Moving Forward

Funny how people waltz into your life. Waltz may actually be too graceful a term. It certainly doesn't apply to everyone. People crash and stumble and knock you over. They stroll in, whistling casually. Maybe even winking. They smile, they coerce, they walk in backwards. Sometimes you don't even notice that they're there till the last minute.

And then they leave.

Funny how sometimes you think you can't live without them. Moments in alleyways, pauses in conversations, shared smiles alll deceive you. All make you think that this is it. There's no living without this now. This feeling, this spring in your step, this person.

And when they leave, you're shocked to discover that  life actully does go on. And you go on without them, But then again, why wouldn't you?

Today

I got my first university rejection.


=/

Blah.

Sometimes it worries me that I'm surrounded by people who don't seem to care about knowing.

Today

I realized I fucking love postmodernism.

Published in the streets of Dhaka

I’m not too big on poetry. I certainly don’t have the knowledge to appreciate Ghalib and Rumi. But sometimes I come across a poem that really makes me want to major in Literature instead of Sociology and Politics next year.


Here’s one I read yesterday


Here I will stay, plumb in the centre
Of monsoon-mad Bengal, watching
Jackfruit leaves drift earthward
In the early morning breeze
Like a famous predecessor used to
And take note too
Of flashing knives, whirling sticks, burning bombs,
And accompanying gutturals and fricatives of hate,
And evil that requires no axis
To turn on, being everywhere
And should all these find their way
Into my scribbles and into print
I’ll cut a joyous caper right here
On the tropic of Cancer, proud to be
Published in the streets of Dhaka

Kaiser Haq

I love this poem. I’m not sure why. Maybe because you can read it all in one breath, maybe because the phrase ‘monsoon-mad’ makes so much sense to someone living in South Asia (and the irony that comes with that, the fact that we have taken the English language and made it our own) maybe the dramatic ending or the rich picture it paints. Or perhaps because the poet takes the good and the bad, the beautiful and the disturbing and casts them all in the same light of love. Whatever it is, I am writing this one on my bedroom wall.

Visiting

They looked up as we drove by. Looked up from smoking whatever it is they were smoking, looked up from kick starting their motorcycles, looked up from chewing paan and stared as the sleek black car drove past them, hunting for a tiny house. We hunt for it every year without fail, meandering our way through narrow roads, almost colliding with anorexic donkeys and cursing ourselves because we come here, to this neighbourhood, every single year and have still never managed to find the place without calling them at least five times.

It's a small house as befits the neighbourhood. Small and untidy and unworthy of a second glance. Unless you bother to look closer and notice the graffiti, the peeling plaster, the cracks in the roof which fell in last year when the rains came and refused to go away. It's not worth smiling at the people until you notice that they've opened a new bottle of coke for you and the cake they put in front of you is untouched. They're not worth wasting your time on until you realize that you are the only family and friends that have visited this year. In fact, you are the only family-and-friends to have visited any year.

And then you smile as you politely sip your coke and show off your mehndi. You ask how the second daughter's MBA is going. You look at photos from some distant cousins's wedding. And you forget the peeling paint, the looks their neighbours gave you and the fact that their clothes are so different from your own.

After all, this is family,

Eid Mubarak everyone ^^