(July 24, 8:07pm)

The date was 24th July, 2011..

And the date is 24th July, 2012!

"Goodbye.. "

XXX

Isn't this funny, of the few people I have ever opened up to or considered my family, not one has remained with me?

And I have always known this, right?
That people will love me and then leave me...

XXX

That first they will praise my writing skills, my academic skills, my time management skills, and then in complete disdain to all that they themselves said was laudable, would loathe me and count faults in me..

Then? Why did I allow myself to be responsive?

XXX

But luckily, each time these 4 or 5 people left me, the Gods ensured "they" undid their own thoughts and compassion with continued abomination..

So that I would not remember them,
or at any rate wait for them..

XXX

The Gods do little kind things... 

Since they have to remain Gods.. 

But what about bigger ones?

XXX

By the way, is "not remembering" easy? 

And what happens after you have bade goodbye?

Do all the gloom and darkness, become thing of the past really? Do all your tormentors, who you once loved in your naivety, disappear... never to come back in your sad regrets again?

XXX

(July 23, 11:16pm)

Okay, the astrologer tells me my depression is so compelling, he doubts I might secretly be having suicidal tendencies..

I didn't know how to react... I thought my pretence of a normal composure was flawless.. like it has generally been, these 22 months..

XXX

But in a way, it's good.. If it were not for the unerring conviction of this stranger, who pointed out things I thought I manged to camouflage, I wouldn't believe his craft...

XXX

"Mom was dynamic... It wouldn't suit me to act as failure.. And my ambitions.. they will never allow me be a failure.."

"Though, yes, I sometimes don't even feel like getting up till late afternoon, or do anything at all" I told him..

XXX

He's suggested me stones..
Will I by them?

Well, judging by how these have worked on a friend, I guess 20 thousands wouldn't be wasted..

XXX

On the good front, he thinks all external factors, such as mom's retirement dues would be settled without much effort..

"And your career will be always eventful.."

"Name, fame, your novels.. it's destined already..."

XXX

(July 19, 10:26pm)

Now some gossip...

Not that I never anticipated this, but it did surprise me when I realised the ACJ hate club is alive and kicking..

XXX

These are same odd bunch, my Group A mates in semester 1, who loved sullying me..

They had even managed this Delhi girl, whose first name began with the letter A, to adjust her top with practised aplomb, and then booze out in the middle of the class, "You are embarrassing me...."

XXX

Anyway, it so happened, now that I am putting as many, if not too many, FB pics as the average person does, the ACJ detractors have got charged up..

But.. one minute.. Why did they suppose I commend the pictures to their kind evaluation, at the first place??

XXX

Anyway, so one of these detractors, who is again a girl from Delhi, and interestingly whose name also begins with the letter A, went on making nasty remarks about each one of my DPs to perhaps each one of the ACJ guy she was in touch with..

XXX

Ufff... madam, madam... Why can't you sense one simple, and I am sure evidently visible fact that "I-give-you-a-damn?"

And at any rate, your calling my pictures bizarre, won't make them bizarre..

XXX

The disparaging PR continued for quite some time, before the gossip fell into a 'trusted-friend's" ears, and was communicated to me in absolute detail..

XXX

And this is what I then messaged her on FB..

"Delighted to know, that even though I consider you totally unimportant for me and do not certainly list you in my faintest of imagination, you have all the time in the world to notice, remember, and then discuss, albeit nasty things, about even my FB pictures...

Take Care Madam.. PS, the one you had a secret, hearty laugh with about me was, alas, a turncoat!

And yes, next time you want to seriously laugh over something, just look into the mirror.. your tacky, uncombed hair anyway looks just as bizarre."

XXX

(July 14, 7:26pm)

I'm on a disassociating spree.. Have already stopped talking to most people, who were close.. including Miss *K, Shah*az Aunty, even Ro*an..

Ap*rva keeps coming, but soon, I know it, I'd have found my way to avoid him!

XXX

The Kashmiri friend?

Well he himself has stopped talking, and somehow, while I do miss him, I really do not have either the patience or the vitality to sort out things!

XXX

So, it's just mom's pictures adorning the walls.. almost all the walls... in different sizes, of different eras! And my books.. And the rains.. though they come only intermittently..

XXX

It's 22 months today... And although I do a list of rituals every 14th, including adorning mom's DP with tuberose garlands and marigold flowers, it was after a long time I did these peacefully..

XXX

Though peace is distant...

XXX

By the way is peace specific, or is it only how you comprehend your own surroundings?

XXX

(July 13, 11:17am)

Already through some 120 plus pages of The Collaborator... another half to go...

The writing is touching, and  the events a mix of joyous little things, amongst country boys growing up, to macabre tales of endless killing!

XXX

But has Mirza been able to resist sentiment and let out a balanced narrative..

The answer is No...

XXX

And this is regretful for an author who has previously been a journalist..

But then can I totally blame him for this evidently selective representation of events? Won't you and I do the same in a similar circumstance?

Wouldn't the sight of wailing mothers overpower, in fact benumb, your judgement of things?

XXX

(July 12, 11:46pm)

Mom was sitting beside the sofa.. in my dreams few hours ago.. unusual it was.. since she generally doesn't show up in late afternoon naps...

Particularly when sleeping in late afternoons suggest I am too tired and lying on the bed helpless - this time on the floor beneath the orange sofa though - without any senses, conscious or intuitive to be able to weave a dream..

XXX

Some indistinct pieces of conversation it was.. besides the feeble, gracious shadow of a smile across mama's face...

Perhaps her attempt for composure as the conversation turned from unpleasant to disparaging... me levelling true, but ungenerous accusations...

XXX

"... Because she finished off eight lakh rupees in less than a year..." I can once more feel that irritable, almost a continually killing exasperation of years, as I threw the words on to a relative who patiently listened in hope of peace-making....

XXX

I told him how mom had been so unbelievably reckless with money... finshing everything off with almost a bizarre speed of a madman, a drunkard...

XXX

"A lakh went to Mr. ****'s charity who anyway do not need a patron... A couple of lakhs in buying things we never required, and which had to be dumped at Mr A***'s go-down in want of space... and perhaps another half a lakh to the hospital coming up.. or may be some trust... I am not sure."

XXX

Should I be happy that those confrontations are finally over, though not on a note I wished for, or would allow my grimmest thoughts to imagine...

XXX

Or should I moan, that at least, between the throttling cries of accusations, whined out from a heart that was becoming alarmingly insecure, that feeble shadow of a smile across mama's face, and mama herself, were there then?

XXX

(July 11, 7:48pm)

Got all the four books.
Flipkart I must tell you is a prompt service!

XXX

So, it's going to be literature, literature, and literature next couple of weeks.. plus of-course rain which is finally here to greet us!

Rain and literature, literature and rain... rain, rain.. literature and rain.... and good food... and my novel shaping up!

Gawd!

It's mood-enhancing!

XXX

Okay, i totally forgot.. many of you must be wondering whatever happened to 'him" and the rounds of talks over family pension..

Okay.. he has agreed...
He will take it in his name and pass off to us...

XXX

But by agreeing to transfer the money himself rather than formally through bank, he's made a space for himself from where he probably plans to impose muted authority on me, if not harass me..

He needs a foot... foot makes him feel present.. and alive... and in command..

Foot satisfies his ego.. or may be the complex... or pride or whatever he has allowed himself to be possessed with in these years..

XXX

His volumes of learning hasn't come handy in comprehending even core requirements of a relationship..

Had he agreed for the same willingly, with few good wishes rather than 21 months of sinful tantrum, wouldn't this remarkably transform our relationship?

But then, foot and not heart seems to him more important..

XXX

Anyway leave it... he's usurped 20 lakhs, and he'd be chipping in 24 thousands (every month).. the discourse as well as "he" end here...

XXX

Rain, rain, more rain...
and a rain of literature too!

XXX

(July 10, 1:27pm)

Just ordered a few books on Kashmir on flipcart...
Hope to have them delivered by end of week...

These include The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed, Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer, Kashmir, the Untold Story by Humra Quereshi, and, My Kashmir: Conflict and the Prospects for Enduring Peace by Wajahat Habibullah..

XXX

The choices haven't been random... I was always sure I'd be balancing my reads between fiction and non-fiction...

That's because the danger of 'self-interest' is as much imminent in civil servants writing a memoir as it is in Kashmiri Muslim writers, who might extol militants to a degree where their atrocities on Pandit men and women get only insufficient mention or may be written in a fashion that inclines the reader to believe these were sporadic, isolated incidents, not part of the larger objective...

XXX

So while the first book is a fiction by a Kashmiri Muslim, the second one is a non-fiction by his brethren around the same time..

The third book is journalist Quereshi's account of his two decades of interaction with village folk, and the fourth one is by Wajahat Habibullah, perhaps the only government servant to have referred to the Konan Poshpora victims as "genuine in their anger"....

And this at a time when the army was doing its every bit to prove the 12 hour long mass rape as ISI propaganda...

XXX

Let's see.. I have to read a lot... Mine is only a story of relationships, but since the plot is J&K, I must allow every interpretation of the conflict intrigue me, if not influence me!

XXX

(July 5, 5:10pm)

Trying to collect few credible books on Kashmir... mostly non-fictions that have some accounts on how militancy, in its peak years of 1990-95 reflected in the lives of people...

Books which have more to tell about ordinary men living in far-off pockets, than ideologues or agencies shaping policy in downtown Srinagar..

XXX

Actually, that's going to be a part of the novel... and no, it wouldn't be an analysis of issues or any attempt to pronounce judgement on either parties to the conflict..

It is very much going to be a story of deep and powerful attachment.. and the longingness for a quiet, happy life, which is common to everybody..

XXX

But in order to test this attachment between people, and in consequence their very belief in human values, a disturbing plot was needed, for which Kashmir seemed to me apt..

And not that I am using a region (J&K) to serve tool for a commercial end... I can never possibly be that mean enough..

XXX

But then.. Kashmir to me is a story of love, infallible and continuing in a situation where hatred would seem natural to even the morally upright..

XXX

And that's what my novel is about too...

XXX

(July 2, 9:02pm)

DEPRESSED AGAIN

XXX

I think this girl from Mumbai doesn't like me much these days.. But Feedjit shows she's been checking my blog even now.. why?

Is it 'interest' transformed to 'plain curiosity'?

But then, interest to curiosity is bad transition...
It shows the concern is no longer present..

XXX

And the Kashmiri friend?
Is he concerned or not concerned?

XXX