Creating destruction

I am somewhere in cyberspace. Have forgotten to forget a few things. For the past few days I have been telling people that I am setting them free.

It sounds silly, for the 'bondage' that some of us experience is what gives us a sense of roots. I have gone through so many emotions in these days that life seems incomplete to encompass all that I have to say, feel, give...

Yesterday, I was at a place where there was a group of men talking business loudly. I don't know how I manage to concentrate...I can't, which is why I am rambling. It is a wonderful feeling not to know what will come up next because things don't always happen as they are planned.

I have been spoiled by physical comforts. Is that why I make up for it by destroying myself a little each day? Sometimes I wonder if I might wake up to find that I cannot speak...I used to practise blindness by blindfolding my eyes and trying to walk...I have tried shutting my ears.

The other day I saw this deaf and mute couple. I wondered how the silence of their worlds could transform their relationship. Are they any different from those who refuse to speak up and out, who swallow their words and tears to 'keep the relationship alive'? Is a dead quietude a solution?

Would I be different if I did not speak or hear? Would others think better of me?

I cannot believe it. Just when I have finished writing the last sentence, there is silence. That noisy group has left. Now I can hear the sound of glass...champagne flutes being cleared from the table. I wish something would drop. And shards of glass would spread around.

I imagine myself walking on them, the blood trailing me as my feet trod upon the pine wood floor. It looks like a nice enough sight. Better than death. Just a wee bit better than dying a little everyday and waking up to a new life… as though rigor mortis had never set in.

Why, then, do my bones feel stiff?

I want my body

The best way to lose your inhibitions is to go for medical tests. You invariably have to take off your clothes. I seem to have perfected the art of a slow striptease.

Initially, I used to be painfully shy. In fact, my first encounter was as a teenager. I was asked to remove my blouse. It was one of those button-down tees, and the buttons were all in front – and the part of me being checked was my back.

The doc stood in front of me. Wicked sod…but, boo, the Coming of the Cleavage was merely a gleam in my revolutionary mind…he beat a hasty retreat behind. It sounds awful put like this!

What I have been through in the last few years by way of tests could make for my own magnum opus.

I have had hot water poured in my ear, I’ve been made to lie at the edge of the bed with my head hanging down, I have run in one place with my eyes closed. I have had long things pushed inside various parts of me and there is that moment when those little vacuum things are placed on various parts of my body. The assistant repeats some unintelligible numbers. The doctor says, “Hmm…” as he tries to figure out my statistics, and not even the one that normal mortals do.

It looks like my stripping saga will continue. Yesterday I had to visit the doc. I was in pain for two days. So I stood there, removed some clothes and lay on the table. After the examination, I continued in the supine position. I watched the ceiling – it appeared to be watching me intently, its white starkness somehow seemed to understand me. The doc broke the reverie and almost lustful bonding I was forging with the ceiling. She said, “Do you mind getting into your clothes?”

Yes, I have become this comfortable. I suspect that if I were to go for an eye checkup I might just ask the ophthalmologist, “Shall I strip?”

However, the thought of my body becoming a series of numbers, graphs, technical mumbo-jumbo is frightening.

I am unashamedly a body worshipper. There is something about skin and flesh and colours. I am fascinated by how people treat their bodies, how they carry themselves, how they deal with warts (which we all have to some degree).

I observe body language. The way the legs are crossed, the flick of the wrists, the turn of the head. I am not concerned about things like ideal, great, sexy. It is just how we feel about ourselves. How we embellish the body, clothe it, mask it, reveal it…

Do you realise we treat our mind as we do our body? We embellish it, clothe it, mask it, reveal it.

Ah, but minds have emotions. The body does too. It is expressive, articulate and, when I am burning with fever, I can legitimately announce, “I am hot!”

Love me do...

I had a made a new acquaintance a while ago.

We were both concerned about the plight of a classical musician. I sent a couple of letters to him and then....nothing. A few days later, I was surprised to get this mail: “See that existence takes care? And, Ustad has been taken care too?...and you have banned me in less than a week! Didn't like my face? Sorry, for I have only that one.”

I was put on the defensive, as always...I told him that I wondered whether the early note was for me or a general list, for he had not addressed me by name.

Does a name matter? Does anything that defines us and 'specifies' us matter?

Why would I ban him? We all have only the faces we have, so long as we do not mask them.

I told him I was glad that the Ustad has been taken care of…but Existence? That is a beastly instinct.

I mentioned that I was in grey rainy Mumbai and feeling morose for various reasons...perhaps that was the reason I had not responded. Besides, it might have been presumptuous to just start bombarding him with mail...which is why I felt I needed to have something 'sensible' to say...who defines that, though?

His reply was prompt:

“Farzana,It was only for you.
For now,
I write only to individuals.
Tomorrow,
I don't know.

The only thing I know
is that you should be nicer
with yourself.
You are simply too hard
on poor Farzana.
Just accept her the way she is.
And I really mean it!”

Does anyone know how to be nice to oneself?

Grainy beginning...

I am just a speck of dust…and you probably have some idea about what that little speck can do. Have you felt the grit in your eye? Can you feel those particles on wet skin as they graze you? Or as they stick to your clothes and you want to dust them away, but so entrenched are they that what you pull out is lint? A grain of sand in an hour-glass is more than just a grain…it is a harbinger of time.

Despite these not-so-modest thoughts I am told, “I don’t think you truly love yourself.”

The insinuation is that I am self-destructive; I invite disasters.In my humble opinion, you’ve got to love yourself to death to court it.

This does not seem like a good start. What is a good start, anyway? Does a good start ensure a progression to something of value, to something that will last forever?

What is forever? For me it is tomorrow. It is also yesterday. Today is the link.

So, today let me tell you why I am here.

I realised I needed a registered blog because I was sent a link that mentioned my home page (I have none) that took me straight to some porn pictures. Now, there are times when I do get excited about myself, but this was not a good enough reason.

I hate it when people call themselves exhibitionists. It is an insult to those who try and connect with you, for would they not be deemed to be voyeurs then?

If one tries to say things without pausing, there is nothing planned about it, as exhibitionism indeed is. At worst it could be seen as a costume malfunction!

Some people think it is not wise to write about one’s life. I just seem to know myself better than I know a lot of other things. I admit this is an open arena, but I write here as I would on paper. I can’t do without paper...sometimes I eat it, after a while it feels like chewing gum. I hate throwing paper. So I preserve them, reams and reams, they gather dust...I can’t eat dust.

One day I will have to...