P...for our Perceptions

..So I wish relationships had rules. Like Science. I know I would love to analyse, hyposthasise and then sign off with a flourish - "hence proved". People and people. distance, time and space. Morality breathes down some necks. Suits some others. Is it? Isn't it? For comfort? intensity? too much comfort? where does it start and how does it end? for those that fit images and worse still, for those who don't. P was never wrong, but the discomfort lasted for days. It shook comfortable notions that fit. Giving in is perhaps so much easier than bailing out. Or maybe bailing out is better than falling in.

Postscript: Just had one of the nicest, most thought-provoking (i hate this phrase!) virtual conversations with P (albeit it lasted all of 7 minutes..but like all our conversations when did duration matter..). I like the fact that limits and lines are being questioned. But to constantly look for newer perceptions, does one conveniently escape from those that don't suit one's state of being? Mind games are easy to play - looking for perceptions and people to fit into one's lense of being. Corny as it may sound, it's easy to miss out on the spot closest to the foci.

beyond the postscript: This creeps into my head when i least expect it and makes me feel like im the one on the perception-discovery trail. Well, maybe I am. But I conclude, and I think this is the perception I "see" now, that its wrong to mislead other people's perceptions in order to look for yours. Lying and hurting don't exactly fit into grey. One's self-discovery trysts aren't exactly doing other people any favors.

A long post..and I feel terribly boring and old.

...And of course writing is supposed to be therapeutic. and I've felt like offloading a very crowded mind, and musings that came in fits and starts. But..the inability to express myself has become a real fear now.

I express too late. or I express too little. Greet mails, which I have been waiting with fervent prayers and buried tensions, with a regular hmm..and shut myself in when people outside my head revel in my glory. I introspect too little. React too late.

Srinagar happened. And despite piled up work commitments and the chaos therein of dealing with cranky others, coiled up self, technological breakdowns, meals served late, being taken for granted, sulky evenings and corners I painted myself into - it was beautiful. First night, being in a hotel with dark corridors, door with broken latch and bathroom floors not witstanding, I think I liked being by myself in a completely alien space. Brought a lot of insecurities to the fore and, I think, inspite of all my attempts to push them beneath the book I was reading, I dealt with a couple.

Srinagar also made me realize how much our rational frameworks are flawed and stereotypical. Dealing with people, hiding 'inside' yourself is never easy. Providing ground for discussions on media modules and political perspectives were both scary and revealing. Four words generating completely different understandings and analysis from different people. There is an arrogance of victimhood that is real and boxes in the head run deep. The two plus two rationale does bring out multiple choice responses.

Srinagar, as I discovered, also does not shut down at sundown. The city comes alive on the Boulevard, at Chhalli point and every turn of the road. Kebabwalas, with aromas announcing their presence a mile away; bhuttawalas and the JK police, replete with their bulllet-proof jackets - each interspersed every five feet. There were three blasts that occurred the first day, but we needed worried relatives from other corners of the country calling, to inform us. The city, does not allow blasts, to bring life to a standstill. Or perhaps, if they allowed life to stop with each blast, they wouldn't have a life at all. Friends my age in Srinagar, who took me out when they felt I was working too hard, told me in passing, that their generation can identify the type of gun on hearing the gunshots.

I looked at each person I passed - our shikarawala (who we jolted out of blissful slumber at 5am), a friend who grew up in the region and then moved to Delhi, another young female friend (who my stereotyping head greeted with a pleasant surprise when I saw her driving around the city late one evening) - wondering how the two decades of violence had affected each of them, their perceptions and their families.

My work the last one year has made me tremendously aware of conflict and violence, and the extent to which it seeps into people's lives - insiduously or abruptly. Social relations, friendships, evenings out, faith, within and without were dictated by the sides you took, or perhaps that which you didn't.

Srinagar was also Dal Lake at 5am and the floating market. Eggplants and lotus at 5.30am. Smiles and scales. Humdrum ran into exotic. Cafe Arrabica was another favourite. Penne and expresso with dates on the next table. It beat Big Chill any day. Greta Garbo and high beams.

So this week is my last at work. I never thought I had the capacity to stick it out for this long. 9-5 deskjobs were not my thing. I didn't thing they were cool enough. Sure, I had my problems with this place - the underbelly (which I was initially naive enough to believe, didn't exist), and the dynamics. I learnt how to delete the extra also's and how to count backwards. I met people from places I read about.. and from those that I had stubbornly fixed notions about. I learnt to look outside my own head and I learnt to think. And I've also learnt that I can write 16,000 words in three days.

The past two weeks I've made my peace with so many things. With my security blanket(s) being out of reach. With being blue and red. With playing ostrich. With being thin. With bad songs on the radio. With compulsive liars. With empty vessels. With birthdays.

I had a terrible case of the birthday blues this year. and age still has nothing to do with it. But birthday surprises, and hearing from people I thought had flown to Pluto, treated me well. I think am re-thinking birthday notions now.

I still haven't figured out a lot of things that I have been attempting to deconstruct for the past month. Black and white are so much easier to deal with than grey and slate. I wish I had the luxury of distance - observing people as subjects makes life and introspection a lot simpler.

Also, perennial "PMS" is my current project.

Syncretic and the metaphysical. and the head.

I carefully looked for a groove without a thread and then double-knotted it. Then attempted to untie it and tie a simpler knot - making it easier for whoever unties it. The thick, red threads representing people and their selfish musings (or not) and prayers of floating hope.

There I stood, jostled and hustled, amid degrees of faith. Of muttered prayers and dialogues of want. A millenia of spaces existed under the awning. Each looking for their own comfort from the sacred. With colour and the rain. Amidst Dama Dam Mast Qalandar. Prayer verses wrapped in soft brocade, nestled, sheltered from the teeming masses. The fine print filtered out. With strands of hypocrisy woven in. Men and Men through marble latticework. And one moonlight clock.

For the construct called religion. and for the thread, the bible in the bag, the self in the census. and the withins-and-withouts in the head.

Disconcerted

..for all the grey's that I now see there is. Perceptions change colours.
Because talking to P was introspection for me, though solely for her.
Why is sitting on moral high ground so difficult?

sorting and distorting

On one of our many (now few) 'sojourns' of kurta-buying and comfort-food-eating Sh said that she believes that if one spends enough time with a person, it is possible to fall in love.

In-conversation. In conversations. Emails of endings and beginnings. Pampering. of hearts and heads. Through vacuums and crossed-wires. Between lines. and damning the expectations.

There have been questions flying back and forth in my head. Part of a larger question. For distance. and the mediating I have done recently. About hyped connections and fuzz. Mirages of comfort shared. or lack thereof. For not seeking. yet finding. For seeking and not finding. For choosing when there's really no need to. For finding onself and for rediscovering.

For the common sense I have prided on imparting. But because this time I did not have too many answers that convinced.

For being unfair. For black and white and charcoal grey.

Monogamous in one relationship and polygamous in the rest? For post-modernism in relationships.