Objetos Curiosos

Anybody born in May is a comrade of mine. I was born in May, my brother at the cusp of autumnwinter in India. 30th October. I scoured through a blue coloured baby book for a name, and I wished I was going to have a baby sister because the name Natasha caught my fancy. Born on Christmas Day. It became lodged in my memory. Once in the school bus, I mustered up enough courage to go to the senior who had that name and tell her what it meant. She replied, humoured and amused, you are only in second grade, why do you know this? I think the apt line of questioning would have been how did I know that, so that I could actually give an answer. Baby brother incoming. Baby names book given by doctor. The only piece of literature available at hand. Scouring through it all. Picked out fancy names for fun. I like your name. I like you. You are so tall, and your skin is so pretty, and you have something called a boyfriend, and your skirt looks better than mine. I love you Natasha, my Christmas miracle. But you don’t know the right questions to ask, so I will let you go. Bye Natasha. Bye forever.

She graduated the next year, and I never saw her again, until I stalked her on Instagram a while ago. Turns out, she is just an ordinary woman, just like me. The Christmas lights can’t stay up forever.

I grew on.

The last three years have been spent dreaming. Dreaming in rooms that don’t belong to me, dreaming in between places, during work hours, while bunking classes simply because. The dreams are all linear in spirit – I must get out, I must give myself to something bigger than me.

Conversations with friends have been about leaving this goddamned place (this place being the one we left the previous goddamned place for) and going somewhere we feel a sense of belonging. I be longing all the time, no matter the time or place. But that’s not the point.

A common theme of our discussions is about going to a country which is not the USA, not the UK, or wherever we are usually sold the Dream, as Indians. We want to go to Vietnam. A road trip in Sri Lanka. Laos. China.

Latin America – the landscape of Romance Languages

Give me a laptop, and the email id of my love, and I will speak romance all night. Even better, get some substances in me and leave me be with hands I am familiar with, and you will have a new creole in the news the next day. Any language is a contact language if you know the vocabulary of love.

It is all too easy for me, this loving business. I love the best when I am left alone, I invent things for pleasure, simply fueled by the love I carry.

I remember I picked up Camus simply because Che liked it. Che, my friend, the cousin who comes over during summer vacations. He was a lean boy, always reading, always quiet, until it was time to play a game that was bound to get violent. I remember him stealing our uncle’s motorbike in the afternoons, the loudness of it a risk he was willing to take. It was this image that made me braver each passing summer. I got brave about touch, about sound, about being loud.

He gave me books to read, but he never really took my recommendations. I wish he had read more women, maybe he would have been gentler. Maybe he would have not had to look at me as one of the guys to treat me with respect. I am tired of being one of the boys, I want to be considered a woman of intellect. I am slowly paving my way to that, and if it means I end up being angrier than usual, touchier than the rest, and more uptight, so be it. Not everybody knows how to ride a motorcycle.

The last three years were also spent readingrereading Jack Kerouac. The more convenient way of escaping. Me, on an uncomfortable bed, years apart from Che, reading a book, and feeling a sense of unrest. I think he would have laughed, in a mocking way, of course, at the general abandonment of Jack, so freed from everything, despite suffering the same. So American. I did get to drink on hills and boulders, and meditate in ways so personal to myself, so I think I am done with that aspect of the Beat Generation. I am simply beat now. But not in the sense that I give up. I am beat with the weariness that is attached to simple living in today’s times. Work, work, work. Everything is about work. Don’t try to get any personal gain, it is all about how you can move the company forward.

Che, look what they are making me do. They want me to become a cog in the machine. I am allowed movement, but only in the direction they are moving in. I simply cannot comply with this, right? Movement is necessary, but people often forget the second part of that sentence. Movement is necessary as long as you are guiding your feet. Movement is necessary until you reach a place where you are needed. Stop and work, stop and talk. Find out. The more you find out, the worse it is going to get. It always gets worse, before it gets something else.

For now, I will walk to a rock, lean on it and drink a little. I will stay for the night, a little while, in the bigger scheme of things. Maybe in a couple years, I won’t have time to look up. Before riding a motorcycle, I need to learn the bicycle. I will take it to smaller revolutions, and when it breaks apart, I will continue walking nonetheless.

As Bergman said to me today,