Self-explanatory.

Pronunciation: /peɪn/
noun
[mass noun]

1highly unpleasant physical sensation caused by illness or injury: she’s in great pain [count noun]: chest pains
(also pain in the neck or vulgar slang arse) informal an annoying or tedious person or thing: she’s a pain

2mental suffering or distress: the pain of loss

3 (pains) great care or trouble: she took pains to see that everyone ate well

verb
[with object]

cause mental or physical pain to: it pains me to say this her legs had been paining her

Things I learnt last month:

1. How to twist your leg so violently during a late night bout of dancing that you end up fracturing a bone.

2. How to hop one-legged down the entire length of the runway at Kathmandu airport.

3. How to go to office, travel alone, and attend a wedding with one leg in bright blue plaster.

4. How to be extremely grateful for your crazy-ass, awesome bunch of friends who come over after midnight and surprise you with a full-fledged birthday party because it's your birthday and you are stuck at home with your bright blue plaster and an impending deadline for company.

4. How to let people help you with the simplest of tasks (putting on your shoes, climbing a couple of stairs, standing in the kitchen and making yourself some breakfast) and not feel helpless, annoyed, and guilty about it.

5. How to stop whining about your pain and your plaster and your virtual house arrest. How to smile and put on a brave face and joke around, even when it's the second painkiller you've had that day. Because no one likes whiners, and pain is a very personal thing.


All in all, not a bad set of pithy wisdom for a twenty four year old. Heehaw.

Magic and words and Prasoon Joshi

During a poetry reading session with Gulzar at the Jaipur literary jingbang, he suddenly stood up and sang this to an audience of around a thousand. And as everyone around me burst into applause at the last line of the song, I was standing quietly, getting goosebumps and resisting the urge to rush up the steps and throw my arms around this man.

Jiya mora ghabraye, babul,
Bin bole raha na jaye.

Babul mori itni araj sun li jo,
Mohe sunar ke ghar na deejiyo,
Mohe jewar kabhi na bhaye.

Babul mori itni araj sun li jo,
Mohe raja ghar na deejiyo,
Mohe raaj karna na aye.

Babul mori itni araj sun li jo
Mohe lohar ke ghar de deejiyo
Jo mori janjeerey pighlaye...

My only way of handling disappointment is to take the blame myself. It is way easier to deal with heartbreaks and loneliness when I can convince myself that the mess, indeed, is not in the other person but in my brain. Because I am my strictest teacher, harshest critic, strongest monitor. The heart, it must be reigned in. The brain, it must be organized. Dependence on other people must be whittled away to zero. One must be strong and one must be independent. It is way easier to sternly rebuke oneself than it is to wait for someone else, who will not turn up anyway. Crying alone in the loo is way better than embarrassing myself in front of a second human being. No one, but no one, must know that each phone call from home is making me die a little bit inside.

It is probably not a healthy way to deal with life's problems but it works for me. Being independent is the last straw I clutch at, because nothing else seems to make much sense nowadays.

I wish 2011 would get over quickly. It's fucked with my heart enough already.

Se obujh, kheyali, se bheeshon ekaki, aabeg sob-i taar toh fnaaki.

Every day when I wake up, I pray for that strange emptiness in my heart to go away. But it never does. The bus rides to office through the dusty Noida roads are the worst. I plug in my mp3 player and stare out of the window, trying to resist thinking about it. But the problem with letting my mind wander is, it inevitably settles on the inevitability of it all, and every dusty corner I turn, I wonder why I live this life I do. Counting every penny, living in my head half the time, and choosing to stay in this city while one incredible soul battles with a hundred tubes and beeping monitors in a cheerless hospital hundreds of miles away.

First proofs, second proofs, perfect grammar, companion Web sites, who gives a fuck anyway, when each phone call from home sends you into a panic attack and all you want to do is curl up in a fetal position with a comforting shoulder by your side and you try and you try but you cannot block out everything you want to?

This is a rambling post and it shouldn't have been up for everyone to see. But I needed to get this out and I needed somebody to read it and there was no one I could mail it to. Ei mondar bajare, readily available comforting shoulders for a self-obsessed twenty three year old are hard to come by.

Blah.

Growing up is not all it is made out to be. For example, this weekend, I'm looking forward to:

1. Cleaning the bigger loo.
2. Getting the rice cooker fixed.
3. Cleaning the top of the fridge. (The red ants are killing us)
4. Pestering the plumber until he comes over to fix the leaky pipe and the broken washer.
5. Getting quilts down from the loft and sunning them.
6. Buying a nice overcoat for myself from Janpath before the temperature dips to single figure and the prices shoot up.
7. Cooking the leftover pork in the fridge.
8. Making the long overdue mutton curry for my roommates.
9. Finishing A Song of Ice and Fire.

Previous weekends usually involved extensive hours on the phone, obsessive texting, and mailing. But I've given up on the last two (because I figured there's only so much of one sided conversation one can take) and am slowly working on curtailing the first one. And therefore, I'm left with the list above.This isn't really how the life of a twenty three year old, living away from home, should be. Apart from finishing that strangely addictive book, I do not see a single thing that gets my adrenaline pumping. The future, my friend, is bleak.

Sotyi.

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart... I hate love.

- Neil Gaiman