Miracles will never cease. I made a list last night and accomplished everything on IT!!! Its quite easy actually, dont know why I was being such an ass about it. Kataria was informed of all changes, one. ensure the shower area in the bathroom is slightly lower for drainage, two. fan in the kitchen, three. cover ac vents with glass. Asked pankaj about gas and telephone connection. called the bank. Went to the hospital for another test. Went to Orange to get my damn pre-paid number registered and BLAH BLEAUGH. I just found out that I need a marriage certificate to get a permanent billing--because I need to use my husband's credit card...and i'm sure i will need the certificate for a host of other things--so i better find out how we are going to get one...i think we have to apply for it in the place where we got married. The woman at the orange counter said oh does your passport have your married name or ? so i said i had the SAME NAME before I was married and I have the SAME NAME now and will always have the SAME NAME. I think I scared the poor lady...she laughed nervously and said "Ohhh thats goood." BAH.
Friday, August 30, 2002
Thursday
IN IMPORTANT NEWS, Lion and I measured the dimensions of our new house today. We've ordered white checked curtains for the living room. We bought ocean blue organdy curtains from a sale at The Linen Closet in Bandra. Also bought jute chiks for the second bedroom which is to be an entertainment room. We've decided that the television shouldn't be in the living room. The kitchen is going to need some shelves. I want a bright red or blue draw attached to the wall somewhere to put spoons and forks in, just like the one at our present house...maybe we'll find something in chor bazaar or some other store.
in other news, i am terribly ashamed of my inefficiency. apart from always forgetting my phone or wallet or something of vital importance to my life, the lion is having to do the lion's share of running the house: so i'm making a list of things that i just have to do on a regular basis. I used to make involved lists of things to do every morning, when i lived alone and i realise that i've stopped doing that. I feel quite sickened by this imbalance and i've promised myself its going to change. Have to unclutter my existence and just NOT procrastinate.
Thursday, August 29, 2002
I love William Butler Yeats for these lines from The Secong Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Wednesday
Most of the girls at the office are running scared after the stories of rape in the city. I'd be nervous too if I was taking a late train back home. Sonia stays back in the office dormitory. She said the policeman who guards the ladies compartment told her, "chehre se toh shareef lagte ho, itne dere se kyun aate ho?" She said the only other girls on the train at that time are bar girls. I don't know what the hell its supposed to mean. you look like such a good girl, why're you out so late at night..asking for trouble?
ok even if she happens to be an "indecent bar girl" she is entitled to a safe journey home on the public transport at ANY TIME OF DAY OR NIGHT!!!!!!!!!!
It's so GODDAMN hypocritical Of course no one would ever ask a man who is returning from a brothel or a beer baar at an "indecent hour" if he has been out doing decent things. It just made me sick to my stomach to hear it, that Sonia had to listen to this idiot policeman whose job it is to protect women on the train...I mean if this is the general attitude, what kind of security can he really provide?
Wednesday, August 28, 2002
My eyes felt so heavy when I staggered in to music class today. Neela was wearing her green cotton churidhar which makes her eyes look even greener than they are. She had washed her hair and wore it loose. I like that she doesn't dye her hair and it hangs in silvery black strands. She stood up and pulled out the gleaming tanpura from its case and we began aalap. My voice was fine, a little throaty and I yawned a few times. saaaa--yaawwwn. Nandu, her husband gave me tea. I was hoping desperately through the first few moments of the class that he would offer tea as was too shy to ask for it. Gulped it down and began to sing Raaga Purvi. Purvi is an evening raaga to be sung between 6 and 9 PM. I got this information from a random website, which lists all Hindustani raagas. I did not have this information when I sang Purvi this morning...but while singing, I thought of the evening lamps that amma lights every day at dusk, the lovely smell of chandan agarbathies in my house in Bangalore, that soothing smell of jasmine and camphor that old temples sometimes have, the view of the sunset from our apartment in bombay---isn't that strange? that the raaga invoked thoughts of dusk even though I had no clue that it was an evening raaga??? I'm so excited with this discovery. I want to sing to my husband tonight. He has no idea how much he inpires me. I've started writing and singing and doing so many things that I idly dreamt of doing before, and now i find i'm doing everything I wanted to, because he is so passionately supportive.
Tuesday, August 27, 2002
Day Two at the Earth Summit. I was watching BBC news this morning and the anchor woman was talking about how the agenda is too huge. There are 193 governments trying to reach some sort of agreement. I must say it sounded rather ambitious. I'm definitely sitting on the fence here. It seems like such a grand idea--all the governments of the world deciding to make the world a better place. (now this is a very serious issue but i'm hearing michael jackson in my head--heal the world, make it a better place... for you and for me and the entire human race.) Maybe I've read too many environment reports today. But the one that stuck in my head is this opinion piece from The Telegraph which says that the 65,000 people attending the Earth Summit will produce as many greenhouse gases in two weeks as would half a million Africans in a year.
Tuesday, August 27, 2002
Monday
The earth summit begins in Johannesburg today. It's among the world's biggest conferences. John Vidal's story in The Guardian is about the chasm between the glitzy conference centre and the township of Soweto. Soweto shocked me two years ago. I was visiting it with a group of compassionate and camera-happy Americans. We visited the church where black children from the township schools sought refuge from white policemen, who proceeded to attack the church. I remember a decrepit old man called Denny giving us a tour of the church and showing us the doors and windows with bullet holes in them. His voice still developed a tremor when he pointed out the bullet holes. He looked like he had been drinking. It's crazy how I feel that I know Soweto, just from the township music that I loved, from Peter Magubane's pictures of the Soweto riots in June 1976 and also from Rian Malan's riveting book, My Traitor's Heart. I felt the fear that Kumalo felt in Paton's Cry The Beloved Country. Denny gave me some pamphlets about the church and a small black and white poster that talked of the anniversary of the Soweto riots. That little pamphlet made me so angry and sad. It talked of the struggle, lives lost and how it was all in vain because twenty-five years later, the township schools still haven't improved.
Monday, August 26, 2002
LRB | Jacqueline Rose: 'This is not a biography' Why do biographers love Sylvia Plath? Jacqueline Rose's essay examines our great need for the true story. Set me wondering as to why we're so eager to know the REAL DIRT on authors, actresses, sportsmen. I know I've heard it so many times, what is he or she really like? You've heard it too--the conversation goes something like this: apparently he is actually horrible and she is not really as sweet as she pretends to be.
When Rose says, "There she is! Sylvia Plath - nothing hidden. The true story told. Isn't that why she wrote in the way she did? Isn't that what she would have wanted, after all?" I'm reminded of Margaret Atwood's poem, True Stories:
"The true story is vicious
and multiple and untrue,
after all. Why do you need
it? Don't ever ask for the true story."
Monday, August 26, 2002
Prairie Dogs @ nationalgeographic.com i don't really think of myself as a prairie dog. I'm not endangered, am by no means small..and also i'm not rodent-like. I really like the name though...a prairie dog sounds like a rather free and happy creature.
Monday, August 26, 2002
Sunday
I've lost myself in weblogs, following strangers' thoughts. This idea of publishing random thoughts appeals to me.
Of course, its terribly narcissistic. What I think, what I write, who I like and so on but it can also be refreshing--so many people saying "see, i read something new today, I saw something that moved me, I met somone who I want to know." That gives me hope and so I'm beginning this blog today !!!!
My best friend, the lion, isn't feeling too good this monday morning. I can hear him prowling around while i'm asleep. We both stayed up too long watching Xfiles last night. WE HAVE FOUND A NEW HOUSE!!!!!!
Sunday, August 25, 2002
