Work

I find it amusing that the work that I used to despise until 2 years ago has become the fulcrum of my existence. It gives me orientation, a sense of identity, a feeling of community, a comfortable familiarity in the smell of fresh coffee in the mornings, the grey carpet, even the new money plant at my desk. Maybe it is simply a feeling of gratitude for my health, which I haven't really been able to take for granted in the last 6 months. Or maybe it's the reflexive reaction to the new designation and improved salary. Whatever it is, I hope it lasts.

By the way

I have a new house. A small apartment. I mean, bought and everything. Mine. Or ours.

Owned by us.

It's lovely. Cheerful and cosy and everything. And on days that it's clean, it's even better.

God, I feel old.

Finally on Facebook

I finally have an account on facebook. I have been trawling all over it, trying to find out how the world has changed in the one year that I've been missing.

Somehow even though some pictures of old friends are interesting, and the niggling question of whether they've done better than I have, is ever present, my interest in this much talked about phenomenon is at best tepid. I cannot wait to get back to my book.

sigh

I am so not with it.

Duties

In the fairly long time that I have been away from writing anything but work-related emails, in this past year, I think I have grown.

From being the glitzy heart bouncing on your formal sleeve, from being the brash child begging to please, from being the mantelpiece holding your trophies, from being the mediocre foil to your superiority.

I see that now, of course, in the dead seriousness of everything.

I no longer cry blatantly, publicly; making a bid for your precious time, your burgeoning responsibilities, your super-hero efficiencies, your perfectly divided loyalties, your measured amiabilities, your calculated appreciation. The time for that is past.

I see that now, of course, inthedeadseriousnessofeverything.

The Commonplace and The Downright Vulgar

Today's fortune: You have an unusual equipment for success, use it properly.

That is my Orkut fortune for the day. And I'm wondering if I'm the only one who finds it slightly, err... obscene?

Elephant Jokes, Tequila Shots.

To M and to S, who left. I miss you already.

And if there really is
A heart of the matter,
Then it is broken along the same lines
That all hearts break.
Along your loss,
Along the vital absences
Of your warming laughs,
Along the quickening pulses
Of our shared jokes,
Along the stimulating togetherness
Of alchohol.

And if there really is
A point to this poem,
Then it is lost along the same way
That all points are lost.
Along my daily latte,
Along the friendly frenzy
Of our nightly dances,
Along the orange restaurants
Of our favourite custom,
Along the way of your days here
That seemed so short.

***

And a piece of this poem by Alexander McCall Smith, which seems to have been written for this moment.

But what breaks the heart the most, I think,
Is the knowledge that what we have
We all must lose; I don't much care for denial,
But if pressed to say goodbye, that final word
On which even the strongest can stumble,
I am not above pretending
That the party continues elsewhere,
With a guest list that's mostly the same,
And every bit as satisfactory;
That what we think are ends are really adjournments,
An entr'acte, an interval, not real goodbyes;
And perhaps they are, dear friends, perhaps they are.

-Alexander McCall Smith
"The World According to Bertie"

***

In Forums Like These

To Cheriyan Alexander

You probably don't remember me, and I have no claim to your memory except one that I am ashamed of, and I still wonder how it was that you kept so calm that day in class, when I called Emily Dickinson's poem trite; I still remember the poem. It was 'A Narrow Fellow in the Grass'. You probably thought that I knew no better. But I did. That is the worst of it. I knew that I had no business saying what I did, using the word 'trite' for Emily Dickinson, for Emily Dickinson's poem, no less.

I still wonder what made me do it, what rebel-without-a-cause feeling made me want to seek that horrible sort of attention. Not that I had any sort of feeling about the poem, really, not then. Just that I wanted to have an opinion, preferably a controversial one, to air.

But I will take this opportunity to apologise, even if you will never see this, and if you do, you will neither remember nor care. Because you, and Arul and Etienne, in those 200 hours of poetry and popular music, opened up a world that may be routine for some folks, but to me, was magic; to me, was all the peaceful dissent of the world, was all its angry protest, was all its arts and faiths and voices, was all the dread of a world gone wrong, was all the hope of a world that could be, was in short, the place from which all my sense of the world derived.

One of my cherished few minutes of the twentieth century fiction course was a class where we were discussing 'No Longer at Ease', and talking about Nigeria's vicious circle of oppressed becoming oppressor. And a sort of terror took hold of me, and I asked Etienne, "But if that is true, then there is no hope for Nigeria, and other countries like Nigeria?" And Etienne said, "Of course there is. In forums like these."