door art - I

This is the door leading to my sister's room. Yet to give the finishing touches to the other doors.

shopping frenzy

Now shopping is not of my favourite chores - well, someone who associates shopping with chore, that says it all. Tomorrow being a holiday, i decided to play traunt today. Chema is visiting us so i thought i would go shopping with her. On an hot April afternoon. At the end of the day, after buying everything from tops to shoes and everything in between, it was all i could do to drag myself+the heavy bags home. i am glad i survived.

i think basically i don't have the patience for shopping. In fact, i don't have any patience left in my cookie jar for anything. How does one cultivate patience? i keep reminding myself that there would be an end to everything, no matter how unpleasant. Sometimes that works. Sometimes i blow my lid. i guess i need anger management lessons too. But this i must say for myself, i am a much better person than what i was, say 5 years back. Or when i was a kid.

i have finished painting two doors. Painting is cathartic. So is scribbling. i think i will post the pictures after all. Just to have the plesaure of having some kind soul say how nice they are!!! An inflated ego like mine needs constant refilling! M came over with her parents the other day and she thought i had hired someone to do the doors! Gee, i was so damn flattered....

This is the second time i am blogging from the comfort of my messy bed! Which explains why i am groggy with sleep. Because it is past my bedtime - they call me cinderella back in the states because i refuse to stay up after 12, unless it is to read books. G'night.

love and longing on an april night

i am chatting with him in the middle of the night (middle of the day for him). We are talking about going to Peru for a holiday-machu picchu-the lost city of the Incas. Hopefully we can make the trip this year. If we can afford it, that is.

i do miss him - though i try not to. It is no fun wallowing in pools of sad emotions so i try my best to get a life without him. It is not that i am unhappy or that joy has flown out of my life - i have my lovely sister for company and my friends in the office. But i do miss life with him - a different kind of companionship and joy. i miss the innumerous fights, well, lovers' tiffs - and the making up which makes all fights bearable. We are two very different personalities- as similar as chalk and cheese can be- and that results in lotsa sparks in the air (and elsewhere too!). i think we complete each other. i sure would not want to be with someone just like me!

chicken soup and the stomach

As i type this, i am nursing an upset stomach, which i suspect could have been the mushroom in the soup i had today. Or was it the lamb? i had ordered chicken clear soup, which so happens to be my favourite soup because it seems so clear-headed compared to the other soups (think of cloudy sweet-corn soup). What was served to me was anything but clear – it had broccoli (which i cannot stand), noodles, carrot and exactly three pieces of chicken (i know because i was playing hide-and-seek with them). In the name of experimentation i decided not to forego it and had the chicken and whatever I could drain out of that miniature-kitchen-garden-like soup.

The occasion was yet another project lunch. i am tired of going out for lunch now. i think my stomach cannot take it anymore.

Keeping upset gastric thoughts aside, the trip might materialize after all. And blogging on an upset stomach is no fun. Period.

racism....

My first exposure to it was in my first year at college. Till then racism was something i connected to South Africa (apartheid, remember?). i was shocked that people should treat me differently because i look different. i mean, how can you measure intelligence by the size/shape of your eyes? My illusion of this world being perfect shattered then. Anyway, it had to shatter someday… In college, in the initial years, we used to be in this “north-east group” – you know something like bird of the same feather flocking together. There we were, facing more or less the same problem, of trying to adjust to a new place without loved ones, of trying to make yourself understood and trying to understand. Maybe that is what bound the group for the initial years.

And then, inevitably, i made new friends, discovered new passions and was ready to leave the nest and try out my wings. The realization that what people think of you does not change/reflect what you are inside made/makes me less bitter whenever i encounter unpleasantness in the form of ignorant people. That coupled with the knowledge that i am no less a person than anyone with a beaked nose. Oops, that was mean of me!

Of course, i do face those inevitable moments when people on the street pass inane comments but it leaves me indifferent rather than flustered. i don’t see any reason to lose my cool because people are ignorant. Of course, when the need arise, i have deigned to clear their ignorance. Like in my campus interview, the recruiter from one of the country’s biggest IT firm went on about how the people in Manipur are ‘fast’ (and from his expressions, he didn’t mean it in a complimentary way) and that got me because i had not expected that from someone supposedly educated. So i gave it back to him good, surprising him (and myself too, i guess). Just in case you are curious, i did get the job offer, much to my surprise.

More on this next time.