a frequency which is fast becoming a cause of concern to me. I was proud of my I-don't-go-to-malls stand and record. It was at once coming from a personal dislike of closed, air conditioned and falsely manipulated spaces and from a rebellion...no a weak pseudo rebellion against the sham of modern existence and philosophy. Select City Walk does nothing but increase my existential anxiety (note that its anxiety and not angst this time..... not that it makes much of a difference at the end of it all). Its a strange place indeed. Each person walks by you in a cloud of rich expensive perfume. Women are dressed as physical examples of the clash of cultures and times. Stick thin, straight hair and a smart short black dress from Zara...perfect. But what is that atrocious bunch of I-am-newly-wed bangles doing on your wrists woman?!!! Another woman comes with her husband and his parents for a late evening coffee to Costa. I sit in the corner, deep in the attempt of disappearing from there and make the City Walk world go poof....and I see all four of them in earnest conversation. Avid face expressions, frantic hand movements and vigorous head shaking...they all probably live in the same house anyway. So why did they come here, in the middle of head hurting loud un-music to have a conversation? Couldn't you all have talked at home? Is this some new idea of real family time? Costa, a site of family dramas unfolding and decision making?
Young parents with younger kids...early initiation into fast living?
Old couples from the Delhi nouveau rich houses...seeking a place in changed times?
Kids bunking school....rebellion?
The whole world collapses inside those three malls and resurrects itself anew in warped realities.
Its a play of my anxieties you could say....in all probabilities it is....but I am have consciously decided to now un-mall myself. Temporarily at least.

We lead lives in alternatives. There are a million different roles we play and a thousand divergent lives we live. Everyday. All the time. To that extent we are schizophrenic. And in this year, this time, the spaces between my lives is increasing. We construct and structure our worlds through lies..a small one here and another one there. Wrap it. Wrap it. Wrap it. Wrap yourself away from a false world. Wrap yourself inside your own world of lies. Only now my lies confuse me. I forget what I said. My lies contradict their own selves. One to the second, the second to the third and the third to the fourth. In endless exponents they come and walk away with the small little truths that I thought I was. I wonder now, even as I write, will there be something left for me to salvage and protect when this world crumbles? If you strip me bare of my lies, nothing of me will be left I think. I am long gone already.

It costs about a hundred ten rupees to travel in an auto from CP to home. I lived a hundred rupees worth of life yesterday in that time and money while returning home.
Home? I found my home in people. A people? Some people?
Its just people. Thats all. The be all and sum all of all our lives. And when they leave? For they will, there is no doubt about that. Then? Does a home end with people? In the life I lived in those 25 odd minutes in the auto, I kept wondering if I could induce a flash of psychedelic recollection. What bits of myself would I have recollected? And from these recollections would I ever manage to find that one tiny crack that could perhaps take me back to where I was and who I was a long long time ago? Don't call this regression. Don't label it anything. It's nothing at all and yet it is all that we want sometimes. You and I....to return to those false ideas of innocence and simplicity..When there is nothing simple about the moment of conception then how can our human beginnings be simple? Innocence is not a word. Its a lie.

There is much of the I everywhere. In your world and mine, that is all that matters. You are. I am......we lost out on much of the us that was ever possible. We only delude ourselves with doubles and plurals. Its a singular life of singular living. Where do we create the space for plurals? Why? This is irony. I ridicule the plural here and yet even as I write I find comfort in the plurals of living.
This is my refuge. From a world of lies and from my own lies. A refuge at times from my own self. You.
You sleeps deep and easy. I write.


I cannot quantify my year of living again. I am changing. One day at a time....we become strangers to our own selves and call it growth. The ideas that we are....that I was are drifting away...But from my distortions and delusions I am happy enough. For now.