Saying Goodbye to Shalimar, Again

My relationship with many of my closest friends is characterized by this uncanny ability we have to force ourselves to say 'goodbye' to each other multiple times a year. What this means is that we end up never knowing when we'll see each other next. In the off-chance that we end up in the same city, we rejoice at the prospects of shooting the proverbial breeze (I don't think I'd be able to do any real 'shooting' - unless it involves cameras of any sort), sharing a few meals, and saying 'goodbye' again.

Shalimar, you may remember him from this post, and I have known each other since 2006. In the five years that we've been friends, we've probably done this hello/goodbye thing at least 5 times - and all in the two and a half years since I graduated from college. I'd say we've been pretty lucky (or, at least I have been - I can't put words in Shalimar's mouth) that we've managed to be in the same city (New York, Seattle, Toronto, etc.) at the same time, a number of times. But at the same time, it's nothing like those years in college where we'd see each other (at least in class) for a couple hours a week - that is, if Shalimar showed up (sorry!).

Shalimar's been in town for the past two weeks. Having not seen each other since his extremely short trip to New York last year, and having not talked in person for more than 15minutes since that odd afternoon I spent at Vancouver's airport (after 30 hours+ of travelling, and ridiculously ill from the stomach problems I had contracted in India), it was nice to chat, and to lose horribly to him and my sister at N64 Mario Kart.

Shalimar left today. He's on his way back to the Motherland. Before he left, though, he came to say goodbye. He has this uncanny knack of saying things that make sense (and are also often things I don't necessarily want to hear). As he was leaving, he looked at me and said - yaar, apne aap mein thori si jaan daalo - smiled, turned around and got back into the car.

The statement irked me. But it's so true. I'm not sure where that jaan's gone. It's kind-of like that book. The one in which the little, happy boy loses his smile one day and, try-as-hard-as-he-can, can't and doesn't find it until he's ready to do so. 

The point of that story is, however, that the boy keeps looking for it. His family and friends Notice that he's lost his smile, and help him look for it. Lucky boy.

Le Succès d'Iff

As a self-professed logophile, my inability to write anything longer than a tweet these days has put me in the deepest of doldrums (and has obviously also kindled an affinity for the dramatic). During my grad-school days, writing 20 pages of decent prose in a night seemed almost automatic. The phrasing, the words, all seemed to flow effortlessly, sprouting out of my fingers without much thought. These days, it's as if Iff has turned off the writing stream. Haroun, unfortunately, is nowhere in sight.

It may be that the waters are muddled, or that the effluents of the hundreds of streams that have sprouted up in the past six months have intermingled to such an extent that recognizing each has become impossible. Perhaps, like my kitchen's drain, my brain - and its repository of words - may just be clogged.

Whatever the case, the long and short of it is that I haven't written since finishing up my M.A thesis - and it doesn't feel right. It's not as if my life is incomplete without writing - the effect is much more unnerving than that. It's as if something's amiss, off-kilter, unbalanced. It's as if I've been robbed of the ability to express myself, to exercise my brain and, most importantly, to compose those word-concertos that I so loved hearing in my head.

That flow, that ravaani, the crescendos and decrescendos, those sudden changes in key. Ahhh. It's as if I've forgotten how to compose.


I hated it when I couldn't do it on the violin.

And I don't like it now.

Honey, I'm "Home"

Well hello there all of you,

It's been a while (and that's an understatement) since I last posted anything of note. There are reasons for my absence, many reasons, the most important of which being my having so much to say but no idea how to say it. It's been a - well - difficult six months. Leaving New York and moving back to Vancouver has been nothing at all like I expected it to be. I'm no longer living with the family, things at home have changed drastically in the two years I've been away (additions, subtractions, that sort of thing), and I've changed. Making the transition from school to work has been harder than I thought it'd be. I miss school, and am perpetually worried that my brain will lose its intellectual agility, all the knowledge it's amassed, and all those things.

But enough of this emotional nonsense.

I'm back, and will be actually writing regularly. Stay tuned for posts on anything from Indian politics (definitely Not feeling the Indian politics love right now) to Urdu poetry to general ramblings about my new not-so-new life on the West Coast.

Till then,

Toodles.

ps - to be born again, first you must die.

Ratrau - 4

I have a curious case of melancholia, one that I think I've had since I was a child. According to my mother, one of my favourite passe-temps as a young'un was to sit in corners and withdraw into my own world. Makes sense, then, that I'm my happiest when I'm alone, late at night, listening to music.

I've always maintained that all of us are tuned in a specific way, that we all function according to a specific musical scale, or a specific raga. And, as a result, we react most profoundly to music we hear based on that particular scale. For me, and for my violin Gliga, I think it's A-minor. There's something uncannily inviting and warm and familiar of listening to Vivaldi's Concerto in A-minor for me. I was hooked immediately the first time I heard it. Over on the Indian side, Malkauns and others in its vein. Tonight, I heard a brilliant Kaushi Kanada by Ustd. Rashid Khan, that had me in raptures (and made me forget to work on my Hindi paper). As a result, here I am - 2:30am - still slaving away at the paper, but still listening to music.

That being said, I'm starting to enjoy being not-so-independent-and-fiercely-alone these days. I don't know what it is, but it feels good. For someone who has trust issues as significantly problematic as mine, it's kinda amazing.

Anyway, if any of you are so inclined:

A Love Letter

It's official. I'm leaving you New York. 

Dearest New York: I'm leaving you - nay, abandoning you - for a city without the same joie-de-vivre, without the same intensity, energy, never-say-never attitude that pervades your very being. A city without your beauty, that beauty that you only get in grime and in soot and in hard work. I'm abandoning you for a city without that je ne sais quoi that I feel every time I walk through the city streets, with those towering towers towering above me, for a city without that certain passion, without what Mrs. H would call 'verve', without this beautiful life and manner of living.

Dearest New York: I'm abandoning you for a city that is quiet, that actually goes to sleep, one where it rains so much that you could eat off the sidewalk and not get violently ill. A city where when it rains it doesn't stop for 28 days. A city where everything is often cloaked in a cape of greyness, of gloom. But, oh New York, the sight when the rain finally makes its way through the mountains, finally decides to torment those on the other side, is glorious. The mountains rise out of the ocean, the sun's rays dance on the water with joy, people smile, flowers bloom, and life is good. Quiet, simple, detached, but good.

So, Oh Dearest New York, I'm abandoning you for one more beautiful on the surface. By all means, call me shallow. Scream at me. Yell at me. Tell me it's not worth it. Tell me that it'll never promise me the dreams you promised me all those years ago, the dreams you still promise me to this day. Tell me that I'm betraying you, betraying myself, by letting go of this world, by going back to where I started, to where I began, by letting go of what I have become and what I am becoming.

Dearest New York: my love for you is not that quiet burning of coals, it is the passion of the ghazal, that burning passion that is never sustained for long periods, but happens in bursts of fierce intensity. The passion of the parwana for the shama', the one in which the parwana circles round and round and round, getting ever closer, getting ever closer to being burned, getting ever closer to being burnt up. Or burnt out - in my case. 

Dearest New York: I abandon you today so that I may return. Energized. Revitalized. Ready to make you my own and to - once again - follow those dreams that you promised me that summer day eight long years ago. 

Forgive me for burning too quickly in your love, my love.

Adieu, mon amour, adieu.

N

I Lied

I wasn't putting the finishing touches on my thesis in March. Heck, I haven't even finished writing the thing. I'm looking at it as my magnum opus - or maybe my primum opus - and am still hacking away at it - lovingly, of course. I love words. I'm a logophile and proud of it. (Take THAT status quo itchy bees*!)

Anyway. Apologies for the lies. I promise I'll be done soon (and that's a promise more to myself than to you). I have declared to my thesis committee that I'll be handing in my final copy on Monday afternoon. I've also declared the same to my 700+ friends on Facebook and, you know what they say - if you've said it on Facebook, it must be true.

Right then peoples of the Internet, back to work. See you on the other side of the thesis-fence!

ps: a self-promoting Twitter plug. I am now being followed by the Sangh Parivar. No joke. Hoping that they RT me one of these days. Until then, I'll be spewing forth 140-character tid-bits about Golwalkar, Savarkar et al. Like the one about G and his Mummy.


* What's a bee with an itch?

Hello from Thesis-Land

Dear Readers, Stumble-Uponers, Fellow Bloggerers, Randoms and Others,

My sincere and heartfelt apologies for the lack of new material on RFS. Two years of graduate school are coming to a close and, as such, I'm in the midst of putting the final touches on my research and preparing my thesis for submission. While my research has certainly unearthed some beautiful gems that should find rest (qaraar) on RFS, including a Hindu nationalist's rationale for why Indians should not refer to their mothers as 'mummy,' at this point, I don't have the time to elucidate my various thoughts in more than 140 characters.

As such, do follow me on mind-ful/less Twitter if you are so inclined. I promise that I'll be back, eventually. Whether that means after my thesis defence (mid-April) or once I graduate from this lofty institution is still up in the air.

Until then, and as always, remember - to be born again, first you must die.

N

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to you all. I truly hope that this year brings every success and desire you can possibly wish for. For me, it's going to be a year of profound changes and perhaps even of trials such as I have never faced before. I do not ask for you to pray for me - I've never asked anyone to do so, and would rather that you don't (being areligious myself). That being said, if you ever have an excess of happy rays, please do send them my way. In the darkness that some say is on its way, I'll need them. I hope they're wrong though. I really, truly, hope so.

The Thin Line Between Sad and Happy

I hate saying this, but what I thought would be a horribly sad and depressing day, turned out to be one of the best in a while. I shouldn't be surprised. There's something wonderful about being around people you care about and love at the passing of another. I remember, when my dada-ji passed away - or even my grandparents from my mom's side of the family - the entire fam-bam came together almost every single day for about two weeks. We'd all bring food and gather at someone's house (usually at my vadaa dada's - grandpa's older brother). Us kids, we were still kids then, would run around the house playing games that we'd made up, would watch movies, and terrorize the adults (and the kids younger than us - although, they used to terrorize us back with equal glee). We knew we were at a sombre affair, but then we'd look at the adults, cousins - most of them, and watch them talking and laughing and smiling and enjoying life, and then go back to being ourselves. 

As we got older, the same tradition continued. The people in my family, up until my father's generation, have always worked together, and lived together until being forced out of their homes in Africa almost 40 years ago. As the years went by, the family started getting more nuclear, but would bond - instantaneously - at death, or birth, or other celebrations. When vadaa dada-ji passed away, we all gathered at his house. The oldest of us kids were now almost adults, and had a better sense of what was going on. But our fun and games continued. We didn't make them up, or watch movies back-to-back (that was the purview of the 3rd and 2nd batch of kids, respectively). We sat around the small food bar in the kitchen, with a bunch of our younger aunts and uncles, other relatives and friends, and joked around, while the others did the same in the dining room. And when we'd go home, I'd leave with a sense of joy and, more so, a desire that all of us would be able to get again and do the same. 

It's almost like the same thing is happening right now. A friend of mine passed away this Summer and his memorial was held, here, yesterday. Friends from around the country, who I had spent the Summer with in India and who also knew this friend who passed, flew in for the memorial. It was wonderful to see them again, and we kept on reminiscing about the thousands of things that we had done, or had seen in Lucknow a couple months ago. In a series of hard days over the past few weeks, it was a wonderful release (and relief). The ceremony was sad. I don't cry when I'm deeply saddened, but started crying (for about 15 seconds) during the shabad at the service. Afterwards though, it was back to the traditional mode of dealing with death - laughter.

Funny story. When my mother's father passed away (my nana-ji), we all gathered at his/my nani-ji's house. This was the first death in my mother's family and so everyone was super sombre and super quiet and super sad. Having dealt with death multiple times before that, I wasn't as affected as my other cousins and relatives. We were all sitting around in the living room, when my mother got up and wandered around, looking for her phone. She had just gotten it and was still getting used to it. Having found it, she started fiddling around with it, but it wouldn't work. She asked me to help and told me that it wasn't turning on even though she had pressed the power button multiple times. From across the room I semi-shouted, "It's dead!"

Everyone looked up. Stared at me. I realized what I'd said and chuckled. Everyone kept on staring at me in shock and horror, and then finally one person laughed, then another, until the entire room was giggling. It broke the ice, and the awkward tension that had settled over the room dissipated quickly thereafter. When my nani-ji passed away, a couple years later, my mother's family was much more open and calm (and prone to fitful bursts of laughter).

I hate saying this, because it's just so wrong, but a part of me misses those days when we got together. And I know I'll miss this weekend, because of the same reason.

RIP those of you who have moved on. Till we meet again.

If I May...

It's not my place to give advice to people, I have enough issues of my own and am still too young to be doling out advice, but here's one thing that I hope everyone who comes across this blog follows.

If you are fortunate enough to have people in your life who are worth thousands of others, make sure you understand their worth before it's too late. And if you ever come to this realization while you're about to do something of which they don't necessarily approve, stop immediately, and tell them you've stopped - even if it means running back to where they are and fighting with them to listen to you.

Hope you are all blessed with wonderful friends and the ability to recognize them. And then tell them.

Yes, I'm an emotional person. It just doesn't come out too often. Call it the Aquarius' "curse," if you will.

N

PS: On another note, byebye whiskey-love and vodka-nasha. It was good being with you, but we're through until the New Year.

Back to the Grind

After a week of sleeping, eating, bothering my parents with my incessant ramblings, drinking litres of tea, sleeping and eating, it's time to head back to the City. I'm semi-glad to be going back (I love the City life) but am dreading this upcoming week. It'll be fantastic to see the Lucknow crew again, but I wish the occasion weren't so horrible and I didn't have so much work to catch-up on.

Still wondering why He chose you to leave us. It's not fair...

RIP Sparkly Eyes...

(Wonderful dreams last night - an amazing rendition of 'hor ki mangna' by an aunt who normally is a horrible singer, teaching a kid a lesson with some cream-puffs, and then waking up with 'tum ik gorakhdhanda' in my head...I think it's all because of the light streaming in through my windows. I've always slept in rooms with windows facing East and am so used to waking up to light. This new bedroom of mine is a bit dark for my taste - maybe that's why I'm having sleep issues...hmmm)

Paroles

Sitting at my desk, head down, thinking hurting thinking promising thinking thinking and thinking, listening to Nostalgie and Hugues Aufray says,

"Ne pleure pas, non, ne pleure pas
Nous resterons toujours près de toi"

Counting My Blessings - #1

I learned a lot yesterday.

An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.
Buddha

It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.
Marlene Dietrich

Friends are God's way of apologizing to us for our families.
Unknown

It's Time I Professed My Love

I can't live without you.

I'd die if you suddenly disappeared.

Your warmth fills me with joy, as does your sweetness.

Oh Chai, never leave me. Pretty please?


Thanks to Ms. V, I've found a spot close to home that makes asal Chai. The real stuff. The one they make on the streets of the Motherland, and that I consumed in glass cups multiple times a day, while there over the Summer. Little Gujrat Deli - you make my life better.

Yes, I'm a F.O.B. But not one of those fresh off the boat. I, my dears, am fresh on the boat.

A Truce of Sorts

There are days, nay months and years, during which we keep on fighting. And then the day comes, suddenly, when we resign ourselves to our fates. The tears no longer flow and our insides no longer seem to spasm violently with every phrase.

It is at this time that we are our strongest. It is at this time that we are at our worst.

This isn't my battle. It's time you fought your own.

Hide Mir - Again!

It's official.


I miss you.


Weird how things happen huh...

Resigned Laughter

Home.

(Laughs)

I no longer know how to define it.

Who knew 8 months could do this to you.

Yay for Me!

I'm DONE my first year of grad school, and my REQUIRED courses!

All that remains for this degree is to write my thesis and defend it (still going to take courses though, the nerd that I am).

Have some fab extra-curricular things lined up for next year that I'm excited about. Oh. I love this.

Also very emotional right now. Partly because of being done, the move back home for a couple weeks and then to India, people leaving etc etc...

But it's worth it. Oh So Worth It.

It's days like these. The ones that make you work your @$$ off for them, that make it worth living and being and acting.

Now if only I get the other thing I want right now...But. That's not up to me to decide. I guess we wait...

Faiz-Love. Part 2 is it?

Naseeb aazmaane ke din aa rahe hain. 

Qareeb un ke aane ke din aa rahe hain.

Sabah phir hamein poochhti phir rahi hai. 

Chaman ko sajaane ke din aa rahe hain.

Chalo Faiz, phir se kahin dil lagaayein. 

Sunaa hai thikaane ke din aa rahe hain.

More Grad School Angst

It's been a year, a whole year. I would freak out at the thought, if I weren't so mentally exhausted. Who knew school could take this much out of you? I certainly didn't. I figured that I had worked so much (and I did - 15+ hours per day during my last term of undergrad) previously, that the constant academic work wouldn't be that bad. I was wrong. There's a HUGE difference between working for 15 hours a day on non-academic and academic stuff, and on academic stuff. The latter is much more exhausting, much more trying, and much more damaging to your body.

Case in point: me.

I've lost weight. I'm not complaining about it, but I've lost more in the past few months than ever before, and people are surprised when they see me. My father, ever conscious of how I dress, is infamous for having once told me I need to wear loose-fitting clothing. He was here, as you may recall from a previous post, a couple weeks ago, and told me I looked good in skinny jeans. Ya.

My eyes have gotten worse. I think it's because of the constant reading and typing. I've tried keeping my eyes relaxed, taking breaks etc, but sometimes I feel as if they just want to pop out and hide underneath my bed.

My back is messed up - to the point that I can no longer sit in the wooden chairs at the library. I've been studying at another place, or coming home so I can sit in my good chair. Oh. And the back problems also make it hard to sleep properly.

My sleep schedule. Maybe we shouldn't talk about that. Here's what it looks like. I go to bed at 1am. Am up by 3:45am. Get out of bed. Wander around and force myself to go back to sleep. I wake up at 6am, utterly exhausted, and tell myself to doze for another 30 minutes - at 6:30, I fall asleep and cannot get out of bed - physically and mentally - until 8am. At which point I freak out, jump out of bed, and turn on the stove to make my pot of chai.

My diet. Let's not even go there.

General health overall. I've been sick for the past few weeks and it shows no sign of disappearing. Wonderful. Just Wonderful

Oh and did I mention that I have Gujaratis coming out of my ears? That's the thing. As an undergrad, when you can't find the stats, you don't write the paper. When you're a graduate student, you write the paper because you don't have the stats - and formulate the stats for the paper.

Ok. Enough complaining. Back to work. Gotta take these contact lenses out though before my eyes die on me.

Sigh...J-B was right.