tomorrow

So another adventure partly ends and a new one begins. Packing up my room, putting things away in boxes (I started my packing a day early unlike usual seven hours of packing through the night-J would be so proud of me!), thinking, how did another year of my life pass by with me barely noticing. Its already summer and somehow we went from autumn to deepest winter to the beginning of spring and now high summer and its 35 degrees and Boston is unrecognizable from the days when we trudged to school knee-deep in snow. And yesterday was perfect as I took a nap in between packing. The windows to my room were open, and the sunlight streamed in and it was a perfect 25 deg and the wind carried the scent of newly blooming lilac and for once I wasn't rushed as I have been all year and all I had to do was to live through the moment and it was beautiful.

And now I am listening to the soundtrack for the summer of 2000 which was the first time I came to Boston and spent my summer here and how much has changed in seven years. And in some ways the things I thought would be different are not and the things I thought would be the same are. Here's to not spending six years of your life fixated on the wrong things, to taking life as it is and not more than that, to adventure at every new corner, to the wind in my hair and a spring in my step. Here's to tomorrow, whatever it may bring.

the shadow lines

I am reading again. Two and a half books in two days surely qualifies as a literary resurgence. Divisadero as I have mentioned. Can Anna ever go back again? Are we ever able to sew scars together again? But also The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh about four individuals torn apart by the Calcutta riots. I was told by someone that this was better than the English Patient. Shocked at such heresy I immediately bought and read this. Reader, it is not. Heretic to be included even in the same sentence. Ghosh's writing is ill-ordered, characters caricatured with no heroic appeal, and no weight of tragedy to carry the writing, to imbue meaning through the slightest of gestures. Though he does wield some talent, it is not nearly as much as it is hyped out to be. But perhaps I am simply not the right person to write a comparison piece on the two. One idea he mentioned was quite stunning in its simplicity, that love was directly opposed to the idea of justice, that he had thrown everything he had into the scales and it had not moved by a tremor. As it is quoted in Divisadero, whether we are the heroes of our own lives or someone else is, these pages will show.

read

"Anywhere else, those events would only have occupied two square inches of a Brueghel, but they brought fire to my life"- Divisadero

I've read it now. And now the re-reading begins, to find out the many truths that are too buried for us adults. But it was anguishing and I tried not to linger to let it parallel but it did. The racing can only hide so much, and it should pause so that other things, ordering and stabilizing can be layered over it, but perhaps it is not to be.

And a dear friend sent ultrasounds of the baby growing in her womb, and it is a miracle of human life, that despite everything, as Coetzee says, the urge for life to perpetuate and constantly renew itself will overpower all evil.

madam, i'm adam

it's certainly scary how I can veer from exhilarated to maudlin in a couple of days. Nothing to quite explain the shift. A long lunch with a professor debating the derisive SLFP proposals before Sri Lanka today and how the situation is absolutely critical. It hasn't been as bad as this in 25 years. We will look back in history and realize that this is the turning point, when something could have been averted, as Burke said, all that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. And what do you do when someone tells you they are dying, to be gone within the year and there is nothing left to say. That has been the hallmark of today, I simply have nothing left to say. And no one to say it to.

person to watch: Priyanka Gandhi. Will she turn out like her grandmother, the personification of evil, or someone else entirely, more compassionate, less paranoid about holding onto power,

one of the greats

I'm back again to the state where life is beautiful. Meeting cartoonists on random street corners, a friend becoming a future congressman in Nebraska while being a Sri Lankan activist, another person working on the Richardson campaign as a matter of honour, out of her apartment with no money. Trekking to Colombia to work with a Nobel peace prize nominated activist is another friend, while another works with UNICEF in Bihar. Met an urban planner/architect from Sri Lanka who is going to help us map out our settlement. Meeting a renowned anthropological professor tomorrow who is a dear mentor, and who wrote Buddhism Betrayed. Always carving out a path in the midst of a madness, trying to find love in the obscurest of places and being unexpectedly surprised by the promises that one finds instead. Always drifting, always at a point of "divisar" by which we look back from the distance of time. Finding another who understands Brueghel, again. We find what we search for, when we do not look for it. Years later. Being with a brilliant economist, understanding behaviour. Always pushing the limits of my own understanding. Oh, that this could last forever. And listening to potent music, (the cheap, as Noel Coward said), and watching lots of television, browning under the sun and the promise of midsummer with days of nothing ahead (except exams which we've written off). The taper and counterpoint to a year that has gone by as fast as it has been unexpected. One of the greats as each year has been since I set myself firmly, fearfully, on this path.

beat up

Currently beat up, chewed up and spat out

Listening to on repeat

a. Road Trippin' by Red Hot Chili Peppers
b. The Story by Brandi Carlisle
c. Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley
d. New Day by Kate Havnevik of Melankton
e. Bach-Air on a G String by Royal Philharmonic

cricket.

watching the cricket finals with a bunch of sri lankans, is the only way it is meant to be watched. Riotous swearing and superstitious behaviour (we all stood on one leg in honour of Nelson's superstition at 111-1) and a lot of hair-rending and a lot of particularly Sri Lankan jokes, including one about the President who had flown in for the match.

It was a heroic effort and they played the game well. They lost to the juggernaut that was Australia, who've transformed the way the game is played, and for whom this is their third World Cup title, amidst much ill-planning, confusion and bad luck for the Sri Lankan side (read two rainouts- 38 overs reduced to 36 under the Duckworth-Lewis scoring, and playing in pitch-darkness in Barbados in a stadium without lighting) but they did their side proud and one can ask for no more.

And in a typically Sri Lankan twist, around about midway through the game, all our phones started going off and it was friends and relatives, letting us know that there was an air raid over Colombo and more bombs in the capital. Of course in typical Sri Lankan fashion it went like this: machang there was a bomb just now and we heard the blast. The power is out! What is the score?"

copyrighted for posterity if nothing else

"As a child she had keenly examined movement and life, expended by ants, bats, dragonflies, plants and trees. She had inherited the English love of the earth. The soil and its teeming life was a source of constant wonder to her and she had spent hours sitting silently in the April dampened earth, still as a lake. The frozen insects, earwigs startled, had dismissed her interruption and continued busily around her, climbing on the roots and branches of her calves and thighs. Armies building castles and establishments, enthroning and dethroning, followed by funereal processions of ants, black and red against the sludge green of the earth. Fortresses on promontories painstakingly constructed, futile efforts only to be ravaged by the helicopter drone of a bee, and blitzes by kamikaze dragonflies. Tiger moths, emblazoned with stripes of gold and camouflaged brown, hurling themselves with concentrated fury against the slender flickering candle flame of her night light. Those had been the first victims of her magnesium arrests. Her nose to the ground, eye to eye with snails. She imagined she could see their expressions, caught in the headlights. Herself as a goddess, haughty, only watching until the whim of destruction led her to exhale and blow. "

divisa?

I decided not to do an MBA which caused great waves of distress in my family, though i think my father is finally resigned to the fact that neither am I going to do an MBA or get married in the near future, thus bringing censure down on his head from the worldwide community of exiled sri lankan tamils who're busy financing terrorism or sympathising with it. I'm confused about freedom fighters/terrorists/goverment-sponsored violence. Should I rule the country, I would put the men to graze and hunt and let the women rule. Except Condoleeza Rice, who would lead the pack of men-sheep. The sun has finally come out and I browned further more while everyone else turned red. I also ordered Michael Ondaatje's book from Canada, since it only comes out in the rest of the world a whole month and a half later and I couldn't wait. After DHLing it from Canada to the East Coast however, I couldn't bring myself to read it because it would take another seven years before he published another book and it couldn't be over too soon. Am in class right now, trying to take down the pharmaceutical industry in America. All rich-country problems, who will save my beloved country?

divisadero

ooooh I feel sick, nauseous almost, but deeply excited and thrilled. I just ordered Divisadero, the new novel by Michael Ondaatje, which comes out in Canada tomorrow (yes I had to courier it from Canada because it only arrives in the States next month and I simply cannot wait that long). I feel ill at the thought of reading a NEW oeuvre by him, instead of the same four books that I have reread for the past ten years. His last book was written in 2001 and he averages six years for a book,so its going to be a long time before another one is here and ooh. I'd better make the most of this one as I can. There goes my life.

vonnegut 1922-2007

On pages 9 and 10 of his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, Vonnegut listed eight rules for writing a short story:

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

And an excerpt. I remember reading Slaughterhouse 5 for the A levels, along with Catch 22 and Dispatches. I didn't know what war looked like then, or death, or the sheer arbitrariness of it all. I only thought I knew what love was and it turned out I didn't know that either.

"Finnerty shook his head. ''He'd pull me back into the center, and I want to stay as close on the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.'' He nodded, ''Big, undreamed-of things -- the people on the edge see them first.''

studio 60

More tragedy and in Virginia too, genteel south.

Did I tell you I met Nandita Das? She’s someone I’ve always dreamt of directing, and she’s only acted in independent Indian films, controversial ones too. Her performance in Earth, along with Aamir Khan was so haunting, the subverting of love into rage and hopelessness. Anyway she was at school the other day and I met her consecutively and I talked to her briefly, awestruck.

Meeting with a potential investor. Still unable to come to a decision on the other school, though admit weekend is this weekend and perhaps it’ll be easier to make a decision. As for other things, they continue. Right now, I’m on a massive binge of Studio 60, the new Aaron Sorkin (creator of West Wing) television series starring the ex-Josh Lyman and Matthew Perry and here is a lovely line, from this valentine to television.

Bradley Whitford (as Danny Tripp) : “I've been married twice before and I'm a recovering cocaine addict. And I know that's no woman's dream of a man, or of a father. Nonetheless, I believe I'm falling in love with you. If you want to run, I understand. But you better get a good head start, because I'm coming for you, Jordan."

the world we live in

This world we live in. What are we doing here?

Above is a picture snatched from the BBC, one of my favourite sites of all time. A girl hands a female soldier some flowers and is embarassed. As usual it reminds me, the people who say we must go to war are rarely the ones who die.

back and blue

so. We made it into the semifis of the competition and it seems as though things are going well on the nonprofit creation front, as well as can be expected.

Back from a lovely time in Oxford and London, too well in fact for coming back is being extremely difficult. A day in bed solved those problems though. Yesterday after a crazy week (where I attended one class and had like nine hours total of sleep or something ridiculous) I got up at 8am, downloaded Ugly Betty and stayed in bed until 5pm until I finally roused myself to go to the gym and I came back, cooked honey and ginger chicken with tortillas and went back to bed at 9pm. It felt as though my body welcomed it, the intermittent napping associated with a day in bed and today I feel like a million dollars. Two !!

Still deciding on life trajectories. Gosh, if only things at the end could make themselves clear. I don't enjoy orientation activities, it must be said. Sigh.
Spent part of the week translating a documentary from Tamil into English. It was very emotional what my friend/kid had gone into the wilds of Vaharai Sri Lanka to film and then to come back with these tales of heartbreak and loss.

Anyway here's a lovely quote : "Beware the last temptation, To do the right thing for the wrong reasons".

and maybe

more advice from Cary Tennis, Salon's resident advice columnist

"So go for it. Please go for it. Go for it because elite academia needs people who've dodged a flying plate or two. Go for it for all the world's dreamers who question whether their dreams are worth it. Go for it for all the world's minority parties and outsider voices and small strange people with big dreams and curiously insistent inclinations and seemingly trivial preferences and nearly unheard voices telling them that it just might work, it just might be the thing, it just might make a difference. Go for it for all the people wondering if their little notions even matter. Go for it because it's not just about you, it's about setting an example for your kids and your family and your neighbors and friends. Go for it because somebody once told you not to. Go for it because someone told you that you weren't worth it. Go for it so you'll have a story to tell about courage and trusting your instincts.
Go for it for everyone who grew up in abusive households. Do it for everyone carrying self-doubt around like a bag of stones.
Go for it because you don't want to end up wondering 20 years later why you didn't.


Go for it to strike a blow against the tyranny of reasonable ideas.
Go for it because it's spring and spring is extravagant and fearless.
Go for it. "

malinga!

Lasith Malinga! Hero of the day for taking 4 wickets in 4 balls, a never-done-before feat in a 100 years or so of cricket history, neither in the one days or in the test matches. As the South African next to me said, "damned difficult to face him".

If Sri Lanka lose one more match, then they will have to win everything else to make it to the semi finals. Bugger. wish i was home right now, watching the match and yelling my head off in delirium. Instead am in medieval oxford, on hard backed chairs in an overwrought ballroom. And while it is lovely, and the sky is blue, the grass is green, the daffodils are blooming, everything is so silent and reserved and I want to whoop and yell! There would have been dancing on the streets back home. I love the Guardian which has an over by over commentary, and the funniest commentators who get so bored during the slow stretches and still have to write something. Here's a classic from the 13th over of this match:

"13th over: South Africa: 67-1 (Smith 41 Kallis 24) So in this B movie autobigraphy of my life as an OBO writer, who'll be playing me? Adopt your best trailer voice and try this for size: "He was a proud man, who compromised his personal tastes for his professional ideals". I'm going for Sean Penn, with Vin Diesel as Jacques Kallis and Bob Hoskins as Smyth. Smith meanwhile, steps away to leg and squats as he swats Vaas way away for six over long-off. The first six at this ground, and a really bolshy shot to a man bowling as well as Vaas has been. "

Lastly, as Bill Clinton said "we are defined as much by the opportunities we have lost, as those we have gained".

how I feel.

broke

my phone bill for last month was USD 536.

I am officially broke-r than a churchmouse

one old one new

And two quotes that made me think, one old and one new

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire"- William Butler Yeats

"Do what you can, when you can, where you are, with all you have"- a 12 year old black Zimbabwean boy who died shortly thereafter of AIDS.

babri masjid

If you are late for work in Bombay, and reach the station just as the train is leaving the platform, you can run up to the packed compartments and you will find many hands stretching out to grab you on board, unfolding outward from the train like petals. As you run alongside you will be picked up, and some tiny space will be made for your feet on the edge of the open doorway. The rest is up to you; you will probably have to hang on to the door frame with your fingertips, being careful not to lean out too far lest you get decapitated by a pole placed close to the tracks. But consider what has happened, your fellow passengers, already packed tighter than cattle are legally allowed to be, their shirts drenched with sweat in the badly ventilated compartment, having stood like this for hours, retain an empathy for you, know that your boss might yell at you or cut your pay if you miss the train and will make space where none exists to take one more person with them. And at the moment of contact, they do not know if the hand that is reaching for theirs belongs to a Hindu or Muslim or Christian or Brahmin or untouchable or whether you were born in this city or arrived only this morning or whether you live in Malabar Hill or Jogeshwari; whether you’re from Bombay or Mumbai or New York. All they know is that you’re trying to get to the city of gold and that’s enough. Come on board, they say. We’ll adjust

From “Mumbai”, Granta 57 by Sukutu Mehta and Sebastian Salgado- on the Babri Masjid riots in Bombay.