There Goes the Fear by Doves
Are we really that shallow and superficial? Or is the result of forgetfulness and the passing of time? It could be the latter, because sometimes, catalysts like a movie song you watched with them or the smell of their cologne or even the way someone laughs brings back so much, like an avalanche of memories. With no prior warning, you are suddenly buried deep in their thoughts. And you curse whatever it is that lets to things not working out. And you also breathe a sigh of relief, for avalanches are scarce. Once every 500 days, being buried deep in shared memories is even sweet nostalgia if not just downright misery.
The End of the Affair
How would you feel if happiness, as close to you as your
next breath, was taken away from you? This book, as the author claims, is a
diary of hate. Hate against his lover, his lover’s husband, himself, and eventually
God.
The plot is not too dense, but the writing gives it such
power, transforming it into a mesmerizing read. The story is, going by the name
of the book, about the end of an affair. The author talks in first person
narrative, giving a very intimate voice to the story. Bendrix, the protagonist,
is planning to write a book on a civil servant, Henry. He meets Henry’s wife,
Sarah, and they fall in love. Henry is oblivious to their affair. Sarah and
Bendrix are madly in love. Bendrix is a jealous love, full of insecurities.
Sarah tries to placate him, but too no avail. After being deliriously in love
for four years, Bendrix wants Sarah to leave Henry and marry him. But Sarah’s
loyalty for Henry is strong, quite similar to a parent’s loyalty for a special
child. While making love amidst an air raid (the book is based in the world war
era), Bendrix goes to the basement to check something and a bomb falls close to
him, nearly killing him. When he pushes off the debris and walks back to the
room, he sees Sarah kneeling on the ground. Sarah seems amazed and disappointed
to see Bendrix alive. That is the last time Sarah and Bendrix meet in a very
long time.
After two years, Sarah invites Bendrix for lunch. After
lunch, Bendrix wants to kiss Sarah but she falls into a fit of coughs and slips
away in a hurry. Bendrix’s feeling of insecurity and jealousy come rushing back
and he hires a private detective to spy on Sarah. This detective steals Sarah’s
personal diary and brings it for Bendrix. Through the entries in the diary, it’s
explained why Sarah left Bendrix that day and didn’t see him for two years.
When the bomb dropped, Sarah went to the basement to look for Bendrix. She
found him lying unconscious, looking dead, in the rubble. Sarah came running
back to the room, kneeled down in prayer and made a deal with God. Here, the
reader remembers that Sarah was not a practicing catholic and never offered
prayers. The deal she makes is a simple one, bring Bendrix back from the dead and
she shall never see him again. She will sacrifice the one most important person
in her life, a constant source of love, Bendrix, for the safety of Bendrix
himself! And just then Bendrix walks into the room. Sarah’s look of
disappointment is understood by the reader.
After reading the diary, Bendrix goes to Sarah and makes her
promise that she will come away with him. They couldn’t go right then because
Sarah had a very bad cold. They decided to wait a few days. However, instead of
getting better, Sarah dies. Henry is shattered. But Bendrix perhaps realizes
the existence of God, although he refuses to accept it. Bendrix’s atheism is
made obvious to the reader, early on in the book. Sarah wanted a catholic
funeral according to the priest she had spoken to. But Bendrix refuses it.
The book ends with the occurrence of a lot of coincidences related
to Sarah. Maybe she has come back from the grave to bless or haunt her people
as she was not given a catholic funeral. Through Bendrix’s voice, the reader experiences
the complexity of being in love, the immorality of adultery, the realization of
the existence of God, and the occurrence of miracles. This book ends with Bendrix
accepting the existence of God and hating His existence.
Stranger things have happened.
Some
days are such that you don’t feel there’s anything wrong with them. And then
you listen to these songs, and you realize, how empty your moments were.
Without the music. Some days take nothing less than music to get better.
Who is this?
There are somethings which you know with such crippling surety that you wish there was a doubt.
Stating the Obvious
It‘s funny how some people like to state the obvious. Here’s an incident:
Evening time, you just left from work. It’s raining cats and dogs. You forgot your umbrella at home. And now your sorry self is getting soaked, standing by the street, waiting for a rickshaw to stop. And right then, in all his sheltered glory, a colleague passes by and goes, “Oh, you don‘t have an umbrella.”
And with a smirk that would impress Damon Salvatore himself, you reply, “I do have my umbrella in the bag, it‘s just that I love a two hour commute back home when my clothes are dripping wet.”
You would think stating the bleeding obvious is a dying art, but no, here’s another common encounter.
You wake up late. Skip breakfast in the hope of making it to work before ‘late morning’. On your way to the work station, your colleague says, “You got late to work today.”
It takes every ounce of self-restraint you can muster on an empty stomach to stop from saying, ”I got here on time. I was just sitting in the lobby for the past two hours staring at all the brilliant people who work here.”
Superheroes in our times need not have the ability to fly or break walls; I reckon we need smart, witty and funny people, for saving the day, one dull moron at a time.
Doctor Who
The Doctor: I said you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever known.
Idris: Then you stole me. And I stole you.
~Quotes from the show
Aqualung - Strange and Beautiful
I've been watching your world from afar,
I've been trying to be where you are,
And I've been secretly falling apart,
I'll see.
To me, you're strange and you're beautiful,
You'd be so perfect with me but you just can't see,
You turn every head but you don't see me.
I'll put a spell on you,
You'll fall asleep and I'll put a spell on you.
And when I wake you,
I'll be the first thing you see, lyricstop
And you'll realise that you love me.
Sometimes, the last thing you want comes in first,
Sometimes, the frist thing you want never comes,
And I know, the waiting is all you can do,
Sometimes...
I'll put a spell on you,
You'll fall asleep,
I'll put a spell on you,
And when I wake you,
I'll be the first thing you see,
And you'll realise that you love me.
I'll put a spell on you,
You'll fall asleep 'cos I'll put a spell on you,
And when I wake you,
I'll be the first thing you see,
And you'll realise that you love me, yeah...
Creepy but beautifully sung.
A Quoi Bon Dire
Seventeen years ago you said
Something that sounded like Good-bye:
And everybody thinks you are dead
But I.
So I as I grow stiff and cold
To this and that say Good-bye too;
And everybody sees that I am old
But you.
And one fine morning in a sunny lane
Some boy and girl will meet and kiss and swear
That nobody can love their way again
While over there
You will have smiled, and I shall have tossed your hair.
~Charlotte Mew
wonderblah
I should
be writing a test right now. But it’s a hot Saturday afternoon, and so I
instead spend my energy mooning over John Mayer.
And I am
never getting over the way he sings
‘Damn
baby
You frustrate me
I know you're mine all mine all mine
But you look so good it hurts sometimes’.
You frustrate me
I know you're mine all mine all mine
But you look so good it hurts sometimes’.
Read
Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth. How on Earth she managed to win the
Pulitzer still beats me. But anyhoo, I read the book knowing the fact that her
previous short stories I read were, for a lack of better word, crap. On my
defence, I should add that my office library only had that one book under
Fiction.
I know I am missing something, but I don't exactly know what!
If constructive criticism is given in a destructive way, is it still constructive criticism?
Jelaluddin Rumi
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.
I feel restless distressed disturbed
The big dark void moves closer
And all I can see is black
Not the black found underneath blankets and inside closed eyes
That which goes away with one swift motion
But the black you see outside your doors and windows
That which like quicksand
Envelops and preys on you.
And all I can see is black
Not the black found underneath blankets and inside closed eyes
That which goes away with one swift motion
But the black you see outside your doors and windows
That which like quicksand
Envelops and preys on you.
food for thought
The Summer Day by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
young and restless
Turning 23 is not a big deal, says my wise friend.
So I explain to him how when you are 22 you are closer to 21 so random acts of craziness are permitted.
But at 23, you are closer to 25, so you have to under any circumstances, act MATURE.
I hate that word. And the fact that my colleagues think I am an 'ageist'.
I have completely stopped writing here. Maybe because my work involves so much of writing. I like it. I am learning a great deal.
And I have been forced to come to term with the fact that I don't really know it all.
There is a deadline at work this month, extreme deadline.
So I haven't had a proper weekend to rest.
On the brighter side, my closest friend has come back to my side of the town, so there will be many meet up!
Yesterday at work, I was listening to Satisfaction and couldn't help wondering what if I simply unplug my headphones and let the speakers blare, my wise friend replied that if it were a musical, my colleagues would join me in the chorus, but mostly I would be reprimanded. So I guess it's a pity my life is not a movie.
There is a lot of negativity at work these past days. But I try not to get affected by that.
Thank god for small mercies. Being with my family and meeting my friends probably saves my life in some way.
I watched Inception last week. I always liked these dream-reality-alternative world movies, Matrix, for that matter or Constantine.
I wish I could hide the dull ache in my heart every time I read you. The only thing that reassures me is that I didn't dream or imagine it. And there won't be a going back because comfortable is a nice place to be.
So I explain to him how when you are 22 you are closer to 21 so random acts of craziness are permitted.
But at 23, you are closer to 25, so you have to under any circumstances, act MATURE.
I hate that word. And the fact that my colleagues think I am an 'ageist'.
I have completely stopped writing here. Maybe because my work involves so much of writing. I like it. I am learning a great deal.
And I have been forced to come to term with the fact that I don't really know it all.
There is a deadline at work this month, extreme deadline.
So I haven't had a proper weekend to rest.
On the brighter side, my closest friend has come back to my side of the town, so there will be many meet up!
Yesterday at work, I was listening to Satisfaction and couldn't help wondering what if I simply unplug my headphones and let the speakers blare, my wise friend replied that if it were a musical, my colleagues would join me in the chorus, but mostly I would be reprimanded. So I guess it's a pity my life is not a movie.
There is a lot of negativity at work these past days. But I try not to get affected by that.
Thank god for small mercies. Being with my family and meeting my friends probably saves my life in some way.
I watched Inception last week. I always liked these dream-reality-alternative world movies, Matrix, for that matter or Constantine.
I wish I could hide the dull ache in my heart every time I read you. The only thing that reassures me is that I didn't dream or imagine it. And there won't be a going back because comfortable is a nice place to be.
The Last Song of Dusk
Just read Siddhart Sanghvi’s The Last Song of Dusk.
Somehow, his good looks and elegant clothes made me very expectant about his book. So young and his eyes already so serene and writing books at this age about big big things!
Ah! But then, looks are very much deceptive. Now, after reading his book, he appears to me as the male counterpart of Jhumpa Lahiri. Much-hyped, less-delivered types.
His novel didn’t make sense to me. His characters were inconsistent. His wit forced, so was most of the plot. Bad play with surrealism and magic. A climax that was too quickly delivered, not like a good and strong final blow, but more like things were made to end as if for a lack of time or pages...
There were some hints of genius, a couple of lines, an expression, but not enough to last the entire book.
Nothing prosy about his style. And more annoying was his use of uppercasing for words like Hope, Fate, Quietness!
Arundhati Roy and Salman Rushdie influenced?
Maybe his only other book (he has given up writing for good) The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay will be a better read.
All in all, I have at least realized my 18 year old self was as lost in crushing on Sanghvi, as he was in trying to write a book on half baked ancestral stories.
And if I already didn’t know he was gay, after reading the book, I would have been certain.
There is this way with which he describes the male body… Something only a lover could do so well.
Talking about gay writers, I dreamed of Vikram Seth last night! If my dreams get any more crazy, I am going to have to write a book about them!
Anyway, next up on my reading list is The Moor’s Last Sigh. Now there is an original psychedelic read.
Raindrops keep falling on my head
It’s been four months of scorching restless summer since I last posted here.
There are times when I can’t write, either because I am too happy or too sad. It was the former these four months.
It’s raining now, and my wordless happy season is ending too. There is something about monsoon. It makes me want to run away somewhere far, maybe Khasak, if it actually exists.
Last week I got completely drenched looking for a rickshaw back from work, took a cab and paid 4 times the normal fare and all this was after the first horrible day at work in my latest company.
I think I should quit and get back to studying. There are so many things waiting to be learned.
Clarity where art thou?
:))
I quit my old company. And that must be the best decision of the year. :)
I am so satisfied with my new job. My work is very much appreciated. And it involves so much brainstorming, so much creativity.
I have my weekends back! I am financially happier! This new place is honest, such a breath of fresh air.
There is so much to write about!
I am so satisfied with my new job. My work is very much appreciated. And it involves so much brainstorming, so much creativity.
I have my weekends back! I am financially happier! This new place is honest, such a breath of fresh air.
There is so much to write about!
:)
You've got your ball
You've got your chain
Tied to me tight tie me up again
Who's got their claws
In you my friend
Into your heart I'll beat again
Sweet like candy to my soul
Sweet you rock
And sweet you roll
Lost for you I'm so lost for you
You've got your chain
Tied to me tight tie me up again
Who's got their claws
In you my friend
Into your heart I'll beat again
Sweet like candy to my soul
Sweet you rock
And sweet you roll
Lost for you I'm so lost for you
And I come into you I come into you
In a boys dream
In a boys dream
Touch your lips just so I know
In your eyes, love, it glows so
I'm bare boned and crazy for you
When you come crash
Into me, baby
And I come into you
In a boys dream
In a boys dream
If I've gone overboard
Then I'm begging you
To forgive me
In my haste
When I'm holding you so girl
Close to me
In a boys dream
In a boys dream
Touch your lips just so I know
In your eyes, love, it glows so
I'm bare boned and crazy for you
When you come crash
Into me, baby
And I come into you
In a boys dream
In a boys dream
If I've gone overboard
Then I'm begging you
To forgive me
In my haste
When I'm holding you so girl
Close to me
*sigh*
~Dave Matthews Band
~Dave Matthews Band
Another death somewhere
What can be worse than dying?
Knowing that you are dying.
What can be worse than knowing that you are dying?
To know that you are already dead.
Knowing that you are dying.
What can be worse than knowing that you are dying?
To know that you are already dead.
Interview assignment
This was last year, an assignment for my Journalism class.
From an internship at Strategic Newspapers to handling the editorial section of Hindustan Times, Zara Murao has come a long way. Currently the Subeditor of Hindustan Times, she is working her way to the top. I spoke to Zara at her office in Mahim.
 |
| Zara at Hindustan Times headquarters in Mumbai |
What do you think of the current state of Indian Journalism?
I think there is too much stress on entertainment these days. It’s only about TRP's now. What is missing is actual information. The journalism world before, during the freedom era, had a lot of integrity. Now we have become this yuppie nation behaving like we are selling quality ice cream, it should look good, feel good. Real news is avoided because there is a fear of readers or viewers getting bored and switching over to the next newspaper or channel.
Describe a typical day in your life.
I work on the desk. My working hours are mostly from 1 to 10 pm. It’s pretty flexible. After coming to office I read some 5 or 7 newspapers. That takes a couple of hours. Then the rest of the day goes in planning the page, editing copies, and planning special features. The newspaper is put to bed by 11.30 pm.
What do you like and dislike about your job?
I like the pace, the speed. Everything is constantly moving about. It’s challenging to meet deadlines everyday. What I do not like about my job is that it’s very taxing. Your personal life has to take a back seat.
What are the common problems faced by a Sub Editor?
I can only think of two problems. First is that you have to get everything ready before the deadline, no matter what happens. Second is the lack of proper communication with reporters.
Who is your favorite journalist?
Indrajit Hazra. I love the way he blends politics and music and humor. He writes about serious stuff with a witty and sarcastic pen. And then politics is my best loved area.
What are your views on Yellow Journalism?
I think there will always be an audience for such type of news. It’s human nature to gossip. But it should be done in the right spirit. Like not giving out gossip as truth or presenting it as fact.
Is there any particular incident that you would like to share?
Yeah there was this funny incident. I had just started working and there was a copy I had to edit. The article was about annual IIT fees and instead of 1 Lakh I wrote 11 Lakhs! The copy was printed and we had to rectify the error later. I was miserable and wanted to quit as I thought I was not responsible enough for the job. In the end my entire team took me out for ice cream to cheer me up. That was the best part!
Tell us something about HT.
Hindustan Times has some of the best minds. They listen to you, no matter where you belong on the hierarchy. There is total democracy. You can march up to the boss and yell if you are angry. Believe me, that is a satisfying experience.
What do you like to do in your private time?
I love to travel. I love collecting stamps on my passport. I have been to Kenya, Finland, Egypt, Tibet, and Nepal. The best experience was in Finland. We went sledging and ice skating. I like trying out unusual cuisines. The weirdest thing I have had was Yak's testicles!
What will you like to tell budding reporters?
I would advise them to not be prejudiced. Always be ready to move with time. If you do not adjust you are likely to fall behind. Be open to ask questions, do not be ignorant. Do not be stubborn whether you like something or not. Do not be biased. It’s a very exciting and respected profession. You get to do interesting things and see interesting places.
-Kavita Mishra
-Kavita Mishra
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