Spaniard, A Sulky Teen Going Through Stuff, is 14: AMA

When I last blogged, it was Valentine's Day. Corona was everywhere else, soon there would be riots in Delhi and the Trump-Modi tamasha during which, very probably, a ton of corona virus cases gathered and spread along with other rot.

This blog has not recorded witnessing anything of note for months now. This blog is a sulky teen, navel gazing for all its worth, and wondering why nobody loves or understands it. If there was a convenient, not very heavy stone lying on the road, no doubt it would kick it moodily and - provided the clothes were not made for females - stick its hands in its pockets, while all around leaves agitated grey, empty streets.

The streets were empty for six weeks. Now they're not. I miss the empty streets, not so much the empty shelves, and am neurotically content to stay at home like this....right until the moment I remember this poem: 

II

Let's say we're seriously ill, need surgery—
which is to say we might not get up
   from the white table.
Even though it's impossible not to feel sad
   about going a little too soon,
we'll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we'll look out the window to see if it's raining,
or still wait anxiously
  for the latest newscast. . . 
Let's say we're at the front—
 for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
 we might fall on our face, dead.
We'll know this with a curious anger,
        but we'll still worry ourselves to death
        about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let's say we're in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say,
                        before the iron doors will open.
We'll still live with the outside,
with its people and animals, struggle and wind—
                                I  mean with the outside beyond the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
        we must live as if we will never die.

*

Anyway. I'm all out of ideas, or rather I (sometimes) have them but can't be bothered to roll them out evenly with words and bake or season them. They're just lumps in my head and there they will remain.

(Aside: why blogger is giving me different fonts with each paragraph I don't understand. Behave!)

So I outsourced the search for a subject for this anniversary post to twitter. 

AMA, I said, and I had two questions in response:

Amba asked: 

If you had to pick one only, which would you consider a better representation of your bare soul before God and the devil - your Twitter archive or your blog archive?

I had a lucid answer to this forming the minute she asked me, but now it's all gone. However:

The short answer is, I can't pick just one; I won't pick just one! They're two different aspects of my (what is now known as) public facing life, and I think both are valuable. 

Also, if I have to have two entities judging me, I reserve the right to present two different (immortal) records of my self.

As I said to Amba in another context, greed is the true mark of this time of pandemic, and what's the use is arriving for judgement with a curated list of achievements? Bring everything, all the things, I say, and let god and the devil so some work for a change, sorting and sifting.

Ranjani asked: 

So...if civilization were ending and you had to pick ONE film to save what would it be?

You guys...so thoroughly living with a scarcity mindset! Why only one film? Why a film? What kind of a world are we looking at that can accommodate the paraphernalia of film viewing but can only allow a single film to survive? 

I'm so literal sometimes, I want to slap myself.

To be honest, I doubt I'd save a single film. Visual memory is persistent, like vision, and what you've already seen, you'll remember some of. For those who remember what films were, their memories will supply a dream-like memory of cinema. For those future generations that will no longer know what films were, why terrify them afresh when there will be horrors enough? 

Nah. They'll have Tik Tok, ya. Bite-sized cinema, perfect for when you have ten seconds to spare before fighting the next disaster.

*

That's all I have for you. 

Spaniard is 14. You can still AMA in the comments.

Belated

For the first time ever, I have missed this blog's anniversary. I began this thing nine years ago on the 21st and I'm rather surprised at myself. 

Maybe I should even change my description and all.

Then I remember that after all I forgot to announce the blog's ninth so.

Let's have another kind of ninth, huh?

And just for fun, the flash mob version.

[Belated] happy anni, Spaniard.

Spaniard Goes West

A little more to the West as Calculus might have said.

I am off to Karachi for the Lit Fest and after that, to Lahore for two days. Of course, it's impossible to make the short hop from Bombay to Karachi in the civilised hour or so that it should take, so I will be jetlagged with a day-chewing couple of flights, but hey - I'm westward bound!

Unexpectedly, for me, I think I will blog as often as time permits. I won't be able to take my SLR because baggage rules about one bag are very strict and I really can't stuff a camera into my laptop bag. There will be another camera, though it's old and the images it produces are rather grainy but that can't be helped.

What has been interesting has been the reactions of people to the news in the last two days. 

"Why are you doing this?!" one person said. "You'll never get a visa to the US again." 

"Karachi? Oh! Oh!" said another friend. The second oh was both exclamatory and silent. I could tell.

Another misheard me and was puzzled. "What?" I asked, maybe a little aggressively. When she asked what I'd said and I repeated myself, she said, 'Oh, Karachi! I thought you said Karate."

One friend of my mother's has just been and back and she had much advice to give me. We've made a date to compare stories once I return. Another sounded wistful; she had tried so hard to visit her sister for a whole year and at one point it looked like the visa might come through. But then it didn't and her sister died.

Visas. Let's not talk about them.

Let's talk about PACKING!

(Actually, let's not. You lot know me and know it was and continues to be epic. One day, I will inaugurate a new genre of travel writing that is almost entirely told via the packing for it.)

Maybe let's talk about shopping instead? Or things I absolutely must do and see in both these cities?

Suggestions, please!

The Spaniard at Seven

You know that Calvin & Hobbes strip where he's trying his pathetic hand at doing push-ups and after three he starts to count what it feels like and not what it is? That's what seven years on this blog feels like - it feels like a round dozen or perhaps a baker's dozen.

My poor blog. If it had feelings, it would feel like an unwanted child [Richie Havens, 'Freedom’]. I can't even conjure up some fantastical number to describe the number of years it feels like since I began this blog? It has to be a paltry dozen?

Yes, but a Baker’s Dozen! Thirteen! That’s respectable? Life-altering even?

When I was 12, I wanted desperately to turn 13 as if that birthday was a Rubicon I would cross triumphantly into near-adulthood. Unsurprisingly, nothing happened. I am remembering those years because El Cid will be thirteen soon, and unlike me he doesn’t care one way or another. He’s a more evolved human being than I ever was.

Me, I was the kind of kid people write teen books for: poseur wannabe, confused as heck and both snobbish & desperately wanting to be as effortlessly settled in my own skin as my peer group appeared to be. It seemed to me then that when I turned thirteen, I would mysteriously understand everything in my world that seemed so mixed-up and incomprehensible.

Where I am today feels a little like how I felt then – a state of mind in which I think a year or a certain date will somehow transform my life and make clear my muddied molasses mind. Amber and waiting.

I should be reading poetry, philosophy; I should be watching my own mind. Instead I look for something I cannot find, in teen books. If I was really thirteen I know for certain I wouldn’t touch that shit with the hooked end of a twenty-foot crane. But now I read teen books compulsively, so many of them that I can’t remember who wrote them or what they were about. Details remain but mostly they’re poorly written attempts by adults who try to talk like the teens they no longer are and perhaps never were. When they get turned into movies based on the book, they’re, shockingly, even worse. Who would have thought a bad teen book would be better than the movie?

Why am I doing this to myself? It’s a sinkhole out of which I should be clawing myself out inch by inch. I think perhaps I am looking for a way in to my son’s mind which, truth be told, is nothing like the vocabulary-challenged blank slates that some writers think teenagers are.

 – Harsh. That was harsh, Space Bar.

– You think? Wait. Let me produce evidence.

*

You know what? I was going to produce evidence. I swear. I even took out the book and re-read passages of it but if a quick re-read wasn’t bad enough, the thought of typing up all the rubbish gave me the heebie-jeebies. So you’ll have to take my word for it that the last teen book I read was awful.

[Basically, a girl is made to kiss a boy she kind of likes but she kisses him against her will. Later, when they talk about it, he pretty much says to her that when girls say ‘no’ they mean ‘yes’. And though she tells him she doesn’t know what kind of girls he knows (a pretty lame response, but perhaps she was in shock? I would have been.) by the end of their – what was it? a date? It might have been – she’s swooning all over him again. And that’s just one small incident in a book filled with....gah! I can’t even talk about it.]

This is not to say that all of teen books are bad; they may not be Catcher in the Rye, but they fleetingly catch something real, the good ones. It’s just, I really ought to be doing other things with my time.

Like writing.

*

Which brings me to this blog.

I don’t know what to do with it any more. I keep it like a name I can’t imagine changing but when I say it out loud, it doesn’t feel like my name.

I guess it’ll be here, I will be here, providing poems and excerpts from books which people will come looking for at a later date. One day – perhaps by next year – it’ll have something to say for itself.

Perhaps this is a pre-adolescent and necessary moodiness.

But as always, however rubbish the contents of this blog and however capricious my responses, thank you for reading.

Confessions of a Light Sleeper

In early May the temperatures were 40C. For the last week it's been 43C every single day. What this means is that the house, the roads, even the plants, give off heat like they were efficient and well-maintained solar heaters. I could fry and egg on any step.

We try not to keep the AC on for too long. We slop water on to mats and leave them on the floor. We wet towels and drape ourselves with them as if we were delicate greens at the grocer's. We think of watermelons ans cucumbers and instead get more mangoes than we know what to do with.

So we succumb and turn the AC on at night.

But here's the thing: I can't actually fall asleep when the AC is on. It's nice enough when I'm reading or writing or just messing around lurking on Tumblrs and looking at pretty pictures, but once the light's off, I get anxious.

I look at my watch every 15 minutes and if my anxiety levels are elevated, then every three. Finally, at 10, 11, maybe midnight, I turn the AC off. But then:

If I turn off the main swtich, I am closing off the possibility of turning it back on if the room gets hot again (which it will, in half an hour or less). If I open the windows, I will let what little cool air there is out. On the other hand, in time - in four hours or more - there might be a breeze.

But the stabiliser lights bother me. The mattress radiates heat. I get up and open a window. Fall back into uneasy sleep. Wake up again to, maybe, turn the AC on again and change my mind. Back and forth. Toss and turn.

There's too little sleep in summer. Too much time in that elastic space when sleep approaches and retreats. Too little during the waking hours.

(Also too many mangoes. If you're in the city, please take some off me. Their smell overpowers the house. Did I say: that's another bar to sleep.)

*

It's been six years since I started this blog. In a lot of ways it's like a marriage*: I'm mildly surprised it's lasted this long but can't bring myself to care one way or another to renew the excitement of it. Not when the siren songs of Twitter and Tumblr sound. Not when other new, shiny things keep me off the net altogether.

On the other hand, it's a space. It's where I am and can be usually found. And I'm astonished and grateful that people still turn up, even when there's not a whole lot to see.

In the last month, I've looked at what brings new people here. It's mostly chunks of text - poetry, stuff I've stored here in order not to forget - things like that. The top two, consistently are:Edwin Morgan's 'Opening the Cage' and Anouilh's 2nd Chorus from Antigone. Other searches depend on what schools or colleges set their students to read. Some will search for Arseniy Tarkovsky or 'Penelope's Descendents' and find themselves here.

They're not going to land up on the main blog and see this, but just in case: Hi!


And to everyone else, who still land up despite the erratic, self-indulgent, unresponsive to comments behaviour I display, thanks for reading!
__

*I ought to mention, when I say a marriage, I really mean mine. I know many people who have lovely marriages six years on.

treasure hunting

Come on all you Indiana Joneses, gather your tool kits, your crystal skull cases, gold dust magnets and divining rods - there are treasures to be unearthed at schools. Here be natives! And WWII bunkers! And almirahs filled with jools!

Bah.

This thing erupted over the weekend so it turns out that the kid has a loooong weekend. In the meantime, the football field, the hillside, the trees on it, the birds, everything is going, going, gone. All because some 'prominent' citizens, as yet unnamed, along with a couple of masons from the hotel next door (who claim to have seen with 'their own eyes'; why they forgot to say their 'own two eyes' history will leave unrecorded) claim there's treasure somewhere on the hill.

What this has to do with archaeology I don't know. Perhaps the government just failed to create a Dept. of Treasure Hunting at the time, and now has to farm it out to slightly-related departments.

Bah, I say.

In other news, the informants have claimed one fifth of the treasure under some 1878 act. Spaniard Smells a Huge, Stonking, Mutant-Sized Rat.

Spaniard Tilts at Bureaucratic Windmills

Actually, don't Get. Me. Started.

It's worse than sitting in a hospital waiting to see a doctor. At least there you can arrive at 8.45 for a 10.30 appointment and expect to get a decent breakfast and a place to sit indoors.

At the passport office, a whole day in the Inquiries queue earns you an appointment to see the RPO (other variations include DPO and PRO; one of the letters stands for Passport and the other for Officer. The third is irrlelevant) on a given date, with the (misleading and false) assurance that you don't need to wait in line; you just need to turn up at the given time and see the man in charge.

Right.

Anyone with a bit of sense interprets this as 'Be there as soon as you wake up'.

I have turned up at the passport office five mornings since November, at approximately 7.15 am. I stand in the Apoointments Only line, and if I'm lucky I'm number 6 or 7. More often, I'm 11 or 15. We stand in the sun, sit on bits of paper or move in and out of this line until 9 am, when a bunch of cops come out and organise the line in the usual way - with a red lathi. Fights break out in the other, longer line, where people have been waiting since last night. Agents work the line, picked out the susceptible and sometimes get caught. Money changes hands, often not even discreetly.

Remember: all this is only to make inquiries and show up for appointments; this passport office no longer takes applications, so these queues are not even in order to submit forms. They are for people who want to know why their passports haven't turned up after three, six, twelve months or longer.

Ten am sees us inside, with little chits of paper that decides in what order we see the RPO/PRO/DPO. These are meaningless, because there's another line of people that the cops call VIPs: they have letters from IPS/IAS/MLA type people.

If your serial number is 11, say, you can reasonably expect to wait until 2 pm to see the man, and you can almost certainly expect to be told that your file cannot be found. This is what has been happening to me for the last three appointments. I wait in line from 7.15 am only to be told, some six or seven hours later that I need to come back another day when they will have my file.

This, dear readers, is how Spaniard gets homicidal. Spaniard is A Knight with Very Little Patience. Oh, wait. I'm mixing books up, aren't I?

This is also why I have no energy and want to curl up in bed with a trashy book and oranges and chocolate. Escapism has a function if this is what short-term reality looks like.

(Anyone wanting to send me trashy books, oranges, chocolate, sympathy and valid passports, please get in touch).

So how's your end-of-the-year treating you?

The Return of the Spaniard

If I had moustaches, they would be wilting and drooping. Where are the rains?! Is this any way to greet a returning heroine? This afternoon a few drops of rain rearranged the dust on the leaves. Where's the malhar? where're the kale megha? where are the peacocks dancing for joy? Where's all the exotica that's I have grown used to? ([vegetarian] Haggis. Highland sheep [to look at]. Deep-fried Mars bars.)

*

There is loot. There is nothing but loot, since I left all the warm clothes behind in London in order to make place for other, more important things. If you pressed me, I couldn't tell you why these other things occupied all the space in my baggage (or even what they were), seeing as I'd posted nearly every book I bought. I suppose you could say that I just never learned and kept buying more. I could name some folk who would be happy at my evident lack of control.

*
So the loot. I can't possibly name every book I bought. Among them are the books of friends I met/made, including Kathleen Jamie, Kona Macphee and Rob Mackenzie. Some were given to me and I wouldn't dream of refusing. Others were like a keeda in my head until I had acquired them. A couple were bought based purely on how amazing the poets reading their own work were.

In no particular order:

The Tree House and Findings  Kathleen Jamie

Perfect Blue  Kona Macphee

The Opposite of Cabbage  Rob Mackenzie.

Taller When Prone  Les Murray

Selected Poems, Revised and Expanded Charles Simic

The Heavy Petting Zoo and Changeling  Clare Pollard

Terrific Melancholy  Roddy Lumsden

Poems J.H.Prynne

And that's just the poems. Other stuff includes Creeley's The Gold Diggers, that Perec (which everyone seems to think I must already have), The Periodic Table and assorted other fiction and non-fiction of varying degrees of seriousness.

But wait for the next part.

*

I came back home to find that two friends of mine had sent on a belated birthday gift chosen from a  rather extravagant wishlist I'd sent out before I left. I had assumed - as any sensible person would who doesn't expect to see bookobssession in others - that they would choose one, maybe two books from that list.

They chose five.

Which five, you ask?

Pale Fire

Words in Air

Versed

The Emperor of Icecream and Other Poems

Poems J.H.Prynne.

Yes.

Two copies of Prynne. Anyone who wants to buy one off me may mail me.

*

Speaking of Prynne, I was sitting at the window of a cafe in Cambridge, chatting with a friend, when she said, 'There's Prynne.'

And indeed, there he was, walking past, looking right then left before crossing the road. I felt fangirly in a way that I can't explain. Rather like a film student with a rapt look on her face who in a hushed, reverent voice says, 'There's Svankmajer!' to a general film-going audience that looks on with indulgent bemusement.

*

Anyway. Too lazy, too wilted to italicise and provide links to the books, poets etc. They're windmills and you're welcome to tilt at them if you wish.

How have you all been?

The Fifth Face/ Letters

Given that I have never held a job down for more than a year; that I've never even done the same kind of job for too long; that I never know what the next week holds for me, let alone what my plans are for the next year, five years is a commitment I never thought I could make.

Maybe the lack of thought or planning is what kept this blog running for so long. Yes: it's been five years and it's not just a face I'm going through. Let's call it several faces. The blog has crossed the enthusiasm of infancy and is probably settling down into a late middle-age of scattered thoughts and conversations that are held more with oneself than with anything recognisably person-like. This, despite the comments I still get that I sometimes forget or just don't respond to.

But I want to talk about is letters. Letters have always been something everyone in my family has looked forward to with pleasure. My grandfather stayed in touch with a friend in Canada until one of them died. My mother used to write letters to people she'd never met, c/o the names of their own or city, or some absurd approximation of an address. And she'd get replies from them. It was astonishing and joy-giving. The letters were always kind and warm; sometime long and delighted. And these letters were from strangers.

I know what it's like to receive these letters because I didn't have to infer the contents from the expression on the face of my mother; I was allowed to read the letters for myself.

Letters were public property.

Family letters - some of them artfully and well-written - were also public property. They spoke about other people, they asked after everyone, they gave news about happenings. They were not private.

I am wondering where and when I got the notion that letters were intensely private things meant only for the mutual knowledge of sender and receiver. Given that I had never in my life experienced a 'private' letter, one that the receiver would rather not share with everyone, I have no idea when it became clear to me that letters were also a kind of very private and confidential conversation, and to share these kinds of letters wouldbe to betray a confidence or inadvertently give even close family members a glimpse into aspects of your own character that you wanted to protect from their gaze or scrutiny.

School? Possibly, but I can't imagine how. School was where I wrote letters home and of course they were both public and private, in that I knew that the only people who would read them would be my parents, and so I could say things to them without worrying about who else might read my confidences (there weren't many of those, I admit).

Of course, the reverse didn't apply. One didn't allow even one's closest friends to read letters from home, though one might occasionally read out particularly funny bits to them. The letters were put away, under the mattress or in a locker and forgotten about until end of term.

Back home, of course, during vacations, letters came that were no longer public. When the postman rang, I would run to get my letters before anyone else got hold of them. My parents never did open my letters but I was convinced they might. (Though I did have to train famiy in general to not read my letters once I'd finished with them, because, really, even thoughI'd read it first it didn't mean they could read it now.)

I have no idea if this seemed strange to my parents. It must have. As far asI know, they didn't correspond with friends, who are probably the only kind of people who commit confidences to paper. Family was business, sociologically speaking, and letters from any member of family was common property - even the most hysterical, harsh, intemperate or savage letters. And there were a few of those over the years.

Passing lightly over the kind of letters I wrote and received from people who I met every day, and with whom I exchanged letter-notes (sometimes in particularly exigent situations, one posted letters locally), I found myself in a place of letter drought. The only letters I got were unpleasant official communications or impersonal requests for something-or-the-other. Once a year or more infrequently, there might be a letter or poastcard from someone I wanted to hear from.

All private conversation had shifted online. These were necessarily truly private, because my parents were useless with the computer and I got online long after I need have worried about shared or discovered passwords.

There was no room for the inadvertently read letter. Until a few days ago, I had no way of knowing what my feeling on the matter would likely be. Recently, though, a friend wrote to me back home and my mother - perhaps inadvertently - opened it. I found out about it and, because there was no immediate sense of outrage, I sat down to examine what it meant.

Perhaps I no longer have my earlier sense of inviolate privacy with regard to my letters. Perhaps I knew that whatever the letter contained, I wouldn't mind my mother reading it. Perhaps, that it would contain nothing private? Or that - of everyone I know who misses the pleasure of receiving and reading letters - my mother's joy in opening a letter, the ritual of it, would be the most acute and I wouldn't/couldn't deny her that, especially since she abhors emails?

Or maybe I've grown used to airing the most private thoughts in public  knowing they're both always available and quickly forgotten. Like everything else, this also is practice.

The Age of the Spaniard

Yesterday I returned from a day trip and was dropped off somewhere in the precise middle of nowhere. After the drama of the lost keys and all, the day was fun, (and there was whisky), but as I began walking towards what I hoped was the city centre I was beginning to feel my age. My knee hurt from where I'd twisted it the previous day; my heel hurt, as it now does, nearly all the time and I felt faint with hunger, not having had lunch.

I considered my options. One of them was - seriously - to lurch and sway across the road strategically until someone stopped and offered me a lift. They may have thought I was drunk, which was one reason why I restrained myself. The other reason was that there were really no cars on that road. Besides, I'd already nudged my luck once that day and had taken a lift to the station in the morning from a stranger.

I am proud to report that - as befits someone of my age and decrepitude - I did not weep tears of frustration and thwartedness.

After several stories in between, I finally arrived at the grocery store on campus, where I thought I'd reward myself with some beer. At the counter, the girl looked at me, looked at the beer and said, 'Can I see some ID please?'

Assuming that she thought I wasn't from campus, I showed her my temporary uni ID.

'Is there an ID you have with your date of birth on it?' she asked.

I began to understand. No, I said, but I told her my age. The girl at the next till burst out laughing. The first girl ducked her head in embarassment and put the beer away with my other purchases.

'It's a compliment,' the other girl said, assuring me that I didn't look the age I claimed I was. I offered to show them my gray hair. (ok, maybe I didn't).

I was finding it hard not to giggle. Suppose they began to doubt my claims all over again? I did not have proof-of-age ID.

I paid, hurried out and stood on the bridge. I peeped over and giggled at the swans.

Luckily for me, a swan was doing what I have discovered the creatures frequently do: it was flapping its way frantically across the water, trying to take off. Unable to gather the requisite momentum to take off, it skid to a halt, and as if to prove that it was still the dignified bird people wrote and sang about, it unfurled its wings into a heart, preened, and arched its neck gracefully.

That, you see, made my giggling plausible. And not undignified.

Hanging On

Or, Spaniard Turns IV

After almost closing this blog down, and once even saying goodbye, I've managed to stick it for four years!

Four is the adolescence of blogging. This is when one gets moody and misunderstood, where one wants all the attention of the first couple of years but, unaccountably, spurns it when it is given. There are long, sulky silences followed by acute resentment when no one turns up to ask what the matter is.

On the other hand, there's - not to put too fine a point on it - boredom.

This blog is, if you haven't already noticed, going through an identity crisis.

I've considered closing comments, because I'm usually too busy or too unmotivated to respond, but I can't bring myself to do it. I love comments! I wish there were more! Nobody loves me unless they comment and continue to comment even if I don't respond!

(It's not that I don't, it's that I don't feel like it most of the time).

There's a lot of intention. There's a whole potential of it. Every day I think of something that needs essay length posts.

But the thing is, I'm inclining toward the elliptical.

This is a good time to point you to Aditi's lovely post about mood boards. Why just for poets? I think it's a wonderful thing for everyone to have. A visual/verbal shorthand* for what's going on in one's head at any given time.

So that's what this blog might turn into from time to time. For one thing, I'm too lazy to start another dedicated blog. For another, I might one day want to do long explicatory posts just to break up the cryptic. I mean, there's room for all kinds of rubbish here, right, and even the occasional gem or two?

__

* I like how she also calls it a morgue. I like places like that. There's an apt quote but I'm saving it for elsewhere.

Spaniard discovers Dr. Space Baby

and Awesome Hospital, where they deal with awesomergencies on a daily basis.

Where was Dr. Dirtbike two years ago when I needed him?

[Via]

Spaniard is a Glutton for Punishment

Not really. Spaniard merely didn't know that the birthday party she dropped her son off at wouldn't get over when they said it would. Spaniard is trusting and naive like that and never learns.

This party was at a gaming mall. That sounds like a den of iniquity, but it isn't, really. There's a food court as you enter and up a couple of floors are a bunch of noisy video games that I didn't stay to listen to.

So when I came to pick the kid up,Ii expected the cake to have been cut and only the matter of a return gift pending.

What I found was a game in progress - did I mention the place was done up in blue and while balloons? And you could hear the music two traffic lights away? - two kids were surrounded by a gang of children (of their own respective genders), who were attempting to smother them in toilet paper. Apparently this is how mummies are made. The event organiser was shrieking encouragement into the mike, the music was...let's just say, when I drank the thimbleful of coke I was offered, my ears popped. The girls won. The event organiser managed to sound both hurt and surprised.

Next up was dancing. With the EO acting as choreographer, chief mime, lip synch artist and lead dancer. The kids hopped around and yelled like a bunch of bloodthirsty extras from The Lord of the Flies.

After dinner and the most nauseating cake in the history of birthday parties, the return gifts made me feel even more ill: a huge bag, with three wrapped gifts and a bunch of assorted candy. At least one gift broke before bedtime; another was a vehicle for more candy; the last had a sticker on it to remind you that this was so-and-so's birthday. Last year these folks took the kids to a bookstore and told them they could spend 300 bucks on their own return gifts. I was appalled but I can't decide which is worse.

I think this party was much more fun.

World Saving Spaniard

As the talks at Copenhagen collapse (what did you expect?), the world waits to be saved. No batfax is going to do it. The round tables have all been chopped up for firewood a long time ago. 'Negotiations' is a word best left for superhero comics.

Enter Spaniard. The other one.


xkcd

*

Yes, well. I know this is not the kind of Spaniard post you were probably expecting but I feel very godly and capricious these days, as if I'm dispensing cheating boons.

Besides, with all the bad news everywhere, we need a man with rueful countenance, no?

the wounded buffalo and other objects

With which image I will be leaving for a while.

Spaniard's Friends

Back when I was 12 and went to boarding school, the first vacation back was a strange time. Everyone wanted to know who my 'best friend' was. They didn't want to know who my friends were; just who my 'best friend' was. I said I didn't have one; just lots of friends. This seemed to stun all the young folks I had hung out with in my earlier life. It was clearly an alien concept, to not have one person above all others who was first among equals.

I was reminded of this most forcefully in the last week or so when I was doing a cull on Facebook. Having crossed 250 on my 'Friends' list, I was disgusted to find that a large number of people that Facebook insisted on calling my 'Friends' were, in fact, less than acquaintances; some I had never met and there were others I fervently wished I never had.

The word, I'm afraid, has to be both the most elevated and most debased one in recent time. Consider how it's used: 'Oh, we're just friends' (when you want to indicate that there's no romantic relationship involved); 'if we became lovers where would our best friends be?' (nauseatingly sentimental notions from Seth, as if the two must be mutually exclusive); 'my friends are my family' (this is probably true for many young people today and is both tragic and reassuring though not necessarily at the same time); the priceless 'will you make frandsip with me?' (which is just pathetic); and so on.

At its best it is a sacred relationship, one where freedom combines with responsibility towards another human being most felicitously. At its worst it is Facebook and related enterprises.

So, how different am I from the kids who asked me who my best friend was, when I expect social networking sites to be hierarchical and not call every person I am connected to a 'Friend'?

End note: I am as suspicious of people who claim friendship too easily as I am of those who say they have no friends at all.

PS: This was going to be longer but this should do.

PPS: Not very cogent, am I? KBPM's post makes me realise that I failed to say one thing I had wanted to: the annoying thing about the debasement of the word is not so much that it has taken place - well, it is annoying but I can bear with that - but that people do not sometimes recognise that they confuse one order of friendship with the other.

II

Blog Birthday. Yay.

**

The evening before last, my father was discharged from the hospital, with instructions to continue the intravenous antibiotics he was being given, for two more days. To this end, my mother, who was with him nights at the hospital, was taught how to give these injections.

It appeared simple in the hospital: she watched as the nurse took out the syringe, poked it into the container containing distilled water; transferred the water from the syringe into another bottle containing the powdered antibiotic; shake it up well; transfer it once again into the syringe. The nurse then handed the prepared syringe to my mother, who, with great trepidation, gave my father the injection.

So far so good? Right.

Discharge all done, we came home and it was time to give him a last shot at night. Just as my mother had done struggling with the distilled-water-to-syringe operation, the electricity went off. They waited in the dark, clutching antibiotic and syringe. The light came back on and mother did the syringe-antibiotic-and-back-to-syringe routine. Time to give my father the injection. My father, suddenly recalling that the nurse had twirled some knob on the side of the needle apparatus, told my mother to hang on while he opened it up.

In the meanwhile, the electricity went off again, and some insect that was buzzing around found its way into my mother's ear. She shrieked, dropped the syringe on the bed and ran out to put warm salt water in her ear.

The electricity back, she began to give the injection finally. But it appeared that my father, far from opening the knob, had closed it. Every drop of the antibiotic spilled out. In panic, my father started turning the knob the other way around. My mother poked her finger with the needle and shrieked again. One injection was wasted.

Harsh words having been traded, another injection was prepared. This time, my father said, bitterly, that he would do it himself, thank you very much. He began operations. The electricity went off.

Shining the torch, my mother bethought herself of one more disaster.

I hope there are no air bubbles in that syringe, she said. It could be fatal.

So with that thought in his head and with the knob having been opened too far and stuff leaking out again anyway, my father began to feel giddy. They threw away the second injection, and each lay awake far into the night to make certain they were alive, if not entirely well.

The next morning, we all sensibly decided to go to a nearby hospital and have a nurse give him his injections, never mind what the doctor said about family being more compassionate and all.

That's the story, morning glory. How have all of you been?

In which Spaniard is comforted by Quan Tick

It is only now, after more than ten rather stressful days, that I can say with caution that things ain't all bad. In other words, I can sit around and begin to feel sorry for myself for missing the film festival.

Thinking about all the great films I'm missing, and determined to put salt on my wounds, I looked for news of what was happening in Trivandrum. I admit I was not looking for comfort. I had thought it would be roses, roses all the way for those attending the opening and I could settle down to half an hour of deep envy.

Instead I find India Glitz determined to make me crack a smile.

12th International Film Festival of Kerala will feature the retrospectives of world famous film makers Pedro Almodovar and Quan Tick. The Almodovar package will feature 13 films of the famous director which includes all his important works like Law of desire, Labyrinth of passions, Talk to her, Volver, Women in the verge of a nervous breakdown, Bad education, all about her mother, high heels, Flower of my secret, What I have done to deserve this?, Live flesh, Dark habits and Kika.

Quan Tick, the first of the Korean directors to bring the country's cinema to the world market will also be having a retro which will feature his eight films. This will be the first time; Quan Tick is having a retro in any of the festivals in India.

Who is Quan Tick, you might ask. Don't. Just enjoy the punctuation. I feel like my grandfather who used to read Churchill's dubious histories for the sheer pleasure of the language.

Spaniard Says Steal

Many things that happen in books are unbelievable, but like everyone else I suspend my disbelief and get on with it. However, some things I cannot bring myself to believe and these items of disbelief have usually to do with the mundane. Such as, how come we never see Jason Bourne wanting desperately to use the loo after being on the run for days on end?

Or, how on earth can Hermione, who loves books and practically lives in the library, tear out pages from books instead of referring to them and making notes in another book (taking care as she is doing so, to write down the name of the publisher, date of publication, pages numbers and so on)?

This last is especially inconceivable for me, having been brought up to worship - if I worship anything at all - books. I always flip through entire books before I borrow them from the library, to see if they have pages missing and I’m indignant when they show signs of damage.

So I can forgive you your gasps of horror when I tell you the evil things I’ve done with books that don’t belong to me. Ok, let me rephrase that: I’ve never damaged books but I have caused or induced other people to do terrible things with magazines.

(Yes, that does make me less culpable, doesn’t it?)

In college, for some reason that I can’t immediately recall, I was avoiding S. We’d set up several dates and I’d cancelled each one on the flimsiest grounds. A normal guy, more or less as callow and clueless as I was, would have given up. But S, being older, wiser and infinitely more interesting for it, didn’t. Two days after I said, for the nth time, that I couldn’t meet him, I got a letter by post.

It was not the usual small yellow envelope; it was intriguingly large and I opened it carefully. Inside were several pages that had been torn out of a magazine. It was good, thick paper; not from one of the cheap glossies. I opened the pages that had been folded once, turned them over and gasped. It was an extract from Tom Robbins’ Skinny Legs and All. The dance of Salome bit. I started to read, ignoring until much later the little post-it note stuck on the first page. In it, I later found, S declared that he didn’t usually vandalise magazines, even for girls who stood him up. But he was the eternally forgiving sort, he said. That explained why he went against his instincts or upbringing, whichever was stronger. I can find it in me to regret some things from that time, but not those pages, which I still have somewhere.

Some years later, at the Institute, it was diploma time. It was also birthday time for me, and A asked me what I wanted. We were always broke, you understand, so it never even occurred to me to ask for something anyone might need to buy. Just days before, I’d been in the library, reading some film magazine (by which I do not mean Stardust). I can’t remember what this magazine was, but it had two pages, back-to-back, of the psychedelic Beatles posters in it.

I coveted them. I wanted those two pages more than anything else and I was even willing to consider hiding in some dark corner and ripping those pages out. But better sense prevailed. Besides, I did not want to ruin the posters by tearing them out badly. This was an operation of great delicacy and planning.

We weren’t allowed to borrow magazines from the FTII library. How to sneak this magazine out so I could use a good paper cutter to cut the pages evenly?

So when A asked what I wanted for my birthday, I told him.

The library people almost laid out the red carpet because this was probably the first time A was entering the library. All eyes were on us as I took him to the magazine stand, took out this one (I had half expected it to have disappeared. Malign forces frequently conspire to take away that which is most desired) and sat at a table.

A had to take the magazine out but how? No bags allowed. Eagle-eyed librarians all around. We walked through every aisle pretending great interest in every unlikely book – books about microphones, stuff like that.

“Put it in your t-shirt,” I hissed.

“No! I can’t lift my clothes in here. They’re all looking at us.”

“Please! There’s no other way you can take it out.”

“I’ll bring a cutter in here tomorrow and cut them out somewhere.”

“Tomorrow the magazine will be gone. Someone will take it away and say read the new ones that have just come. Please! You promised!”

Hard to do all this in the regulation library undertone. But I managed.

“Ok, fine. Just remember, I’m doing this only because it’s your birthday.”

A hid behind a shelf while I guarded one side of the aisle and he quickly tucked the magazine into his jeans.

“Done? Let’s go.”

Suddenly A was more calm and nonchalant than I was. He insisted that we browse for a while longer. I looked at his t-shirt and it was clear to me that we were going to get caught. I nearly said, put it back. Never mind about the posters.

Guilt vied with greed and greed won. Naturally. We left without getting arrested or grilled. Nobody even noticed.

Back in my room, we examined the two pages with a surgeon’s eye. A fished out a paper cutter from his bag. I turned away, unable to look.

Two minutes later, I was the proud owner of four posters - John and George on one page and Paul and Ringo on the other.

“Happy Birthday,” A said.

I beamed.

I wouldn’t do it myself, ever. I hate vandalising books.

But I can’t promise I’d never again ask someone to tear stuff out for me.

My conscience? Clean as a whistle. Did you doubt it?

Spaniard Turns One

Or, in which Statutory Navel Gazing and Blogispection happens.

Interior. Early morning. A study.

Space Bar sits at a computer typing away. The room is dark, lit only by the monitor. At the edge of what is visible, are several bookshelves punctuated by the occasional light-coloured spines of books. There is a fan that often whirrs and hums but it is off at this time. Space Bar is careful to type softly, lest those who sleep in the adjoining bedroom should wake.

Take 1.

Spaniard turns one! Gosh!

I’m actually surprised that I’ve kept this blog going for one whole year, posting something – anything – nearly every week. I can’t remember which came first: the thought that it might be fun to have a blog, or the name of the blog, which then demanded that I post to get it started and keep it going.

Cut. Too exclamatory and Dear Diary-ish. And incoherent.

Take 2.

It seems almost mandatory for every blogger to introspect on the reasons why s/he blogs and anniversaries seem to amplify this urge. I find such introspection especially hard to do, because it would mean I know the kind of writing I want to do in that space; it only remains then, to sort out the ‘why’. But I'm not even sure of that.

Some people write very personal, journal-like blogs – almost a form of thinking aloud. As Take 1 will indicate, I can’t do that (and this is the place to emphasise that this goes only for me. I have no problem with people who do have personal blogs.) And though I’ve had several posts on cinema and poetry, some on books, some posts that are links, most are what could be categorised as Misc. At the end of one year, I’m still not sure why I have a blog or what I really intend to do with it. After all, I deleted the first one I had; this should augur ill for this one. But given that I spend the time immediately after I put up a post in a state of mild euphoria, followed by two days of complacency and then a rapidly escalating sense of tension (I have to post! I have to post!), that doesn’t seem very likely.

(Aside: notice also, that this post, like the life of my blog, is still going strong in its second avatar. Hmm.)

I can understand why journalists blog, and why they are so widely read when they do. It’s a place where they can give themselves the space to explore all the thoughts they can’t in the media they engage in. They can be more informal, and have conversations about their work. At the very least, it is a place for them to store their published work. But I am not a journalist.

I think of a blog as a lit space surrounded by a pool of darkness. Why I find writing about my life or more personal matters difficult (apart from my inability to understand how anyone could be possibly be interested) is that it feels uncomfortably close to being a Lady Godiva figure at a lit window at night. Do I pretend the curtains are drawn and this space is indeed a private journal? Or do I assume that there will be people looking in? And having assumed that, would I ignore that fact and do what I would otherwise do? (Is that even possible?)

I prefer to think of this space as a stage instead, and necessarily an artificial one. If I must be in the lit space, I may as well offer something else than a slice of my boring life. And if the light leaches out into the dark places and draws in some figures every once in a while who will participate, so much the better.

Like several such spaces that hold a few people in for a period of time, blogs can become a real world sufficient in itself. We know each other by our real or assumed names and our opinions. If we do not know the personal details of each others’ lives, we know, through the writing, what any given person is likely to think, or how s/he will react. Even what we react to are often the same things. We live in an echo chamber and we find our choruses rather pleasant – even the occasional dissonance (who was it said you can have no harmony if everyone sings the same note?).

I enjoy that. I enjoy the eventual sense of community, the opinions that people hold, the way they express themselves and the conversations. I read several blogs for these reasons; I can only assume that someone somewhere likes to read mine for similar reasons.

So…Spaniard turns one.

Thank you all for reading!