coma of the non-medical kind

The promise of a sterile tomorrow that holds no promise

The frustrating certainty of trusted certainty

Squishy brain mass squelched by Prozac doses of ennui

Seeking lobotomical relief

A heart devoid of soul and a soul devoid of spirit

Days of a monotonous hell that hath no fury

Reserved for a madwoman’s scorn

A hell of vacuous vaccum

Dusty morning walks to purgatory, seeking salvation

Slacking off in purgatory

The senses sung to sleep by the collective lullaby of potent moronic babble

Finding hara-kiri-like kinship in listlessness

Shuffling about in sparkling new shoes with rusted needles that poke

The feet that don’t want to walk, that want to bathe in dehydrating turpentine

Loud voices and acrid smells float about with an iron baton of doom

Waiting to swipe out of the slightest smidge of life essence

Karma has left the building

Caffeinated grey cells feed the imagination

Fed unto nasty obesity

Tears add salt to the wound

They dry up before you can feel them with your disgustingly unsullied finger

Doused out by clouds of poisonous sedation

Dreams die before birth, before conception, before lovemaking

Goals kicked out silently expanding French windows

Desire, a maggot-wrapped package

Emotion…

The lack thereof

Of spinning and living

When I went to office on my first day of work, I thanked my stars for the salsa red of my workstation, the wide-screened magnanimity of my computer monitor, the endless opportunities, the golden smiles and my lovely blue chair that would spin at will. When I wrote my first ever article, it was with avaricious ambition that I played away on my keyboard, like a novice taking her first piano lesson, faltering and blithering, but finding a giggly joy even in raw dissonance. When I drove my own sweet car for the first time, I had the cheek to actually chuckle and swear back in Tamil at all the people who asked me ‘ootla-sollitiya’? Oh and when I first fell in love, it was with the wide-eyed naiveté of a new-born lamb that I entered a land of roses, where Elton John and Paul Anka songs played on loop. I baahed and booed and cantered about happily, my tinkly laugh announcing to the world that I was a lamb in love. Baaah!

Today, the red of my workspace could be a royal blue for all I care, the smiles could be a stale silver. The articles that I write lack inspiration and the sound of my typing reminds me of an old lady from the 80s attending to her government job, striking the keys of her type-writer slower than the rotating speed of the squeaky ceiling fan. The last time I drove my car, I merely bared my fangs at the kena-dog cyclist who dared cross my path. And when I fell out of love, it was with all the tinkling joie de vivre of a zombie that I trudged out.

Of my friends, I have always been the most immature, most prone to spawning ‘heated’ cold wars with best friends, most likely to take a leap without making sure there was a safety net waiting below, much given to laughing like a pig-hyena hybrid at inappropriate times, like when being scolded by a professor for sleeping in class. During my college excursion to Wayanad, along with four classmates, I teetered up a slippery rock path, to the part of the waterfall where many people quite simply slip and die. I refused to be one of the thirty other girls who were busy taking pictures of themselves, prettily dipping their toes in the cool waters. But then, life changes you, doesn’t it? You join work, assume an air of pseudo importance and stick your nose up in the air, convinced that you’re the best thing that happened since the creation of cheese. You kill the toddler in you and go all grown-up on yourself and the world. You enter a relationship as a baby, and while in it, morph into a scary aunty, haggling constantly in a migraine-inducing voice. After this comes a point where you stop caring, build a wall around yourself and get super-fat on a dose of ‘Don’t give a damn’. It is approximately at this juncture that life begins to sing to you in Steven Tyler’s voice ‘Yeah your so jaded, and I'm the one that jaded you’. And sadly, all you can think of as a counter is, ‘it’s ‘you’re’ not ‘your’’.

Thankfully, life, apart from performing tacky covers on Aerosmith, also gives you wake up calls, reminding you to kindly get your limbs to move it, move it; your bottoms to, shake it, shake it. Because, really, what’s life if you can’t dance like crazy cartoons or do a funky Hakuna Matata a la Timon and Pumbaa. What’s the point of getting used to things? What’s the point of not caring? What’s the point of being a zombie, just because you won’t get hurt? What’s the point of being impassive when you can rave and rant? What’s the point of saying ‘whatever’, when you can yell ‘what the hell are you thinking you dung-brained raccoon-face?!’ What’s the point of mumbling about your job when you’re the one sitting there- no one’s dying for you to stay, you know. What is the point of giving up on life when you can give it one tight slap and demand that it ‘say sorry’?

Life is all about getting hurt, pulling your hair out, bugging all your friends and making them laugh the next minute, typing nonsense and then saying ‘now that is called nonsense verse my children’, pulling your window down and shouting ‘daiiii **** **** ***’ at the next biker who acts smart with you. It is about growing angry with your partner but never bored, about doing crazy things because they make you happy, about crying for days on end when love is lost but then looking to the future with hope and a renewed partner-preference list.

Life is about being the lovely willow which bends to the wild tempest and escapes better than the strict oak which resists it. Life is about spinning in that pretty blue chair for five minutes every single day!

Love, victually

It is with much shame that I admit, my comrades, the dishonourable truth. The appalling reality.

I share a more meaningful relationship with food than I do with you.

So why is it that a deep dish of pesto pasta or a banana leaf of choice Iyengar delicacies or a smidgen of perfectly-textured mousse, or a bowl of creamy Thai curry, or a stack of bebinca…sigh….so, where I am getting is, why do all of these aforementioned items seem more enticing to me than a long, meaningful, cosy conversation with my friends and loved ones? I thought about it hard the other day, when this heart-breaking home truth exploded in my head in the first place, like a heady overdose of wasabi. It was one of those Anusha-in-murderous-mood kind of days, when everything was getting on my nerves. Friends offered their impatient sympathies through instant chat and I made plans to meet several of them later in the day. In the evening, however, as I was getting ready to head out, I changed my mind. I texted my friends asking them to please forgive me for ditching at the last minute, but something had come up. What had come up was my dear appetite. So what I did was, head out to the nearest restaurant and order a plate of mashed potatoes. I then devoured a main course of gnocchi. It was lovely. Not doughy like many stupid restaurants tend to make it these days. Next stop- the friendly neighbourhood coffee shop, where dark passion awaited me in the form of a tall-glassed mélange of chocolate ice cream, chocolate brownie, chocolate sauce and chocolate rolls. Half an hour later, Anusha went home and slept like a baby-on-Cerelac. The next day, everything was well with the world again. Since then, I’ve been taking mental notes…Food versus Home Sapiens. Here are some thoughts:

Food makes me cry, brings out the emotions in me:
Those who know me as a mere acquaintance, think I am granite- cold, heartless, emotionless. Those who know me better, however, will tell you I am The Tempest in human form. I rave, I rant, I growl, I grunt, I bite (telepathically), I jump… but I don’t cry, not that easily anyway. But I kid you not, the last time I was fortunate enough to come upon the perfect Thai curry, tears escaped involuntarily and unchecked, until I realized the curry wasn’t even that hot. I was crying tears of unhindered joy.
“Every woman is wrong until she cries, and then she is right - instantly.” ~ Thomas Chandler Haliburton)
Food makes me ‘right’.


Food doesn’t have crazy expectations and is not possessive:
It won’t mind if you don’t account for where you were last evening at 6.17 pm. It won’t give two hoots if you have a life-sized zit on your life-sized nose. It doesn’t even expect you to brush your teeth before you kiss it. And sure as hell, a jam tart isn’t going to demand an explanation when you decide to switch to burfi, one fine day. All food does, is dole out spaghetti-like spools of never-ending, comforting love.
“Expectations in your life just lead to giant disappointments.” Michael Landon
Pass me the giant bowl of popcorn, please. Mr Disappointment, be on your way now.

Food and I share a love-love relationship:
I love food and food loves me. It is that simple. Food shows its love for me by being yielding, fulfilling and filling, and I show my deep affection for it by polishing of every last morsel. Who cares about kama sutra, when you can have khana sutra?
“A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.” Stendhal

I hope my next meal is just as good as the last one.

Food has a universal language:

Yummy, mmm, ahh, ooooh la la... you don't need to know Spanish to tell a boat of tacos that you love it.

"Smiles are the language of love." David Hare
Oh that olan, oh that pulisheri.... :-)
Finally...

When all is down and the world is plotting against you...:

... Turn to a plate of thayir sadam and maanga oorga for comfort, instant relief and a quantum of solace. It is unlikely to tell you 'Sorry darling, am stuck in a meeting. We'll talk after three and a half hours.'

- FYI, here's a note to The Eagles: Love doesn’t keep you alive. I tried it once and after merely six hours, I suffered from symptoms of dehydration and started having severe hallucinations that involved being locked in a bottomless pit of despair. Try the food life sometime, guys.

Dear God

Dear God,


I am not an atheist as people think I am. I am not even an agnostic. I am a believer. In fact, just because I don’t go to a church or a temple, it doesn’t make me less of a believer than X, who FYI is asleep through Sunday sermon, or Y who goes to the temple only to surreptitiously feast his eyes on the hip-swaying, faux coy girls who seem to come just to sashay prettily around the deities like the whole thing were indeed a roundabout fashion show. Ok so I don’t pray at home either- I don’t pray anywhere. There’s just something warped about the concept of prayer taught to me that makes it so immensely unpalatable. ‘Ask and thou shall receive’, I was told. This is prayer, I was told. Which is not fair because starving Somalians have fairer needs than I do and their supplications must reach you before mine do, by all means. I lost all faith, over the years, in the image of you that was almost force-drilled into my head. Later, I tried to find the real you several times. I tried to find you in a church and I slept as most Catholics do in church. I went temple-hopping and was no nearer to communicating with you, but I did form a list of favourite temples- ranked based on the quality of prasadam they served. When this failed, I got interested in Jaggi Vasudev and tried to immerse myself in his teachings and change my way of approaching prayer. It got me no nearer to prayer. In fact, it erased prayer from my life- which was really an achievement because the zero-hearted nonsensical verses I was spouting at night, out of habit, seemed like an insult unto you. Osho went right over my head and I couldn’t jump high enough to gather sense. Oh and the new stuff about how one can have conversations with God as if he were a friend… I tried it, it felt rather strange. Also, my mother thought I was hiding someone in my room. So that was that. Officially anchorless and empty, at this point I felt I could well be the brand ambassador for No Man’s Land, if such a land did exist. I came to a conclusion that you would take care of my needs anyway, whether or not I touched base with you. It’s like my relationship with two of my closest friends- I do not have to talk to them every day for me to confidently believe they will be there for me anyway, even if I was a kidney-peddling fraudster or a croaking copulating bull frog. I accepted that you would give me my daily bread whether or not I asked for it and forgive me, whether or not I was repentant.

The Let Us Make Anusha Religious drives stopped ages ago. But still, my insistent cousin tells me now and then ‘Prayer is not just about asking and receiving. It is also a means to give thanks.’ Well, when I dig into a bowl of creamy mashed potato, with nary a lump or bump, my body says thanks in entirety. My five senses strike up a harmony, my gastric juices gush and gurgle, and every organ tinkles…'thanks!’ they effuse in unison. Now, in comparison, kneeling and saying ‘thanks for the mashed potato God’ seems so supremely lame. Similarly, when something I really want happens, I don’t fold my hands (as is wont by many an elder in the family) and say ‘Praise the lord. You are the most supreme. You are the master of the universe.’ See, I’m sure you already know you’re the master of the universe- so I don’t want to reiterate that. Instead, I go ahead and indulge in hardcore happiness. My happiness is my prayer of thanksgiving to you.

All said, I do have some requests. I mean, I know Somalia still needs you, and Afghanistan too, but if you don’t mind terribly, and you’re up for some lightweight duty, you know what to do. Also, if we are destined to meet in a more direct sense sometime, please don’t be put off by my seeming nonchalance. It’s fake. Maybe then I can have a proper conversation with you, without doubts creeping into my mind, as to whether perhaps I ought to check myself into a mental health facility.

And oh, just for the record, thanks for everything. Really.

Much love,
Anusha

a summer's dream

It is a long drive from the city to the resort, nestled idyllically in the distant outskirts, and I occupy myself with songs on my music player - Chapman to Clapton to The Chiffons. And I eventually doze off, the summer sun beating down on the right side of my face from the untinted window by the side. I don’t know what I’m dreaming about, but it involves a lonely golden desert, a large bird and a candle. There is a certain strangeness about the dream, like exploring the unknown. I open my blinkers and spend the rest of the journey counting the mirages that tease and then disappear with shiny consistency.


By the time the gates of the resort greet us, I’m in a daze. The ride from the reception to the seaside, in the cute little white buggy, wakes me in totality, as it skids and skims through the winding, cobbled pathway. The Vietnamese man next to me announces himself as Ta Phoon Phan, or something like that, and says that the heat is too much, too much. I say, ‘Welcome to Chennai’. Inner voice says, ‘So?’ He gets off the buggy to go to Room No 63 (again, whatever) and I have two minutes of serenity before I reach the seaside restaurant. The thatched roof, sea-breeze engulfed eatery makes me feel glad for the merciless summer. For, as I sit by the side that opens out into the sea, I feel transported to a different time and place. The sea looks beguiling in blue, and the sun beats down merrily on it, creating a fine orchestra of crashing waves and golden silence. I watch as a tall, lumpy white woman comes out of the sea in a yellow bikini, walking and tossing her hair about as though she were Ursula Andress. Amused, I look away and see an old browned Brit talking with a random fisherwoman, who looks like a mean, under-nourished eel. They share a strange rapport- she gestures to him, in an imperious manner too, to buy her a bottle of water and he rushes in and gets her a bottle of Qua (that over-priced brand reserved for the rich and firang). I ponder over the queer nature of their relationship and wonder what they’re up to. But before I can put 6 and 9 together, the sound of a bell makes me turn to my left, from where emerges an ebullient waiter who comes bearing a bell and announcing the dishes and drinks for the day. I choose a tender coconut-based drink and sip on it, biting on the straw in that infuriating way that irritates all my friends, while the sea breeze uses my curls to whip my face in criss-crossing patterns. By now my main course has made its way to my table- tantalizing cuts, fresh veggies tossed in olive oil and spices, and I sit back after several greedy mouthfuls. The tender coconut water caresses my throat and slows down the number of thoughts running in my head from seventeen to three. In the distance, the blue of the water gets purple and the sky gets cottoned with clouds. I feel very glad for the summer again, while I devour a stick of orange ice. I feel like the summer was created just so I can enjoy orange ice, the sensation of sweat beads forming on my nose and feel the humid heat blow-drying my hair a chembata brown. At the other tables, an albino-esque Indian girl (this is what happens when you shun the sun) and her husband (judging by the numerous bangles that encircle the girl’s white arms, they are newly-married) are playing footise and there’s a couple where the lady is laughing so loud, you would imagine the poor fellow sitting opposite her is hard of hearing. But he is quite enjoying the hyper ultrasoncitiy, as it evident from his dopey smile. That must be it; maybe he is stoned. I walk away to the deserted deck which smells of sun-dried wood and seaweed. The sun whispers heated secrets to me skin, even as a pair of uncertain arms wrap around my waist. I am startled at first and want to kick hard, but I don’t. Crows screech above, or maybe they’re eagles, because crows don’t screech. I have this mad urge to screech. And I do. Screech. A light giggle erupts above my head. I giggle too. Had someone started singing like Aretha Franklin, I would’ve too. But no one sings like Aretha Franklin anymore. Aretha Franklin sang like summer dusk and almost as an ode, dusk arrives. The sun is bidding a tangerine farewell. So long, farewell. I take one hand from my shoulder and hold it in my hand, preparing to leave the deck. I turn around. But a table stops me. Not a fancy table. Just a battered oakwood table with a broad chair on its two sides. This table is surely for me. Only I could’ve imagined such a setting to be dreamy. I imagine Heidi and her grandfather ate at exactly this kind of a table high up on the Alps. A table laden with thick, hand-stirred cheese, warm fluffy bread and a steel mug of goat’s milk. Milk so sweet, it is no wonder the dear goats were made to graze on the choicest of herbs and flora high up on the mountains. But that’s their table and I won’t intrude. My table bears a candle at the centre. Not the long-stemmed, perfumed kind. But the kind you hunt for when the lights go out at home. Around it are two wine glasses. One with white, the other with red. No compromise in taste. I like that. He doesn’t pull the chair out for me, he notices I have hands. But he waits for me to sit before doing so himself. We start eating, a wholesome meal. I sniff the air. I smell summer, salt, warm candle wax. I smell a surprise too. It comes. Without drama. A ring. A thin gold band. No stones, no pearls. Just a band. The eyes ask and I put my hands forward towards him. Of course, I do. The band fits snugly on my finger. We continue eating.

Something has changed; it makes my insides feel warm and fuzzy. Maybe it is because in this moment, only the moon, a smattering of stars (that have managed to peek out through the grimy skies) and the sea know our secret. Perhaps that eagle too. Eagles are known to be prophesiers of grand fortunes. A wild breeze rushes towards us, spearing grains of sand into my eyes. I shut my eyes and blame the little teardrop, on the grains lodged in my still-shut eyelids.

elemental

Silent grains of pollen fall upon the face

Veiling the ache in jaundiced beauty

Swirls, streaks, sinews

Yet the doe eyes tell the tale

Through the seed-spotted lashes,

The red rims, the swell of a crystal tear



Flashes of sunny brilliance tint the soft tendrils of the hair

Blinding all to the raven darkness within

Gloss, gossamer, gushes

Yet the stray strand lays bare the story

Through soundless floating melancholy

The loneliness, the pain of abandonment



Rivulets of fluid fervour reflect against the lithe limbs

Distracting one from the taut tension

Affective, aesthetic, allegoric

Yet the terse tendon pulses passionately

Through throbs of pilfered potency

The hurt, the twinge of forced surrender



Cowlicks of feeding fire caress the soul

Burning mercilessly the water of life

Coy, come-hither, cooing

Yet the undiscovered drop dances

Through pirouettes of pleasure

The joy, the abandon of a second chance