I live in a bare house. Which means it has just the following - a futon in the living room and a bean bag, a yo home theatre, a fat mattress in the bed room, lots of stuff in the kitchen and shoes in the other bedroom. And i was just wondering today, i am SO used to this bareness, this feeling of finding space all around. Had gone to a nice lunch at a married friend's house and the sheer amount of things there scared me. And it brought me back to last weekend when a sri lankan frnd had stayed over for the whole of friday nite and saturday day-over. She had said - amit you live so spartan but i think its nice because then you can have more space to yourself. I think ive always hated cramped spaces everywhere. In the apartment, in the mind, in relationships. Its nice when one can see a lot of tiles on the floor, just like it is when the light from light bulbs can reflect back into your eyes from a clean bare floor. And you have low beds that dont take up space. And you can walk bare foot on the floor and admire your thin feet (yes men do that too, atleast the ones with nice feet), and sometimes wear the house-inside-only designated flipflops. On those weekends, during the day, when you are all by yourself, you can just soak in all the music that comes out of Worldspace. The music, it seeps into the bare walls and the whole apartment becomes a quiet den.

Its nice too when relationships are transient, when you know that itll all become clean one day and itll be just you all bare with all your space just yours. There will be another post on the sri lankan (sinhala) woman who came in for a weekend in my life a week back. Tthat will be later though.

random muse

No more No less.

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.

To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise,a misfortune is a tragedy,a joy is an ecstasy,a friend is a lover,a lover is a god,and failure is death.Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create - - - so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him.

He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating."

- Pearl S. Buck

vulnerability sex

Was reading an interesting piece in the Bangalore Times today. In between all the Manoviraj Khosla and suresh(?) dembla seen here and here, they had managed to squeeze in a piece on physical intimacy as a means to express warmth. The story, in the standard TOI format of checking out the bangalore buzz on something reported in some study in the west, was interesting. It talked about how more and more people are being transiently physically intimate to express their love and affection. Now this isnt really rocket science, as long as one doesnt refer to an involved body part as a 'rocket'. cheesy! but i knew someone who often referred to IT as that. that apart, the article set me wondering.

Isnt it really true? i mean does it not happen SO many times when you just want to be intimate with someone who to you is looking extremely vulnerable. crushed. Not just comfort them with a hug or a squeeze, but actually be naked with them, and hold them, kiss them, mingle your skin with theirs. And not in a pity sex way. Heck, I guess I'd want to kiss every woman who cries in front of me, attractive or not. I think, its about KNOWING that sex comforts us. all of us. and that yes having sex is about orgasms and boobs and butt and lips, but its also about being nice and kind and compassionate. It IS about gratifying one's physical self, but is also about gratifying a part of one's innerself, the one that feels happy when it knows that warmth has been spread and shared.

Is sex then also Charity? like hey you know i run a school for disabled children, work with the Gates' foundation and fuck the needy. too many questions, too much thought. but its nice to realize that alongwith the 'in love' sex and the 'need a woman today to get off' sex, there is also this 'spread warmth' sex. sowing oats far and wide is then really just spreading warmth all around. hehe

Reminds me of that immortal line from 'The Departed' - 'Your vulnerability right now is freaking me out'

Of new rides

And so a Mitsubishi Cedia (Pronounced Said-ayah) it is. Ive always liked the Mitsubishi brand. Its an oasis of pep in the sea of insipidness that Honda and Toyota inspire. A departure from buying a car more for its resale value than for the drive. I also like the way Mitsu introduces new models to unknown music tracks - anyone remember the 2003 outlander launch on Breathe - Telepopmusik? and ends up making the tracks famous. The car drives so well. Oh. in the red sports trim, that i got, its a beyooty too. Come here Civic Corolla, my car will bitch slap you

someone called clouds

Her name meant clouds. It still does. Just that i dont know her anymore. She used to say that whenever she cried it rained.

She was a soft skills trainer with a BPO here, a nicish kathak dancer and training to be a Bharatnatyam one too. Id met her when we were working as volunteers for a fashion show for a common NGO we used to spend time at. She was so beautiful.

She had just broken up with someone and I too had, with someone id been with for 5 long years. And we had connected. I still remember that moment during the show when id finally closed the ticket window and was sitting in the last bench. She had come and sat next to me and said - Amit i dont have friends here, can I hang out with you. She was wearing a brown Sari with a big bindi on her forehead. and id said of course, im feeling useless myself.

Ill call her meggie. Meggie and i dated for a very short but very turbulent 5 months, sometime starting the autumn of 2004. She had been hurt very badly in her previous relationship and I too had hurt and had been hurted by someone who, at that time id felt, was perfect for me. And in those windy, rainy and about to be winter months, the way they are here, we had scripted, driven by our own fears and longing, the most intense, passionate, mad, angry, dirty, conniving, loving, sad and unfulfilling relationship ever.

The first time we kissed was with pizza in our mouth. 2 days after we had met. The first time we had sex was in a school for disabled children that we had painted the previous night with stencils for drawing angels. The first time we fought was just after having had sex in a school for disabled children that we had painted the previous night. id called her a slut once and she had spent a whole night crying. It HAD rained all through that night. And at that time I had attributed it to the season. The first time she'd called me a bastard, id cried too. And had to skip office because my eyes were so swollen. And she had attributed to a binge night. Such was our relationship. In those few months that we were together, we had completed our recently broken incomplete selves and we broke whatever semblance of completeness that some parts of our bodies and minds had managed. We had the most magical sex possible. She had once blacked out after we had been at it for the larger part of an afternoon. Id once not showered for a full 3 days because she was not in town and id not wanted her smell to go away.

I still pine for her lips. I imagine her saliva on my body, lingering in a small thread between our lips as she pulled away after a kiss. i sometimes think of the way she used to smell a very nuetral 'woman chumming' smell. She had a dancers body and i used to remark on how graceful she was. I remember that. I sometimes think, in a niteclub, in between shining lights, how she used to sweat when dancing. Sometimes when driving back home, I stop and wonder what used to make her cry whenever she used to see little kids begging at late nite traffic lights. I remember the times id gone to watch her dance performances, she bowing to the audience and I clapping and whistling, like, maybe, a proud husband. She'd always called me her cute devil and had once even made me act out the role of a 'Rakshasa' in a durga puja dance play she had done.

Sometimes now, I think of meggie, and I cry. and i wonder how I let someone so beautiful go away. she never forgave me. and i never forgive myself. but then this isnt the first time i have asked forgiveness of myself and NOT got it.

Everytime it rains here, like it did last nite, and it is right THIS moment, the warm dripping rain of the summer months, i suddenly get warm and scared and welled up in my eyes. I imagine that we are still together and that i am rocking her tears away.

colors magazine

An all time favorite of mine. www.colorsmagazine.com. its a quarterly magazine published from italy by benetton. Its chic, its extremely visual, a canvas of colors. it talks about contemporary times, but through pictures. the underlying theme is color, the sense of sight. Its been noted, controversial and even banned. the current issue is China, but go back a few ones, to an issue titled Lust. Pure magic. About the myriad forms of lust - sex, blood, money, fame. I wish i could cut paste the visuals from there. seduction. here's an extract from the editors' note - There are the saints. And then there are the rest of us, who sometimes crave, yearn, covet, hunger, itch, ache, pine, and hanker for too much of a good thing. This is lust.

image copied from - www.colorsmagazine.com

Friends and sex and sudden evenings

A friend of mine recently came back after spending upwards of 5 months in North America on work. Client onsite as it is called in these parts. Ill call her bigblackeyes. Bigblackeyes and i like know each other for 2 years now. we work for the same company, albeit different groups, and have been out and about so many times that for anyone new, we would almost be an item. There's something we always guarded ourselves against, and that is crossing the more than friends rubicon. She is just too important a support system and sensible people never DO support systems. And so she came back and after the week long company provided plush acco., had no place to shift. Accomodation in this bustling city isnt one of the easiest things to manage, esp if one needs it for like just a month. What with the 10 months deposits and lecherous landlords. The most logical thing happens, i had a spare bedroom, a cook and a maid, we were good 'safe' friends (call it lack of the phrase fuck buddy in our urban dic).

Bigblackeyes shifted in with me.

She had got me the nicest box of gift ferreros that i had ever seen. I helped set her up, unpacking her stuff, smelling her new perfumes, feeling some new clothes she had bought. And we commented on how both of us had changed in the last 2 and a half years. Funny, how you dont realize how people change in 2 years if you see them continuously and then a 5 month break and bingo! you realize the changes all of a sudden. I commented on how well toned her body looked and the neat hairstyle she had started sporting and she, well, commented on nothing. i could have done with a longer legs thing. All she said in a passing kissing the air tone was a wayward you're still as mad.

We drank. A lot. Like all through the evening. Like those times when you think that Hey! today my liver is not pickled and tomorrow the GOD of liver will frown on me and say - i pickle you. She is one of the few women I know, wait, the ONLY one, if i disregard a skank i used to know back in delhi, who drinks whiskey and drinks it straight up. And we got very drunk and silly. The kind of silly when you think that jumping up and down on a cold bare floor is super cool. She hopped on my shoulders trying to touch the ceiling. We even danced on the dining table one by one. And i think there was a mock strip tease i did too with my tie and belt.

All good. But then slowly something changed that evening. Maybe it was because we were getting to see each other after so long, or maybe very simply the fact that we had been sexless (i can vouch for myslef) for like maybe 3-4 months, but we both knew....and well just before we were to hit our beds (in different bedrooms), in the wee hours, we gave each other a good night hug. It was insane the ferocity with which we tore clothes off each other after that. it was unnerving then and very lustful but strange and magical when i think of it now. And i dont think it can ever come back. And itll be good if it doesnt. The guilt is just so much. Random sex with friends, I think, carries as much baggage for men as it does for women, or maybe for just SOME men. bigblackeyes is getting married in May.