Mumbai Things

If you live in Mumbai, you will need to live with malls. They make me numb. Actually, they make me feel tired. Shopping feels like such a burden and I’m never sure how everyone does it.

If you lacked in spatial perception in Mumbai, you would likely be concussed frequently. People forget personal spaces in Mumbai, even in malls.

In Mumbai, you’ll find pop-up food stalls on every corner. I just found a large one around the block from where I live. A bunch of women with tables set up with big drums of food. What they were serving looked delicious. Must try.

Mumbai is also full of restaurants that you wouldn’t know existed until you suddenly realized that you had been ignoring them for a while. Today, I found two new restaurants to want to try. Maybe even Jay will like it.

In Mumbai, people like me still read books and cherish them. Milan Kundera’s style in The Unbearable Lightness of Being is slowly becoming interesting. Meanwhile, The Fall of the Hyperion rages on. What a book!

The obesity pandemic runs rampant in Mumbai, especially around malls. I found the cause for it. They must feel the need for something sweet to dampen their sadness and regret. Just like I feel right now.

In Your Grace (2024)

Red, the box and ropes
Grey, the pole and cross
Black, The sky and mind
White, my eyes are shot

Like The majesty 
A flight of fantasy
Cries of blue and dark
Try, my soul is shot

Lap up the juice
Sweep in the leaves
Grab all the stakes
Live in your grace 

Green, wears the man
Pale, his eyes in pain
Blue, the stripes of shame
White reflects the light

Holes in your steel 
Climb down the trails
Loose, you get to live
Lose, you get to die

Lap up the juice
Creeps in the snake 
Write out your pain
Die in the daze

Dichotomy

The light from the ceiling light was golden in the sense that it was not anything else. The smoke rising from the fireplace made the scene look rather hazy, and it only heightened the urgency of the speakers engaged in a raging argument.

“Of course, there are two ways of looking at that,” said the woman. She felt exasperated. In her anxious states, she often found herself adjusting the curls of her long black hair by her ears, but right now she was too angry to busy herself with such a pointless activity.

The man answered calmly. “Only when you are ignoring all the other ways.”

“And what exactly are these other ways?” She felt like rising but managed to contain herself. Instead, she reached out to the glass she was drinking out of only to find it empty.

“In the context of our conversation? Or in general?” He paused before adding, “Would you like another drink, Ms. …”

She realized that she hadn’t introduced herself. Not that she had to, considering that other patrons were nursing their glasses, and people behind the bar didn’t need to know their names to serve them drinks.

“Natalie Hetmore. Call me Nat.”

The man nodded. “The same?” She didn’t respond but he started making the drink.

When he brought it back, he leaned forward and whispered, “Everyone sees things their own way. So there are innumerable ways of looking at things. Including the one that we are talking about”

This was the tipping point. The man was patronizing now. She couldn’t quite imagine any other way of looking at a Boolean parameter.

“How the hell can you look at a true/false statement in any other way than the two possible answers?”

He answered coolly. “You can, Natalie, by factoring in the possibility of change over time.”

The one thing

There is so much that I want to tell you, but I’m afraid there isn’t enough time. So let me tell you this one thing first, for I fear that I will never come around to it if I started any other way. Here is that thing.

No matter how you feel at this moment, there is only one thing that can happen to you. You will feel different. Soon.

There will be change. Good or bad, bad or worse, or worse or better. What you need to do is to let yourself every chance to remember how you felt, or how you feel at any moment.

Doing that is called journaling.

Me, today

Whatever you bring to world, if you do not attempt to capture it, preserve it, and nurture it, it is as good as dead, and dead is good in only some of its implications.

Nature through apps

Kites need to mate, just like everyone. It may not be something that you want to look at when you are having your morning coffee. Or maybe, for some people, it is a luxury. One that I have, something I don’t know for how long I’ll continue to have.

Life is full of luxuries from the point of view of the social classes that you find yourself above. Remember the movie Platform?

The arguably good thing is that the kite that I have been observing — yes, I’m naive enough to continue to believe that it is the same one that I have been seeing — has some company. Since when, you ask? Maybe a week.

Considering that I’m judging the act of mating as good from the kites’ point of view is a human flaw. But I’m still observing, and it is amazing how having an app like Merlin Bird ID app extends your senses to see the avian world around you better.

Similarly, has Planta changed my life. So I hope will also All Trails. All of these are apps that seem to work better on the iOS. If you’re wondering whether I’m a snob, rest easy, for I have only had an older iPhone as a secondary phone for a few weeks.

PS: I’m listening to a Spotify playlist that seems to have a new Justin Timberlake song. Interesting mix.

The scum of society

Your life is what you make of it, and most people don’t.

They don’t even know that they have to try. They just let it get their lives made. Made by others. Made by the society.

Everyone eventually follows the masses. They stick to their lane. After birth, at school, in college, at your job. It’s easy being like this.

If you talk about ambitions and aspirations, arguing that they are original will be hard. The vast majority are influenced by society. Everyone needs a reference point, and the reference points are others.

So it is an incestuous affair.

The ones truly making their lives are the ones who don’t follow the lane. They are the nomads and the wayfarers in the older sense, and the social and cultural outcasts in the modern sense. The same people we love to internally judge as abnormal without ever wanting to admit it.

And I’m one of them.

Just write; just right

Hope is a four-letter word. But so is fear.
Love is a four-letter word. But so is hate.
Day is not a four-letter word. But so is night.
Write is a five-letter word. But so is right.

Write something every day and eventually get things right.

It does not matter if you have hope or fear, or if you are possessed by love or hate, or if it is night or day.

Just write.

Just right.

Think

What’s the one thing that you wished you could change in your life?

Assume what you wished were to come true. Will you expect yourself to be thinking about this and writing about it right now?

And if you think you wouldn’t, do you think you will wish to not have changed the thing that you changed?

And if you did, where would that leave you?

Right here? Right now?

The shadow of the bird

There is a patch in the sky that never gets full. It cannot even raise itself when the sun sets and when the bats come home. There isn’t a cloud, but If there was one, it could not be seen. For lack of a better word, it lacked something that an astute observer could ascribe to it, but because it did not have what it did not, the observer would fail to even notice that it lacks it.

The land over the patch is sullen and sordid. It never received the love that its neighbors received, and it started being the focus of indifference. The largeness of the world had remained unblemished those days, and even passers-by failed to give it a passing glance.

To it flew a bird without realizing that it would get lost in its surroundings. And it did that and got itself lost because when it looked up, the patch was not to be seen. It had seen the patch from every possible direction and had wanted to take a close look at it from the land that the patch laid over. It flew in and out to test its reality but it kept repeating itself.

And then it finally noticed it. Or the lack of it. It couldn’t find its shadow. It looked up to confirm that the sun still shone, and when it did, it looked down to find itself truly alone in the shining sun. It felt free. It hadn’t realized that something as light as light could make it feel as heavy as stone, and when it was shed it would be truly free.

Three views of today

This is the day when I know for sure that something has died. Something that once it represented left it for good. It is now a pale shell of what once it used to be.

This was a day of a new beginning. A day that was celebrated and will be remembered. The day when we set ourselves free from our torturous past. This was the day when we became free.

This is the day I confirm the feeling that I’m not safe. That people like me are not safe. Anyone who is different is not safe. Anyone who wants to blend in will be, but those who can’t will never be able to.