Jotting for BLS.

Bangalore Love Story - Workshop II.

A Love Story is like a large sheet of cellophane wrapping ones being. Mummifying a part of you
forever... keeping chips of heart together... One can’t tell how tightly
wrapped you are. It’s transparent, you see...

Mine is tinged with a bit of green, grey and red... it is tinged with a bit
of Bangalore.

I find most people share this tinged cellophane with me...

This is what binds the BLS team together... a ream of cellophane stories
running into each other. Overlapping. Superimposed. Becoming one.

After two weekends at the farm, I see us owning each other’s stories. We
don’t necessarily have to have shared it but we know that everyone is here
for the same exact reason you are here; to tell a story of Love, to give off
oneself.

The second workshop saw people joining us anew, who couldn’t make it the
first week. The ease with which they melded in with the “actors’ workshop
veterans" was amazing. Jyo and Bree burst into the scene with such elegance
and tenderness it made one weep. Mr.Handsome quietly brings an innocent
honesty that makes one want to tug at his cheeks like one would do to a
baby.

One can tell we are all here with the right kind of heart. The same kind of
heart. We are going to be a great team.

“Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of its trouble, attempts what is above
its strength, pleads no excuse for impossibility, for it thinks all things
are lawful for itself and all things are possible.”- Thomas Kemp.


For more on Bangalore Love Story: http://infinitesoulsfarmandartistsretreat.blogspot.com/

Circadian Cycles...

A character in a certain unremarkable movie made a very astute observation...
"It looks like a crime scene in my pants".

I largely agree.

Every once in, say a month, I wake up with a clear head, cheerful as if yesterday had never happened... all set to take on the day... There's this energy surging through me... I could do anything and everything... I feel oh-so-light and frothy... even pulled off a somersault once... But this is only a distraction... a fake rubber serotonin loaded bone the universe throws you just before hitting you over the head with that 'crime scene in your pants'.

Two or so days before the fact comes this false sense of well-being which is quickly over taken often by a sudden stab of unwantedness and a whole bouquet of emotions... a spectrum of  saintly, ambitious, child-like, child-ish, deviant, homicidal, suicidal, even genocidal tendencies in quick succession.

This is popular as P.M.S... Look it up...

If some one so much as breathes around me, I could take their head off... Attending a phone call feels like listening to a coconut scraper going at it with a ceramic plate... A constant frown lodged on my forehead, happiness seemingly light years away... I'll never smile again and I won't let you either... Get away while you can!

See its mostly out of my control... Its like the weather... There's no telling... Ask  the weather man...

Then, thank gravity in the heavens, the horrifying prelude ends, only to give way to the 120 hour long biological chorus, which only makes one feel worse. Worse because, its the end of the unpredictable roller coaster and it all steadily, monotonously slants downhill towards the valley of cramps and discomfort. Aching bones and backs...

Then I remember that glorious gift of the Maya and the Aztecs to woman kind - You know what...

Although there is a better cure to pain than the brown gooey stuff; Somebody once said to me, women are the most sexually charged when menstruating... Was quite convincing and I was inclined to agree...

But we are on the most readily available remedy now... So, the moment it dissolves in my mouth, I'm human again...

In the end it isn't all that bad... Just goes to show how eventful having a uterus can be... A show recurring for most of your life... Isn't always entertaining, but there it is... to keep you company through thick and thin... Instrumental to the miracle of life... Your best chum.

(WARNING to the unaware: This is a personal account... The episodes vary greatly from woman to woman...) 

Feliz Cumple!

There's always a certain nervousness as the day approaches... Like the run up to a performance to a large audience... 

One would be woken by the slight tickle on the foot, a soft voice in the ear and the warm hug one always is in need of... Festive morning, with everyone on tiptoes around you trying to make you feel as special as possible within the walls of your home...

Nobody knocks on the bathroom door this day... Water will not be a concern for today... All soaked in oil, scrubbed clean one emerges to brand new clothes with creases as fresh as blossoming jasmines and the pooja niche all set up...

She looks on with pride and he with all the affection... She's happier than you could ever be for yourself... Its like its the day she was born... 

9 times out of 10, he would've forgotten... but she smooths it over for you...

Then one goes around to the rest of the family, touching feet, getting blessed, collecting that little token hundred rupee note from each one...

All your favourite things are cooked on this day... and you're smothered with hugs and kisses from time to time the entire day...

Then comes the evening, with a little rain every time. Out comes the cake and a trail of little utilitarian gifts for school that'll begin in five days... They sing, you make a wish... the same one every year... One went to bed with a sense of having accomplished growth for another year, waiting for the next one already...

But one had begun finding them quite stressful for the past few years... for one no longer lived within those comforting mud walls of no expectation. One had started to become a citizen of the big bad world...With "plans" to make, and "celebrate" the day more to give a bunch of 'there now-now not' friends an excuse to have a night out on town and spend that precious little time with you, it becomes more of a chore... A misguided sense of wanting to do the done thing that everyone does and looking for that elusive story of the ultimate crazy intoxicated birthday to tell for the rest of the year. It is somehow against one's good sense, with no happiness to be found and no wishes to be made... No wishes, because none of the thoughtless morons ever think of getting you a birthday cake... 

With the unhappiness comes the anxiety of growing older by another year and of not accomplishing anything of substance... nothing of value to show for the years one has lived...

Then comes the time when one is used to the big bad world and has their own little niche of warm mud walls...

This time around, there was that familiar knot in the stomach, the nervousness from two days before, like you are afraid you might screw up getting older, but there was no pressure... although one decided one wasn't going to let there be any pressure.

So one went about business as usual...after the rare visit to the temple and making sure the social networks weren't broadcasting around the world that it was your birthday...

One couldn't help not getting sweet stuff for the people at work place... Having a birthday during the summer can make one resentful for not getting to be the one kid not in uniform and actually getting to distribute candy to the entire school...

A regular, noisy, laced with alcohol, good natured lunch with new found friends, going on a wild goose chase for the tree of wisdom and finding it... A walk with one's greatest friend and another random person in the dark wilderness of a park and stumbling on-for the first time in one's life- Glow worms zipping around in the silvery shadows...

A regular day... more fulfilling than others... Lovely, quiet and grown up...

Thank you...

Little Lily wants to go fishing...

Still and alert... At the edge of undulating water threatening to swallow her...

Fishing is a very demanding activity featuring a lot of inactivity I would think... I wouldn't know...
I have never gone fishing, in its literal sense..

[But one must have realised by now that this metaphor of fishing is not working as well as one would've liked and this attempt is quite sodden.]

Fishing seems passive unlike hunting and pursuing with aggressive focussed intent...

She does not see herself as a predator or a pursuer. Her inherent laid back-ness manifests itself in her choice of sport as well...She'd rather wait and watch, letting the prey come to her, in their own space, take their own sweet time.

It may not be as satisfyingly morbid as thrusting a knife deep into bleeding flesh, or shooting a poison tipped arrow at a living, moving being, or even pulling the trigger in that precise moment to do maximum damage... But one cannot deny that feeling of pleasure, of ownership, however short-lived it may be, washing over when the fish comes to you, seemingly of its own accord... The moment when the aching wait and punishing calm comes to an end...

Next comes the question of consumption...

Who consumes whom? or what...

Is there fulfillment?

Are they content... with their roles of natural forces pitched against one another...? Is the marauder penalised justly for having considered necessary to scout the edges of that other world... For lurking...
Or is the quarry tainted with the responsibility of creating a destroyer?
Maybe it carries enough venom inside it to destroy what it created.