I feel wretched...

Ok, I'm back.And much better. But I did have an awful time while the influenza was making its slow and surreptitious invasion over my innermost anatomy. Sneezing,running nose,blocked nose, coughing, headache, eye pain....man, was there an end to it,you'll wonder... Oddly enough, I was at my lucid best in terms of writing power. A couple of observant friends did report that to me. But then, I always knew that I stood out in crowds because of all the wrong things.

The worst part of fever for me is that it leaves me alone with myself and those fears, guilt feelings and psychic debts I do otherwise manage to repress. Psychoanalytically, that's easy to explain. Your conscious self recedes to the background and the unconscious returns with a vengeance. Anyway,I'm not going to go into all those intricacies. For sooner or later, some purist will turn up and accuse me of having the audacity to dilute Lacan and prostituting him. I wouldn't like that to happen.

Let's come back to the point.I realised in these couple of days, that I've been too caught up with K to give the other people in my life the attention they do merit. Especially those who have always been there for me, without being assertive in any way whatsoever. Rashi, for instance. She deserves to see much more of me than I do spare time for her. And Tua, Shobhana, Sohini.....they don't complain....but that's because they're probably generous enough to forgive me repeatedly. Can't say for certain whether I would have done the same in their places. But all I know is that I feel wretched at the thought of this narcissistic streak I hadn't known to exist in me before. Just proves that you're as bad as other people, if not worse. All preaching, no practice.

What can I say, everyone? 'Forgive me' sounds too cliched. Just 'let me try again ' perhaps?

Repercussions...

INEBRIATION

Burden me not
With so many unsought
Memories.

My heart,
heaped heavy
With such happiness
May no longer be able
To
Brave the battles,
To down the draughts
Of bloody bottles
When
They eventually come.

And render me dumb.

Harnessed to the hopes
Of endless heavens,
I am doomed
To be done
Into
A deadly defeat .

Darling,
I am drunk
With a deep-seated,
Dire,
Heady desire
To drown,
To demolish,
This hapless heart
In you,
Yourself,
All that is you.

This defiant ego
Alas,


Even this is daunted:
It dares not fight
A lone, lost war
With no arms,
Mere head,
To stoke
Its dying fire.

Hangover time,
I fear,
May
Never
Draw near.

Spoken in delirium

Am down with fever. Hate it when I am sick and bed-ridden. My very instincts rebel. And to think it all started with a sore throat. Aggravated by an AC in office that is intended to condition the air for computers and not we poor human beings. We are actually instructed to bring shawls if we feel that cold. Man, what is the world coming to? I'm sure that we shall soon end up with a world a la I, Robot. Just replace 'robot' by 'computer'. How worse can things get?
Much worse, it seems. Himesh Reshammiya stars in a film where Mallika Sherawat is paired opposite him (not exactly, she appears to be the vamp). She dances to his songs. He is wanted by the police. The biggest tragedy of all - he actually emerges unscathed. I knew the police were no good.
Even worse things are happening.I want to go watch a new film this weekend, but there's nothing on offer that really appeals. I don't want to watch 'Jara Brishtite Bhijechhilo' or the tiring starcast of JBJ. Un logon ko dekhte hi mere sare jhumne ka shaukh gayeb ho jati hei. K suggests 'Shootout at Lokhandwala'. I cheer up. Lots of dhishum dhishum gives me a chance to behave suitably scared in a multiplex and cling on to whatever part of him is closest to me. I actually start feeling much better after gauging my future prospects.

Chauvinism et al

Jamai Shashthi. Just another name for chauvinism at its worst. Even my company encourages it. Pampers the jamais actually. Singling them out for a lavish treat that just drives home once again the Great Wall of China divide between men and women. As if marriage topped their list of achievements in life.Big deal. No wonder that all the marriage jokes (PJs actually, each and every one of them) somehow sound suspiciously pro-male. I only wonder who the hell finds them funny. Certainly not any of the married women constituting my own list of acquaintances. Nor for that matter any of the sensible and gender-neutral male friends I possess (who, I'm glad to hear, are no longer an endangered species, thanks to proper education and media outrage at any extant non-conformist MCPs) .So....I guess the jokes are on the 'stronger sex' at the end of the day. They actually have to be coaxed into downing the bitter taste of medicine they secretly feel matrimony is by all these juvenile jests that seem to celebrate marriage as an institution.

Writing therapy

When I am happy, I read. When I'm unhappy, I write. That's my own form of catharsis, you see. I call it writing therapy.

Perplexed? It's simple really. When I'm happy, I'm sorted out. And I can make sense of 40 pages of hardcore non-fiction in an hour. So I prefer to read, to make sense of what others have written post experience. But when I'm down, I become complex, incoherent, diffuse. And I suffer. So I need a cure. In my case, I am kinda weird. And so, you see, my form of convalescence is different from the normal people around me. I write when I'm troubled, tortured, tentative about myself, about life. And writing purges me. A variation of Aristotelian catharsis, you might say.