The Evil Indian Ducky post #1

RS on peeing on a stick :" all you need is a pair of balls to take the test".

A grey sweatshirt and a pair of nice jeans

It was that easy. My colourful mood of the last couple of hours was brushed away with easy strokes of apologies. Its insane. I melted without even the first brushing of skin. It took them hours to achieve that previously. Now its seconds. I can stare at that countenance and want to jump start...

Somewhere along the line of crossed t's and dotted i's, I have come undone. Happily. With the exception of tonight, where my carefully daydreamed plan was thwarted by the realities of the careless one making merry with the phone buzzing in the car, I am unfrazzled. It is what it is. The small sightings of sap green become sappy deductions and leave me satisfied.

That is not to say that the cold shrapnel of exploding mind mines do not penetrate through the day.

I still have submissions; there are still friends who need assuaging; friends who need side-lining; work that needs to be sought out; chasms between knowledge that need bridges; bio-diversity, ethno-diversity, emo-diversity, all waiting to be untangled and a healthy heart to be carved from underneath the fat. Yep, the shrapnel still zings, yet somehow, at times, this slightly dotty joy of what is rather than what could/ should be is a more powerful salve than reason.

Though not more potent than the morphine-esque effect of pheromones combined with the smell of the morning after.

Dialing, connecting the line...yes Big Man, I still want to keep the standing order of a tall drink of dark chocolate. What? No, I don't mind if it gets too bitter at times, as long as you are there to wipe the dribble.

...It feels like cold blue ice in her heart When all the colors mix together It's grey, and it breaks her heart...

I have less than 36 hours to write 3000 words, and write them well, mind you! Instead, I am listening to The Dandy Warhols. After spending the day watching DMB videos endlessly.

It feels like not many understand my itch to go through the day on caffeine and music. Even dancing has become more appealing as I learn to appreciate the beauty of a beat that some buff black man created using some template, laid on synthetic beats. Maybe the reason we dish out so much money for a complicated technical masters degree in an expensive country is not to actually graduate but to explore and push the boundaries of what you can enjoy and of what you can discard. Sorta like those platform heels (from kitsch hell) that you promised your mom you would always wear in an attempt to justify the ridiculous price tag!

I discovered that large concert venues can only be open air fields where one can light one up or lie down, rolling dewy blades of grass between your toes; not seated theatres. A small venue is no longer a 300 people amphitheatre but the Manchester Apollo, accommodating 3000 people!

On that note, I wrapping this up a few paragraphs too soon. To watch a video that marks the end of one journey for my friends (the band) and with this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTcjnatrEAs&feature=player_embedded hopefully doors will open to a new more exciting creative period in their lives. And hopefully, my screechy voice will haunt them if they even consider selling their souls to the God of creative death (aka media pimps)...

excerpt of my exchange with Raka

...the beauty is in the malleability of life and our existence: from mad love and daily connection, we live in memories, eventually incorporating them into the future.

What do I remember from 2009?

I remember leaving Lahore, packing up my life there into neat boxes, waterproofed with plastic sheets. Bomb blasts and different wars that all bled the same colour but for the front page had different names and agendas. I remember being confused by political discussions where not a single person knew who the good guys were. There was a 20 20 world cup that I remember watching with Malkani and Sahar. I know Anam came and shared a week of my existence in Lahore. Sahar, JB and I went and absorbed the warmth of the refugees in Swabi who even in the face of homelessness were willing to share stories, food, children and love. I made up with a new old friend.

And such memories are all that reach out. The rest of the year and in fact the last few years just stare back at me and they look as blurry to me as I to them.

Though, now that I’m sitting and writing this, there are more memories poking me, sliding their cold fingers against my skin; goosebumps that remind me of what I didn’t do. Matters that I left incomplete. Or the half hearted attempts I made at following through with a few decisions. Running through money that I am not earning. Or being confused about wanting things and struggling for them.

So maybe this time, I should think of the year I have ahead. I usually don’t have resolutions at the end of a year for the next. And I still don’t want the rather self serving list that reads so impressive but never really materializes otherwise!

Maybe 2010 can be the year where I will actually work on and struggle with all those existing aims, plans, layouts that are all shoved together in a dusty pile when working on them requires too much from me. I know somewhere in all the rooms that I call mine, like shiny dollars under the couch, my plans lie hidden in the nooks and crannies. Slightly dusty but still of value. I shall start collecting them.

Tomorrow.

156 (12 x 13)

I want to say that its because we have taken a beating at the youthful sprightly age of 26 that makes us cry at all things odd and inane but it would be a self effacing truth. It is the monthly curse. A curse it was known in the medieval times for many a woman even took to sequestering herself when she was plagued by this red horned devil.

Bitter pill: it would be so pacifying to name all the hormones and the chemicals that cause the unstoppable unexpected out pour of tears at all Hallmark moments. It would be more pacifying to dig into that tub of Belgians chocolate ice cream that followed that large bag of salties.

It seems as we grow older, it does gets harder to sort out our emotions into neat little categories and run a statistical analysis on it. Without wanting to sound like Andy Field, the author of the giganomous book I need to wade through, it is the truth. When I was younger, my emotions might have been a lot more complicated, but there were fewer variables that caused that much angst. Now, at this age, its getting harder and harder to stay in the loop of my own distress cycles!

When I see a dog movie and cry, I know its because I amongst a few odd thousand love my pets more than most people I know. When I cry in the middle of a sap fest in a TV series...ahh maybe its just my period. It could be the art of multitasking that cannot defy the limitations of scientifically measured time. Or maybe its just the fact that all my co conspirators (read amigas) are constantly worrying about being past 25 and not having found the "one".

I could go on about all the new variables that can create our tear ducts to work over time. And I know that my mother would say the same thing to such a tirade as she has been since a few years now "Find a husband so there is someone to take care of you and someone to be support you when you grow old and...", so she would go on.

I say, yes, at the end of every third week, we begin a new cycle that reminds us that we are still a unified part of this reproductive cosmos (not that all of us desire to add to the number of mouths to be fed globally). While we are young, most of us will not realise that this "curse" is actually a heavy (pun intended) reminder of our fertility. Of our ability to create, carry and care for a new life. But. And this is the important 'but'. We are the first generation of women who can actually know the value of the monthly visit that turns us into a devil and we are the first generation who are liberated enough to make a knowledgeable decision. Its not a monthly clock, its not a biological alarm (or warfare!); its a choice that we have.

Husband, man, donor, sperm, in vitro, test tube, adoption or a cat.

And there were cows

Its been one month, three weeks and five days since I landed in the fields of the colonizers. And now I understand why they so desperately wanted to conquer 'exotic' territories: to hang colour and culture next to those coat of arms and throphies of war.