I Almost Forgot...

Five years of RFS and counting. Boo-yeah.

Also, in a previous post I'd said that Bartender Steve knew his tequila because the one we'd had was so smooth we didn't need the lime.

Turns out - I Don't need the lime anymore.

It's all New York's 'fault.'

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.

What the Swami Said

Vivekanada told me, by way of a book, that if the steps are carried out to the best of one's ability, the ends will manifest themselves automatically.

 

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