Weird!

There is no escaping now, I think, now that I actually have been tagged to write something. There always is the 'was too busy with my thesis to blog' trick. Sadly, there is also the 'I wrote a 1000 word essay, yet again, about the same thing I always write about and it's now your turn' trick too. The problem is that there is nothing weird about me. Or interesting. which, as ye invisible readers must've figured out by now, is the reason I write so little and so far between. So, I present to you a list of, let's jus call em amusing, facts about me.

Oh, wait, the 'rules' of the tag. I'm required to
a. Link to the person that tagged me: Ziah, you couldn't have chosen a time worse than now, lady. Follow the blog closely and make him do fun stuff like this: it's easy, I leave symbols to guide you. Leave me to my inappropriate RSS style propaganda posts!
b. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about me: Patience, we're gettin there!
c. Tag 7 other people at the end of the post: Now, this is gonna be a challenge. Ashok, hon, we really need to socialize.

And now *drumroll* Seven Amusing Things About Aishwarya

a. I have nine moles on my face. Three around my mouth which in the absence of the other two could've worked perfectly as beauty spots. Yeah, I know what you're thinkin. I don't have skin cancer.

b. Or Diabetes. Or Pancreatitis. Not severely hypochondriac, but slowly and surely gettin there. With support and borrowed paranoia from Ashok. It is quite strange that I'm still alive considering I grew up in a household that firmly believed in paracetamol panacea. So, I'm surprised that nothing's wrong with my body (goddammit, the brother at least has allergies) and try to read a li'l too much into every stomach ache and sneeze.

c. Oh, nor do I have 'weird brain disease' that makes me wildly intelligent as it worsens. Always wanted to have a major catastrophic illness which no one but I and a friendly uncle knows about. And wither away. And be a genius the world didn't know it was losing. And then die within 24 hours of my secret being revealed and leave behind some unimaginably brilliant work.

d. Yeah, I stare at the pimples on my ceiling all night and dream up a lotta weird things like that. I can also loose track of time admiring myself in the mirror. I cannot start using a new pair of socks without first checkin if that tiny metal clip/hook/thing holding the socks together makes for a good clip-on nose ring.(it does.)I always smile at myself in the mirror, even if I've been crying till just a moment ago. I've tried practicing speeches in front of the mirror but never get past a line or two because I start smiling at myself. Very embarrassing but I must admit that I feel better when I look good. I suck at looking good.

e. I don't understand what the big deal about a hot meal or a hot drink is. It think this too is a direct after-effect of my largely forgotten but probably traumatic childhood. Mom was busy being the busy working woman and middle-class India had not discovered the magic of microwave yet. So now, I walk into a coffee shop in our crazy Minnesotan winter and ask for an IceCrema 'cause I can't wait till regular coffee cools down enough for me to be able to even sip and the barista has this look that reads, 'the snow probably does weird things to immigrant-looking people'.

f. I can sleep for obscene lengths of time. And if my neck didn't begin hurting after 16 hours, I'd sleep some more. No, we're not talkin about crashing after a tiring day, once in a while. We're talkin about weeks spent just sleeping and waking up to eat and then sleeping some more. Ashok thinks I'm hibernating.

g. Most days I'm happy spending my time alone. There are very few people I care about. I am the most important person in the world. But, I also want to travel a lot and meet people worth traveling across the planet to meet.

Oh, alright, so the last one was not really all that weird.
Or amusing.
That's because, I can't think of seven weird things about myself. I might be conceited. Wait, if I'm not sure does that mean I'm not?
And I did ask him for one weird thing about me. Well, he's too friggin scared of me to actually suggest anything weird enough for the purposes of this post. Like I'd believe the very fake,'shit, there's nothin weird about you??' thing he did. Just you wait till we quarrel again.

Now for the tagging 7 other people part. I can't think of many people who'd take me seriously if I were to tag them. And most of the people I can think of have already been tagged. Thanks a ton, Ziah. So, I'm gonna be really fair and let him tag four people and come up with three forward links myself.

Here's my list.
all or nothing who doesn't really say much ever but just might take this on for a change.
Ubiquitous who hasn't written much in a long long time. and,
Alien who's been around since we started this blog.

do nightmares have a director's cut?

people unsound of the mind, and unhappy with the world have imaginary friends. they call them jack. or tyler. depending on whether you vote for the shining or the fight club. people high on newsroom conspiracies and invisible wmd's have imaginary fears. they call them muslims. or any of the equally islamic names of oil-rich countries. depending on whether you vote republican or democratic. those with vivid imagination, and lotsa spare time, have imaginary lives. they call them hell or heaven. depending on whether they vote for suicide or an eternal cycle of pause, play and repeat. i am one of them. i lead an imaginary life.

let me,or something like it,explain.

i live alone. but in the company of the girl of my dreams. i don't talk to people. but my jaws hurt reeling out my day to her. i don't eat much. but i light my rationed cigarette after every home cooked meal. i don't have a home. but i try painting every wall red and blue. i don't have kids. but i help them with their homework everyday. i know am losing it. but i have everything to the point of excess. i have the best imaginary life in the universe. every unimportant thing that happens, is an important plot point. every new indie rock song, a thankless addition to the original sound track of the life i don't have. singing in praise of the people we are both not. not yet.

forever suspended in anticipation. beauty delayed on arrival. and a future of unmitigated goodness, lost in transit.

freeze frames and picture books of anniversaries that never happened. conversations and minor conflicts that almost seem real. walking barefoot on sand and foam, hand in hand with thin air. lulled into sleep by the whispers of a cold wave. painting stick-people with my fingertips, on the small of her back. and the nape. both made out of regulated hallucinations. making shapes out of cotton candy clouds. and laughing back at the memory of her face. and her laughing back at the memory of mine. uncorking wine and tinkling tall glasses that are always empty, and never spill over. li'l triumphs over everydayness, gloriously memorable victories over the general dictatorship of boredom, sweeping acquisitions of lifestyle enhancements. all ignorant of their strange intangibility and obvious impossibility.

invitation to a display of blank painting frames. holiday cruises on ghost ships through dead fish. and weekends in the basement. with the music on mute.

i love all forms of my life. love the way it pans out of lush green grasslands to reveal one winged monsters. determined to take their loss of flight out on my wish to soar. i love my wished for life. with all its predictable drama. and the imaginary long faces and even longer freeways to reality and perspective. i love the girl of my dreams. i know she is real. i know she is out there. somehow dreaming up the same impossible dream. reaching out through the haze and hate, that goes around as respectable denizens of this dying planet, battling out her own army of scampering personal demons. scheming a way out to me at the other end of the labyrinth. in my fairy tale, she has to reach me while i am still standing. and for me to get back up on my feet, i'll have to hit ground soon.


and wake up.

A Change in Theme

because it's my turn to write and as ever I can't think of anything to write about. This evening started with I thinking of watching Munich. I sauntered into its IMDB page to check the ratings before I began but found myself reading page after page of discussion on the Israeli-Arab conflict. In the words of one of the more reasonable sounding Jews on the board there was one "propagandist, the ideologue who cares more about winning an argument, trouncing an enemy, upholding the virtue of the ingroup, than testing her assumptions and learning something new" supporting zionist politics, battling a whole bunch of people and rejecting everything that sounded sane. Then for a natural progression towards 'Hindutva' and Vedic 'Science'. However, most of the stuff I read offended me, like all those of-course-god-exists! arguments with Ashok do, mostly because all the (scholarly) text only adds to all the reasons there are for quitting on Hinduism. When I don't wanna quit. But then, I found this:

I asked myself, what sort of secularism have we created in our country that has appropriated my claim to my intellectual heritage?

and am convinced I should hang on.

So, even if he hates me for doing this to our blog while he sleeps, blissfully unaware, here's the link to a paper I loved: The Dilemma of a Liberal Hindu