What the Sparkly Says.

No, this post is not over with the sparkly thingy. After the jump is the actual birthday post :) (check after midnight, on March 27)

Pale Hands I loved Beside the Shalimar

What an annoying song, God. What a terribly annoying song. It progresses from a vaguely nice-image-evoking first line to become a cloyingly sentimental travesty of words eleven lines thence. Bah.

It being a particularly inappropriate time to post for several reasons, I, of course, make it a point to do so.

Lindt milk chocolate has a taste like no other brand of milk chocolate, which leads us to wonder if the difference is in the milk, chocolate or the makers. Or whether the milk, chocolate and maker simply share a dynamic that transcends comfort and approaches romance. Whether those cows are born and bred delicately in full view of the Lindt factories as a gentle reminder that their produce is to be used to satiate the evolved palates of nineteen year old asian girls with vivid dreams and limited funds. Amongst others. Of course.

Do they know that they end up as dog food if they're not good enough, those cows?

(What an anticlimax all this will be if it ends up being buffalo milk. But I expect better from the Swiss ;) )

But I digress; the chocolate. It must be the cows. Because Amul milk chocolate is the shittiest milk chocolate I have ever had the misfortune to taste. And I had it for free, so if I am dissing it, it was that. bloody. bad.

Or it could be the Swiss pastures. Are Indian cows pastured? Or are we reluctant connoisseurs left to contemplate the delicate and competing flavours of sundry Indian roads and garbage cans, in our chocolate? Are cows pastured at all, or am I confusing them with sheep? Aren't cows just 'driven'?

I've never seen cows 'pastured' exactly, and I have been to villages, thank you very much. Two, in fact. Cows're just sort of let loose on scraggly grass patches not far from roads. Hardy looking cows.

Maybe I'm having just having a Ruskin Bond hangover. Where all villages are on hills and there's lots of luxuriant green grass and things. So the whole pasture-deal fits in perfectly with those 'bucolic' images on imported cookie tins. Complete with spotted cows spotted in an eye-pleasing symmetry. And arranged in eye-pleasing symmetry. On satisfyingly pointy hills. With snowy caps.

Alternatively, these villages I visited just may not have been particularly 'rural' villages. They could be one of those bastard ones that are spawned awkwardly on halfheartedly used State Highways. Like satellite townships that grew indifferent before they quite reached 'town' status. You know. Or maybe not. Neither do I, incidentally. Hi, are you new here?

'Random' is a much-abused word. It is almost as though people are frightened of titling their facebook photo albums anything in specific, though the running theme of these albums is often specific enough. Tenuous friendships, shiny photos. 'Random'-ness appears to be 'cool', that other much-abused word. I'm sorry to burst your bubble, darlings. It's not called 'cool'. It is called 'lack of imagination'. Or 'lack of vocabulary'. Equally bad, as far as I am concerned.

Freedom is, roughly, choice. Is a choice a choice when making it alters every other variable that you meant to keep constant? Are only equivalent choices choices? What of conditional freedoms?

And what of the law? There is no compulsion to follow the law if there is no fear of consequences. The law does not require us to fear the consequences. We choose to fear the consequences. Does the law then impose upon our freedom at all?

What of these consequences? Prison we construe as a limitation on physical freedom and consequently mental freedom, though far be it from me to make a distinction between 'freedoms'. Therefore we allow to law to limit our freedom in the fear that if we do not allow this limitation on freedom, we shall have our freedom limited in some other manner? What? Clearly we require naked literality to frighten us. The gun is scarier than the gun-laws. Idiots.

Arundhati Roy's face is planed so beautifully. High cheekbones, liquid eyes and that iridescent honey-gold skin that girls with uneven tans and sunburnt noses will always be envious of. And she wrote that one book that I shall never be sure whether I like or not - God of Small Things. For all the knee-jerk cynicism, I'm a sucker for happy endings. GOST has no happy ending.. GOST has no ending that I could make anything of, actually. But she has a beautiful turn of phrase. 'A viable, die-able age', she said. What age isn't?

A viable, die-able age. Singing syllables.

Provogue Jodhpur does not carry skinny jeans in size 28. Asking for said jeans in said size appears to be reason enough to invite exaggerated expressions of disdain and pity in salesman of said store. I prefer to take this as definitive indication from the Universe that, inspite of all the well-meant encouragement of my enthusiastic and pushy friends, I am meant to spend my life in washed-out, one-size-too-large, held-up-by-clunky-belt blue straight jeans. I hear they're called 'Boyfriend jeans' and that Heidi Klum is wearing them these days. Fashion apparently does come full-fucking-circle.

I must stop blogging when I'm ridiculously sleepy. I just must.

Goodnight, me homies.

In Other News...

Anurag Kashyap just birthed the love-child that he had with Baz Luhrmann. Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie have also registered claims of parentage. Along with roughly every minor director involved in neo-European cinema over the last thirty years.

(Attempts at determining paternity have failed because the child, fondly named Devender Singh Dhillon, pooped unceasingly and unabashedly on every person who attempted to get within twenty feet of him.)

As far as I am concerned it was one big, happy, politically incorrect orgy.

Congratulations, aap sab baap ban gaye hain. :)

Also, all you peoples simply must watch Dev D.

Because it has a actor in the lead role who is not only delightfully debauched, but proceeds to indulge in said debauchery against the background of arguably the best soundtrack of the year.

Because I live in a college that abounds with drunks of every variety and I know what drunks look like. When Abhay Deol wants to look drunk, he looks drunk. (Pertinent case study - compare with Shah Rukh Khan. In Shah Rukh Khan's world, drunk clearly equals spastic.)

Because he is the Snark. (*spoiler* the Haldi-wala sequence at the wedding!! ooohhh swoon */spoiler*)

Because he has dimples.

Because he can act despite his dimples.

But mostly because of the dimples.

I kid, I kid.

(It's actually his arms. What lovely arms. )

I have a thing for arms, clearly.

Ahem.


But seriously, please watch Dev D. It's important to watch a movie like this one purely for the privilege of being able to develop an independent opinion of it irrespective of whether it is favourable. In a sea of self-satisfied silicone-enhanced mediocrity, exposure to the noir side of Bollywood luxuriating in its own selfpity is necessary for perspective. Even if yours is different from mine.

I am Tired and you are Stupid.

You know when you're tired and you reach that point when words are simply bunches of syllables strung together for no reason at all and people are just talking blablabla the words are only sounds and all the sounds are the same and look the lamp's making a pretty pattern on the wall right there and what were you saying? and you squint at talking people but now they know you hear nothing know nothing and the words die down slowly and they stare right back and their stares and your ignorance and your tiredness go straight back into your head and warp and implode quietly inside the oatmeal that is your mind.

And the someone says WHY AREN'T YOU PAYING ATTENTION. IT'S ONLY COMMON NICENESS TO PAY ATTENTION. I AM DYING AND MY LIFE IS OVER AND I WANT TO KILL MYSELF AND YOU'RE NOT EVEN BEING NICE TO ME.

Firstly, niceness isn't common. It is extremely uncommon.

Secondly, I am fundamentally a nice person. I eat rainbows and shit butterflies on a regular basis. This is just my off day.


Thirdly - yes, I believe you should break up with your boyfriend. Partly because you are "not on the same plane of Emotional Maturity as far as commitment is concerned" and "maybe our lives are just beginning to run their Natural Courses in different directions from each other" and you are "Destined for different things" , as you so eloquently put it.


But mostly because I know he is cheating on you. Sadly, so do you.



Now stop talking to me about it.

The Small Print, Only Bigger.

FORMAL NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF BORROWED MATERIAL (garnish liberally with 'respectively'):

To both of you Unknown Persons who own sites good enough to show up within the first two pages of search results for "angry jumping woman" and "anal British butler guy" - observe left hand side and right hand side respectively of (BRILLIANT NEW!) header, respectively - please note that I have borrowed your (?) creations and made me a new slap-up header. Which I love. I am sorry that I have forgotten the links to your webpages. However please note that this would not have happened if your webpages had not been eminently forgettable.

Ooh, I almost forgot:

Please don't sue me.

I love you despite your catastrophic taste in colours (Dear Angry Woman - did an extra large bag of peppermints throw up on your dress? No? Then we have a problem.) And is that not the truest love?

Ok i'm done.

I Watch You Smoke.

It is all peer pressure, she said dismissively, with all the happy confidence of one who has had her opinions gifted to her shrinkwrapped, for easy consumption / long shelflife.


She said, Cigarettes are Dangerous and Smelly and Dirty, how could they possibly be sexy.


I don't really know if I like the smell of cigarette smoke.. I've never had the luxury of choice, my sinuses have been making their opinion obvious for as long back as I can remember. I cough and I sneeze, repeatedly and embarassingly, around anyone who chooses to light up anywhere close to me. For every five minutes that I spend in an elevator with a smoker, I sneeze four days. Quite understandably, I try not to linger.


But I look at smokers, that doesn't hurt. I watch them gather in straggling groups around paan shops and outside the highway dhabas, and walking along the railway tracks, and sneaking behind the city hotels, and very rarely, braving the danger of their hostel balconies, standing facelessly in the scary opaque blackness of winter nights, the tips of their fingers lit up faintly by the smouldering ends of their fags. I look at them and for every ten fumbling idiots puffing away at their stubs, there's definitely one sexy smoker.


There are those smokers who clutch their cigarettes gracelessly with three stubby fingers, puffing on them jerkily with a sort of sullen singlemindedness. They smoke furiously, right till the filter, with the urgency of asthmatics with inhalers. Sometimes they pound their fags into their little plastic dip-tea cups, stubbing them out until there's a papery, grey-brown sludge at the bottom of the glass. Sometimes they belabour themselves into doing party tricks and force out a marching parade of stiff, unhappy looking white rings, looking pleased with themselves. These smokers and their silly, pouty, ring-producing mouths are a pain to watch. I don't like these smokers.


I like the other ones.


The ones that inhale slowly, absentmindedly, with their elbows up on the table and their fingers completely relaxed, the cigarette between them barely an afterthought. They inhale, and you see nothing for two seconds, and then they breathe out gently, in faint white tendrils. Their lips barely move as they smoke, the act of smoking itself just an accessory to the whole thinking, talking, laughing performance.


The ones in whose long, tapering fingers the cigarette stays suspended almost miraculously, as they move their hands around while talking. The thing dangles carelessly between middle and ring finger, and they flick the ash away from them in that pretty wrist-flick that they don't even notice they do. It dances dangerously, threatening to fly from between their fingers when they start waving their hands around as they talk excitedly, and pushing their hair away from their faces. They never notice. It never falls.


Then the smouldering tip begins to fade, and they stub it out halfheartedly in their cups, and they leave.


I walked into a dhaba once, on the Madras-Pondicherry highway, to buy chocolate. I saw a girl with long, shiny, messy hair, mile-long fingers and a beautiful mouth smoke a Djarum Black while talking angrily into her phone. To this day I am not sure whether I bought a Dairy Milk or a Gems, but the tableau of that girl and the beautiful long black cigarette dancing angrily at the end of her beautiful, skinny fingers is burned into my mind, like one of those pretentious black-and-white photographs they call 'high art' these days. But this picture is not black and white, of course. Dark brown gold hair, freckled brown fingers, black cigarette, pale gold band. The colour is only too alive.


Smokers should quit. If they can't, they should learn to be sexy smokers.


I mean, if you're doing something that is going to stain your skin, kill your breath, block your blood vessels, collapse your lungs and stop your heart, the least you can do for yourself is look hot while doing it.


No?

Watching Shoe Porn..

..is an excellent way to spend a Sunday morning. It leaves you full of delicious visions of orgasmic silk ballerina flats (transferred epithet, ya -- shoe is satin and I am orgasming) and deLIGHTfully vertiginous patent mary-janes, and you float through the next hour or so in a pleasant haze composed of the million shades of purple that only exist in celebrity shoemakers' minds.

Then you switch off your computer, wear your dusty Nike floaters with ankle socks (what? my toes get cold.) and go downstairs to eat your puri-bhaji.

I have no intention of owning any of these things, these Blahniks or Choos or Loubous or Ferragamos. I love my floaters most of all the shoes I've ever owned; yet, you know, I believe that to obtain a sense of perspective, it is necessary to know that perfection exists at a height of four and a half inches from the ground. It has a delicious little moue nose and wears plum silk.

And today, it retails on eBay for $10.50.

I don't have $10.50.

Today is not a good day after all. I better go back to sleep.