Spare Change

Words to live by

2008-06-23T10:48:08Z

Be one on whom nothing is wasted. (or something to that effect)
- Henry James.

L' Incendie - On Accidental Beauty

2008-05-11T18:51:58Z

To the conventional eye, Vanessa Paradis is a pretty enough woman- with wild hair in the French fashion, and an emaciated frame. But every time I see her gap toothed smile, a small unkind and insecure part of me jumps back, startled. But I can think of no better example of true physical beauty. Sorry Aishwarya.

As somebody who has been at constant (CONSTANT) war with her body for as long as I can remember, I don't think it is very easy for Paradis to put herself out there, on a public stage suspecting that people could be making fun of you for not conforming to what they think Beautiful should look like. Of course, it helps that Paradis is rail thin and that she is married to Johnny Depp. A modeling contract with Chanel and thriving career in French Bubblegum Pop doesn't hurt either.

I think Paradis has been on my mind because I have been having some very one sided but fat-phobic conversations with a friend over the last 3 or 4 weeks. At the moment, I am an average sized woman and nobody on the street would look twice if I walked around the street eating an icecream cone. But there used to be a time when they would have. So I am not sure how to say that I don't just NOT agree with my friend, but that I am intensely uncomfortable with body prejudice.INTENSELY UNCOMFORTABLE, in case that wasn't clear the first time around.

So You Wanna Be A Writer Two.

2008-05-05T03:02:42Z

The time of the year has something to do with ( it has been sweater and hot chocolate weather lately) but I spent a lot of my Sunday at the bookstore I am secretly in love with. And front and center, on their bestsellers table were 4 books by authors from the Subcontinent. Yes, FOUR out of ten. Aravind Adiga, Preeta Samarason, Jhumpa Lahiri and Indra Sinha.

All decent writers, and thank god - not one of them seemed to mention the smell of adulterated saffron or the swish of a cheap sari or the smell of burnt curry, except maybe for the Samarason woman.This is a good thing because writers should always write about what they know but not just. This is not such a good thing because if you are a wannabe writer, now what are the odds of -?

The book I really want to read is Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger which appears to walk on the seedy side of the Great Indian Dream, much like Sharma's An Obedient Father. The pervert in me totally adored and enjoyed reading that book.

Something Old, Something New.

2008-05-05T01:55:14Z

What does it say about my current mental health that my favorite new tv show is Dexter, the series about your friendly neighborhood serial killer, that my favorite new author is Kate Atkinson, a magical realist who writes about gruesome family tragedies and my favourite new Mallu movie is Calcutta News."

In any case, there are things (oh so many things) that I have to tell you - but these are the few that are swirling around in my head at the moment:

- I went to Disneyworld and the Florida Keys on a long two week vacation and narrowly escaped being eaten by an alligator. True Story. At the end of the day, Disneyworld kicked Key West's ass, but only by a smidgen. Sorry, Blue Heaven. Also, Mickey is a lot shorter than I expected.

- Weightwatchers. Yes, that's what I said. Sadly enough for my skinny jeans, it has indeed come to that.

- I have joined a new bookclub. We actually talk about books here, unlike the other one where we talked about husbands.

- I used to support the smart, cool and sexy-intelligent HC but then she turned all shady and Karl Rove on me half way through her campaign. Now I am an Obama girl, but only on the inside.

- Song of the moment: Daydreamin' (Featuring Jill Scott) by Lupa Fiasco.

In addition:

- I have embraced my Mallu heritage totally and without the remotest sense of post modern irony: Vishu Kanni, Thiruvathira Nombu, Kerala Association and all. I can barely remember how I got here but it has turned out to be not as terrible as I feared.

- Speaking of irony, however: I hate hate hate doing laundry but I now work for a company that services laundry machines.

- I have found that after two years and many more to go, I still love my husband but not all the time and not always well.

- Life is full of woe and foreboding and chaos and uncooked dinners and dirty pillowcases but Spring is sort of here.

- I am househunting for a new home and for a new blog.

What???

2008-01-14T05:03:51Z

Is it really the 14th of January already???? What? Where? How? My outrage at this totally unreasonable pace of time aside, I tried to write a short story today. One of my goals this year is to sneak a piece or two into Agni

After spending ten minutes staring at my notebook, I came up with " I always imagine India in color." Which is fine if I were planning to apply for an copy writer's position with Tourism India, but perhaps not so awesome for somebody with literary airs, like you know who.

However this silence that has ambushed my pen and left it for dead does not bother me as much as baby-watching at the mall does.

I haven't made a fool of myself with a toddler yet, but I am at that point in my life where my body will sometimes send out little rays of utter panic when I see a child with a mother who sort of looks my age.

On the days I feel particularly low, I make odd bargains with my God, but so far I haven't told anyone about them yet. When I am this way, it is the secrecy that really makes me feel better, because my mind convinces me that this will give me an advantage over everybody else. I haven't met these imaginary adversaries of mine yet, but naturally, I don't like them already.

G thinks I am sound hysterical about the subject, but since we have been married for nearly 2 years, he has learned to be patient about it. Maybe this too will pass, like my one time fascination for Bikram Yoga. In any case, G. indulges me by switching his regular cup of coffee for green tea and adding Brazil nuts to his daily oatmeal. On the other hand, I have taken to sudden mood swings and have become obsessed by white bread, sugar and Amrita TV.

Still, so far my story is that there is no baby. In the meantime, India remains, as in my memory, full of color.

It is not the Best of times.

2007-12-27T16:27:59Z

I was never a huge fan of Benazir Bhutto's politics (or her sticky fingered husband) but what a truly awful way to die.

One Night @ the Life of Pi

2007-11-29T19:09:25Z

In an effort to revive my comatose muse, I have been reading a lot more than usual. That, and my insomnia. G goes to bed by 11, and most nights, I lie next to him listening to him breathe and counting sheep. But I am not complaining: this is also my favourite time to read. I am not sure why...its not like I am rushed off my feet during the day, and I spend most of it by myself anyway..But somehow, the night lends itself to all kinds of thinking.

So yesterday I finished One Night @ The Call Center, after G picked it up from the local library. This is the last time I am reading anything my husband recommends. It is bad enough that Bhagat is a trite writer. But that is only a crime if one has literary aspirations..Bhagat is very proudly mass market in the saddest sense of that phrase.

What I have a definite problem with is its v.v. uncanny resemblance to Yann Martel's The Life of Pi. The two books share similar frames: both do that Story-within-a-Story/Arabian Nights thing, which Martel (controversially) borrowed from the Brazilian author Moacyr Scliar.

In any case, both Life of Pi and ON@TCC use a conversation between the author (who is a character in his own novel) and a stranger to lead into a morality tale about love and god and faith. "I have a story that will make you believe in God," Francis Adirubasamy promises Martel in an Indian coffeeshop. Martel's writing won the Life of Pi a Booker. In ON@TCC however, the tale disintegrates quickly into about 200 pages of melodramatic crap about phones, ex girlfriends, money, pizza, gurgaon and shitty bosses. Also, a lot (A LOT) of rubbish about the 'stupid' Americans ( you have to read the book to believe how bad it gets really.)

But my questions about Bhagat's book are mostly isolated to ON@TCC's last two pages which appear to be copied directly from Martel's book in both text and spirit. Like Martel, Bhagat waits till the very end to spring all kinds of messy metaphysical/existential choices on the reader. Unlike Martel, Bhagat harangues his long suffering reader into bringing his book together into some sort of cohesive form.

I am actually pretty surprised that nobody (including the hapless editor who had to read the first draft of this sad little story) picked up on this already. Though that might be because ON@TCC (or whatever insane acronym Bhagat is using to pimp his book/upcoming movie) was published and publicized in India. The book is however being published by Picador(?) in the US next year.

Kavya, meet Chetan.

Excerpts:

[note: I don't have any quotes from Life of Pi but I remember reading words v.similar to this in the last two/three pages of the book..particularly the part where Pi tries to explain his voyage to the Japanese sailors who are trying to understand what really happened. On an slightly related note, I once had coffee with Yann Martel and had a v. long conversation with him about India and he is a lovely, gracious man.]

.."Yes," I said.
"So you choose whichever version you want in the main story. It will, after all, be your story."
I nodded.
"But can I ask you one question?"
"Sure" I said.
"Which of the two is a better story?"
I thought for a second.
"The one with God in it," I said.
"Just like life. Rational or not, life is better with God in it."...
One Night @ The Call Center, Chetan Bhagat

Ready For Change?

2007-09-25T14:12:00Z

I don't know what I'm looking for
but I know I'm good for a little more.
-Brendan Benson(live version)

Part of the soundtrack from Supernatural on the new CW.

In So Many Words

2007-02-28T00:05:00Z

And After Discovering Your Brother's Orkut Profile:

Out of a million ways to remember you
I keep coming back to this one:

where the prairie rain casts shadows
over another Sunday afternoon and
me waiting to leave.

Your face saying something, almost
and then
changing your mind.

Shhhhh.

2007-02-15T09:32:34Z

And it's not just writing. I don't feel like talking to anyone these days either; except of course for snide remarks about marriage. Oh yeah. In my book, there's always more where that comes from.

But about this curious silence that has taken over my life: So far, this year, I have not returned phone calls from family members and ignored important emails. Quit work. Also, discarded blank notebooks that (before they were converted to scratch pads for grocery lists) begged to be filled with prose in all kinds of sparkly. Instead, I have regressed from merely antisocial to being an antisocial insomniac. But on the other hand, thanks to late night HBO scheduling, I know a lot more about ancient Rome than I will ever need and have discovered that my inner patrician malcontent is alive and well.

Occasionally, after G asks me when I am coming to bed, and before I say "soon..when I feel sleepy.." G gets this funny smirk on his face. Anyone would think, he says, that you are having one of those sordid online affairs or something, what with all this late night surfing and such. But after a quick second of silence, we both laugh out loud because seriously, what a terrible idea that is for a happily married woman. Anyways, I think he knows that mostly I sit up till 5 in the morning to google recipes of home made ice cream. I kid you not, my mature and intellectually sophisticated reader.

Well. This is more than I have talked in two weeks put together. After reading Madame Bovary in college, I had always believed that there was something wry and poetic about drifting aimlessly through one's life. But recently, I have come to see that as with many of the ideas that will pass through your mind when you are watching TV in the dark at 3 in the morning: Lighting is Everything.

my last 20sumthin

2007-01-30T18:34:36Z

"...And did you get what
you wanted from this life?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth."
- Last Fragment, Raymond Carver.

*hair pulled back
*rented apt in desi neighbourhood
*white toyota corolla
*REALLY REALLY SPECTACULAR sushi on a plastic plate.
*The Cheesecake Factory 's Pecan Brownie and Caramel Fudge Swirl Cheesecake, Topped with Caramel Turtle Pecans and Chocolate. (-->world, say hello to my clogged arteries)

The secret to

2007-01-09T06:32:27Z

Writing is writing everyday.

Random Thoughts On Secret Battles in a New Marriage.

2007-01-03T06:06:29Z

Worse than that, the pay is bad.
-Burt Reynolds
I really like stories. This is the reason why for as long as I can remember I have been hoping that eventually my life will yield something odd and manic which would then rework itself into a really cool yarn I can tell my grandchildren. But so far, the most fascinating thing that has ever happened to me has been moving in with a man, and taking care of his house. And now, after living in B- for a year and meeting about a hundred other women who are all living my same exact life, even that seems sadly commonplace. G & I even fight like every other middle class South Asian couple I know: with mindless words and on autopilot. Something about us, I told myself on New Year's Eve, would have to change.

Four days into the new year, I am not entirely sure What (because, naturally, this question is never as simple as it sounds) or How to change. But I know I don't want to feel as lonely as I do now. How pathetic is that? 2- and living in one of the world's brightest cities with a perfectly decent man who is perfectly decent to me most of the time, and I still haven't stopped feeling like somebody has their knee permanently pressed up against my neck.

There are only three things I can think of, right off the top of my head, that is more dreadful than feeling this way. The first is recognizing that not all words are equal and some hurt worse than others because they are less self conscious and more honest. And then there is finding out that your winsome, incredibly smart partner doesn't know that his wife is rudderless and starting to give in to despair. Finally(and far more damaging to one's ego, I think) is realizing that he actually does but would just prefer to pretend otherwise anyway.

Its been rather cold in B- all week, but so far this dark warm thought has numbed my frazzled nerves, let me wallow in countless cups of very milky, very sweet Lipton tea and generally allowed me to feel like a nuisance to the person I live with. And I am trying really hard not to, but I am afraid I am greatly tempted to write a poem that will end up sounding like a bad Fiona Apple Song.

I think every marriage, like every hard won war, has these moments where one or all of its' characters are forced to jump headlong into sentimentality, retrieve the best of what is left of your gap toothed relationship and then settle your differences. All but the essentials of one's logical self have to be left aside and you either do it for love, or you don't. Luckily for me, I don't have a choice.

Hello Amherst

2006-11-16T21:47:03Z

Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes

Excerpt

....The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -
...
What I can tell you is ...
I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

- Billy Collins

currygrrl @ 2006-11-10T13:43:00

2006-11-10T17:43:51Z

I swear, this is like the funniest episode of NBC's The Office yet. I swear.

The Office Diwali: Season 3, Episode 6.

PART I

PART II

Naaaiiizz. (sorry. I just saw Borat two days ago)

The Truth, As She Sees It.

2006-11-08T19:38:23Z

Presenting The Evaluatress.

Because no man should ever have to answer the question "Do I look fat in this?" and because no woman should have to lie that size doesn't matter.

When asked

2006-11-02T18:56:09Z

to peg down what exactly my writing aspired to be, I answered coyly oh I don't know. I just..I just feel this is what I need to be doing, I guess. But the truth is if it were up to me, I would write like R. K Narayan would, if he was a South Indian housewife who lived in the suburbs and shot meth on weekends.

A Life Less Absorbing

2006-10-01T01:15:17Z

Recently I have found that I am no longer interested in writing about my semi-interesting life in an semi-interesting way. But personal blogs are like emotional crack cocaine for my generation's morbidly introspective. So when some days something completely ordinary happens - a conversation with a friend in a cold parking lot, a sliver of sunlight breaking through the early fall sky or the sound of G in the shower, I am back here again because I can hardly help myself.
***

G and I spent the first part of last Sunday bickering. Later his cousin and her family came over for lunch. We ate biryani that I'd made from an Ummi Abdulla recipe, and watched Fox News without really watching it. A's mom asked me what exactly I did during the day when G was away at work.

Well, The truth is I do nothing. I eat breakfast while watching Regis and Kelly.I cook dinner in the one hour interval between The Dr. Phil Show and Oprah Winfrey's efforts to makeover America. I clean the house when I feel like it. From 8:30 to 11:30 PM on Thursday evenings, I stop my life to watch Ugly Betty,Law & Order and The Office.But how can I tell a Vice Admiral's wife that my weekdays are run entirely by remote control?

So I shrugged.Then, graciously, S looked at his plate of rice and asked "What kind of fish is this?" "Salmon. $5.99 a pound." I replied quickly, thankful to be back on familiar territory.

By now, the music inside my head had switched from Underneath It All to Saint Augustine In Hell. S & A's four year old daughter greeted the moody lull in the room by laying herself down on the carpet and doing multiple impressions of a banshee. Everybody laughed and naturally, I felt obliged to laugh the loudest even though I had no idea why anybody would find a screaming child funny.

Then someone drawled "Aren't we going out now?" So at 6, we left in A's SUV to visit P, B and their moon faced 2 year old.
***

The truly unreal part about hanging out with desi couples with young children and listening to them talk about daycare is seeing your future life unfold before you like a vomit stained BabyGap frock.

The other thing about hanging out with them is that you learn more about the U.S real estate market, the SUV v/s minivan debate and the 'Best Time to Return to India' than you've ever wanted to know. I tried to contribute to the discussion in the only way I knew how which was by telling everyone about how when I was seven, my dad had crashed his Merc into the front gate of our house in Cochin. Inexplicably, this effectively killed any conversation left in the room.

We left P's place shortly afterward. It was starting to drizzle lightly by the time we returned home. I reheated the rice leftover from lunch and made chappathis and two kinds of dal in under half an hour. Lately, these kind of things make me both happy and proud.After dinner, G poured whiskey shots for the men while their wives listened to the rain and watched the four year old play. In the bathroom I swished Listerine around in my mouth and searched for my vitamins. Everybody said good night like they cared.

When we were in bed and finally alone I told G "I don't think we are that special." I think I might sounded a little suprised. "Worms. We are like frigging worms. There are thousands of us, living the same exact life in exactly the same frigging way." G is used to hearing me talk this way and so, sensibly ignored me. I turned my back and began to read as soon as I heard G start to snore softly.

I don't remember anything else about the day except falling asleep to the sound of thunder in the distance.
***

Onam 2006

2006-09-08T14:51:33Z

Not this year.

Country Roads, Don't Take Me Home.

2006-08-17T21:51:27Z

Read ,learn and finally, because this is America, reach for your wallet.

Late Night Thought Fragment

2006-08-17T05:48:06Z

"It is imperfect, but have you considered the alternative?"

The Fine Art of Mining Travel For Meaning

2006-08-10T02:12:01Z

1. Road Signs, All kinds of grand Canyons, Me :
revised

Off US 89 on a small Navajo reservation in Arizona there is an inconspicuous beaten path that is harder to walk up than it first appears. That is where G and I find ourselves on an oppressive summer afternoon, and we talk idly between ourselves about how we wouldn't have known to come here, except earlier that morning we had met a bearded man wearing a shark tooth necklace who assured us that the view from up this hill "is totally worth your time, folks."

"Are you ok?" G turns around to look at me with squinted eyes as I follow him up to Horseshoe Bend, a trailhead that starts with a long snaky road that crawls through the dusty landscape. Barely a quarter of the way up, I am already crouching down with exhaustion, my head tucked between my knees and away from the heat."Well..yeah, but not for long, I think."

But half an hour and a mile later, we come across what we have come to see, which is a bird's eyeview of the yellow green waters of the Colorado making a perfectly shaped horseshoe around the Glen Canyon. Looking down from the top of the hill, the river looks like a 1000 dazzling words and the red sandstone canyon beyond it glistens in the sunlight like a National Geographic picture. After G and I catch our breath, I tell him, only half joking "Even if I did collape from heat exhaustion on my way back, coming up here would totally make it worthwhile."

*

Unlike most people who write about their travels to remote places, on my week long road trip across three western states I did not meet any charming characters who had found for themselves a more genuine way of life. I did not heal from my various childhood traumas or discover a fresh stream of affection for my husband or actualize a lifelong dream.

And while G and I shared many moments of great tenderness on this trip, there were just as many times when we were really very angry with each other.

What I did find however was that I loved the physical act of just being on the road for hours at a stretch, with no greater agenda than to get from one non descript town to the next. My feelings rarely had anything to do with the destination itself. A canyon is a canyon is still only a canyon, is what I told G. I seldom spoke to the friendly locals we would meet on our way except to buy made-in-Mexico souvenirs from their roadside shacks or to ask them what time it was. (on a side note: we criss crossed two different time zones and found our watches and car clock always either an hour ahead or behind everybody else in town.)

But peeling back mile after mile of sunny asphalt that appeared to go on till the end of the earth is something else altogether and worth writing about.On this trip, we moved quickly from desert to forest to canyon to city, from motel to lodge to hotel. There wasn't the familiar warmth of hearth and home within my slick metal cage, just hot air from open windows. Life on a journey such as this is stripped down to being stark and unvarnished but thankfully, it is also unsentimental. And chaotic.

"Any thing could happen" G tells me, "between this traffic light and the next." I am not sure what to say, but I remember watching darkness fall around us as we drove away from Page after climbing down that desert trail. I remember thinking that I am never as sure of myself or as dangerous, as I am on a road that promises to take me farther and farther from myself.

After Learning About R's Suicide Last Week

2006-07-31T16:32:26Z

1. "Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really.

How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."

-Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

If You Thought I was Grubby then

2006-07-21T21:08:46Z

I am really Grubbie now. :)

Gogol Penn

2006-07-10T17:26:48Z

I am still not sure if I liked the book, but I am certain that I will love the movie.