The outdoors

No, indeed, he tells me, he won't do it.
Won't let the rain spoil his noonday sortie
into a dust covered battlefield; won't allow the
grumbling offensive oatmeal to fester
anymore.

I, doubtful. Ask him -- how sir, will you recover,
when you are as you are, a cold man, alone in artificial
light, in the intentional dusk of apartment interiors,
amongst broken chairs and ashen walls?

Sir (he tells me), you are mistaken. We
are not slaves to our contrivances
Our feet are not tied to the lint-
fingered sensations of interior
carpeting.

No! We have our bicycles,
our windows are blinded, but at least
they exist.
Our palms can barely keep down
our swaying
disconsolate
hair.

A brief explanation

I find myself unable nowadays to abandon a certain style of writing. Features of this style include long sentences, a profusion of punctuation, and overall semantical heaviness. There is also the vocabulary, which tends to be inclusive and attempts to achieve specificity at the expense of comprehensibility. I am aware that the adoption of such a style leads to the (undesirable) effect of alienating the average reader -- people are chary of verbosity, and usually ascribe to its purveyor an inventory of undesirable characteristics, including weak-mindedness, conceit, and (worst of all) untruthfulness. Their contention is that 'no one' thinks 'like that', that inaccessible forms of expression are to be viewed with suspicion. On the whole I agree with them -- timidity of thought and expression possesses no surer indicator than the gratuitous display of verbal might. Having said that,however, I plead innocence to all charges of such timidity. It is not because I have little to say that I use so many words to say it.

But such literal pleas are not evidentiary, and so I have decided for the time being to cease my flow of opinion. Posts on my blog following this one will be written in the style of 'someone else'; this third person will have a 'voice' that does not resemble mine in any aspect. Such posts will force me to inhabit -- if for a short period of time -- this third person, and therefore force me to channel his means of expression. This should at the very least enable me to divest myself of all stylistic responsibility and redirect it to the 'voice'. I also expect it to bring to the fore my latent flair for mimicry.

I cannot think of an appropriate way to end this post; it is after all supposed to represent a new beginning. I can, however, insert a literary reference that is completely out of context --

You madam, are the eternal humorist,
The eternal enemy of the absolute.
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist!
With your air indifferent and imperious
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute --
And -- "Are we then so serious?"

Perhaps not completely out of context.

By all means

Sir,

The second Buddha is done. I will be shipping it today via DHL.

Regards,

satya


Satya,

Please do so. Tell me the tracking no too

--bc

Sir,

The tracking number is: 2310495012935392

It has been mailed on 21st July, 2007.

regards,
satya

Satya,

Thanks, I will be waiting for it/

--bc

Satya,

I havent recvd the package yet. When will it come?

---bc

Sir,

The tracking online says that it is in Tempe, Arizona. It will be reaching you by tomorrow at the latest.

You can also track the package yourself by going to dhl.com, selecting US from the drop-down list, and copy-pasting the tracking number.

regards,
satya

Satya,

What is the tracking number?

--bc

Sir,

The tracking number is : 2310495012935392

Regards,
satya

Satya,

I havent recvd the package yet? How do I see where it is??

--bc

Sir,

Please click on www.dhlk.com. From there select USA from the drop down list, and at the page enter the tracking number (2310495012935392) at the text-box positioned in the middle-left section of the screen, the one that says 'Track It'.
regards,
satya


Satya,

I clicked on it. The website has fast exercises. theres no drop down box.

--bc

Sir,

There was a typo. Please click on

http://www.dhl-usa.com/home/home.asp

and directly enter the tracking number in the Track It text-box.

Regards,

satya

Sataya,

I entered the tracking no. It says that the tracking no does not exist. wheres it????

--bc

Sir,

Are you sure you entered the correct tracking number? It is 2310495012935392, and you can copy-paste it instead of entering it directly.

regards,
satya

Satya,

plz dont beat around the bush. tell me where it is instead of all this tracking no and all this.

--bc

Sir,

Here is a snapshot of the status of your package --

7/24/2007 10:20 am	Arrived at DHL facility.			Houston, TX
7:47 am	In transit			San Angelo, TX
7/23/2007 1:30 am	Depart Facility			Tempe, AZ
12:01 am	Processed at DHL Location.			Tempe, AZ
7/22/2007 10:40 pm	In transit.			Tempe, AZ
10:26 am	In transit.			Hesperia, CA
7/21/2007 5:36 pm	Arrived at DHL facility.
1:21 pm	With delivery courier			Dublin, CA

It is already in Houston and should take only a couple more hours to deliver it to your house.

satya

Satya,

i hope so.

--bc

Satya,

can you give me dhls phone number?

--bc

Sir,

Call --

1800-CALL-DHL.

satya

Satya,

I called the no. its voice operated and doesnt understand me.

--cb

Sir,

I respectfully tender my resignation effective immediately. It has been a great pleasure to work with you.

Regards,
Satya

B.R.A.

As I suspected.

C.T.

No, you cannot have it.

y????

I can't deliver it to you at such

k if u like me..

short notice.

u wil send it

Listen Nhea

*Neha

I'm tired of your constant jabbering okay? I'm also a human being you know?

im also human being

hws that related to nything

u never send me nything u write

maybe u dont write...

Don't be silly Neha

maybe yu sit in fronto f yur comp n tell ur frens

look, I'm not going to get dragged into this ok?

tat u write...

ur just a fraud....

don't say that Neha

from since wen we met yu wr teling me abt hw ull send me ur book....

i haven seen even the first chap.....

Its art, Neha! Art can't be rushed you kow

*It's

*know

don call me a cow!!!!!

nyway its spelled cow not kow...

i meant 'know', Neha, not kow

u shud no that...

ur the author

don even no the speling of cow

Ok, look, Im really sorry. I've been wanting to send you this stuff for a long time, it's just that I've been procrastinating

procrastination is the theif of time....

u shud no that author.....

ok tell you what i'll send you the first chaptre now

*chapter

finaly! hw long it took to make u uderstand....

otherwise hwre u

*how're

m fine. ll be better wen u send me the book.....

dont start that again Neha

im sending u first chapter no?

*know

*no

where i don see it......

ok done! check ur email.

*your

i hv my email open i don see it

wait

k here it is

Chapter 1: In which we discuss the health of Mrs. Singh

wai tim reading it

dont read it now! lets talk

.

no i want to read it..

look neah dont read it now

I want tot alk to u

*talk

*Neha

its been so long since weve spken

*spoken

Neha

why you not saying anything

wait im reading

neha come on

this is grt

ur real good writer u no

Wow.......

you hv wesome sentences

thanks

but ur mind is very dirty

Neha. Can we talk now?

wait cant u see m reading

ok tell you what

why dont u read the book n tell me hw u liked it

*how

and thenw eel talk

next year someitme

*somtiem

*sometime

*we'll


Neha is offline. Messages you send will be delivered when Neha comes online.

#1

Dear --,

i hope you are keeping well. im okay too. the job has been keeping me busy nights and weekends. (coffee is always a comfort though.) recently the boss gave us a couple of deadlines that 'you have to meet come what may'. one of them was quite mad -- 500 pages of single-spaced lines to type out in four days! that kept me at the office almost fifteen hours p.d. mon-thu . and the thing was quite hard to write too -- i get a headache just thinking about all those clauses and conjunctions and prepositions and what-nots. in fact, i'm writing this to you without capitalization and apostrophes partly as a reaction to the grammatical overload i've suffered in the past week (but already i'm finding it hard to resist putting in the missing punctuation.)

There (see? we're back to capitals again) is nothing here to see apart from the occasional play or two. The plays are in Kannada, which means that I don't understand most of what is being spoken. The actors are quite melodramatic though, so i can grasp most of what's happening simply from the context. usually love enters into it somewhere or the other, so i can always be on the look out for that pattern. just last week there was a play where these two men sitting on stools were talking about something for the longest time. the lighting was dim, so i could barely make out their faces (i actually have this problem with most plays, because i'm in the back rows and have to learn to recognize the character from his voice); shrill whistles from sections of the audience from time to time told me that they were discussing 'taboo' stuff. gradually i came to understand that they must be talking about a girl, and surmised that they were doing so in a not-so-proper way. eventually the object of their affections graced the stage with her beautiful presence (now, now, don't be jealous -- she isn't as beautiful as you are. No one is.) . Presumably she ended up with one of the men on the stool (the one on the right, i think) because she exited the stage with him. the other guy left by himself wearing a suitably defeated expression.

i haven't gotten to know anyone yet. there was pillai who joined our firm a few weeks ago, but couldn't keep up with the screaming pace of the days and just quit. the boss used to treat him like filth too; give him a hard time whenever he showed up even a little late, berate him for being a 'kaamchor', ask him how the wife could tolerate his ugly face in the mornings. he was a funny guy, though. one day he showed up without wearing the suede shoes that the boss always insists on as part of the dress code (why do stenographers need dress codes anyway?). he predicted the exact time that boss would come out for the inspection (yes, yes, he examines our attire), down to the very second (this only on his first week at office, mind) and waited outside the door to greet him. Picture the boss, with his plate-like face and that pinned-on looking nose, opening the great oak door that separates his stately office from our glass cubicles, and picture pillai, standing in front of him and saying "Do you wandsome dea zurr?" You had to be there.

These empty weekends are suffocating. i can't go out anywhere, because everything in the town closes by 7, and can't stay at home, because there's nothing to do. i end up taking these small walks close to the pg, but everything's just so deserted i begin feeling depressed almost immediately. if i'm lucky the wholesale guy a few streets away has his shop open for business. bala (i don't know his full name) is always squatting between his huge sacks of rice, and always willing to talk to me. he knows his english too. yesterday he surprised me by quoting shakespeare -"To be aar not to be, no?" in his thick kannada accent. and this was when we were talking about the plays too. i immediately asked him where he'd heard that, and he told me that his daughter is doing an MA (!) in literature in mysore university. she actually asks him to read lawrence and flaubert and all that. i was quite astonished. He's definitely a guy i'd want to meet more often during my walks.

anyway. i'm off to put this in the mail before the post-office closes. you fill my silences.


--

On The Blog

There are, I hazard, saints of art who have simply waited mutely all their lives rather than profane the purity of a single page with anything less than what is perfectly appropriate and beautiful -- that is to say, with anything less than what is true.

The past few months have seen a steady decline in my desire to blog. This is partly due to the lack of readership that this blog has suffered from its inception, and which (to my mind at least) invests it with the imaginary purity of purpose that some people claim to strive for all their lives. But let us not lie. I am as much a slave to attention as anyone else I know; as much subject to its indifference as I am to its continuing presence; as much a human being as a telephone call would reveal, and more than this blog ever can. That this blog does not reveal this aspect of my nature is unfortunate. I crave readership.

But there is also the (not quite) unrelated issue of my aims. I began this blog so I could improve my writing skills. Whether or not that goal is closer now (a year later) I cannot say. What is improvement, anyway? How can one definitively claim to have become better? The presence of a comparative implies the presence of a datum, a reference point; I do not think I have any such. Not even -- and I can almost hear the ascending sonorous clamor -- myself. If I have improved it is in a limited way; in the sense that I regard adverbs with suspicion, in the sense that my commas are placed where they heighten the effect of the prose rather than obscure it. But these achievements are lilliputian, motes in the eye; they conceal the larger question at hand.

I have a 'day job'. I can even at this point abandon my writing with no tangible losses, monetary or otherwise. Perhaps two or three will feel a twang of incongruity if I announced to them tomorrow that I would be giving up writing to pursue Computer Science or some other such equally 'promising' field. Of them one will perhaps even feel a vast sense of relief. Writing is after all not something that people should do. They must go to work everyday, experience the quotidian disappointments that attend it. No, such an announcement will at best met with joy dissembled by an outward grudging resignation. I may even receive $50 instead of $20 on my birthday (which, to anyone who is reading this and has forgotten, is on April 4th. Lavish gifts will not be deemed inappropriate. I want an acoustic guitar.).

But then--if no one cares -- then why write at all?

I find it harder to read these days. A word used too often, a sentence out of place, a passage that is badly written -- these of course I have always found repugnant, and the past few years have only heightened my sensibilities in that regard. But there is also the pith of it, the imputation that people can in fact be expressed by language. Our depths remain unexplored even by ourselves; a writer can scarcely do better. If I were a character, I would ask my author if he was doing justice to who I was, and listen carefully to the answer. Writers seem to think somehow that they own the story that they're writing, that somehow its 'theirs' to mold. At the heart of all literature is a perennial arrogance, the certainty that one can in fact do justice to the beauty (or ugliness, or anything at all in between) of life; an elaborately contrived self-deception.

Blogs are even more culpable in this regard. If it is difficult to understand people through books, it is nearly impossible to do so through the medium of a thing as literal as a blogpost. Blogs are unfortunately not art. They can be about art, but only in a superficial way. Blogs epitomize the hubris of the world of prose; if novels claim to understand people in pages, blogs claim to do the same in words. They heighten the effect of stereotypes, summarize where they should elucidate, draw false parallels, and place literary references out of context. They take advantage of the authority we give them. They prevent us from leaving our rooms. They deceive.

And so blogging has charred a hole through my preconceptions of the written word. Hardly have I written an article than I begin to think that there is more to its subject. The fact that this is always true -- regardless of the medium -- does little to comfort me. Paragraphs arranged lengthwise neatly can be appealing from an aesthetic standpoint, but they do not begin approach a semblance of what is true. So much the worse for them if they pretend to do so, because eventually we will come to understand ourselves better, come to regard ourselves for who we are rather than what we can do. It will be then that this obscene medium will disappear for good.

The apotheosis of Barack Obama

Girls outside our gym nowadays seem to be occupied with Barack Obama's campaign. I see them holding up posters, hawking T-shirts, screaming praises. They usually begin at evening, when the day has wound down to the extent that we are at our most vulnerable. They pepper us with feminine entreaties. "Are you an Obama fan?" "Care for a bumper sticker?" Obama -- knowing his guile -- may have picked these women himself: prepossessing, but not to an intimidating degree; unassuming, but also forceful; blonde, but not platinum. We cannot help but fall prey to their croons.

Or can we? Obama has apparently spent a lot of money this past week trying to woo the middle-class Texan. It's clear he wants to win; it is also clear that he knows he will. How else can we explain the larger-than-life-size posters that herald B.H.O as the symbolism of hope/peace/change? How else can we explain the sudden increase in rhetoric? How else can we explain the demagoguery?

I am wary of such bombast. I do not think that Obama represents a significant improvement over H.R.C, and any advantage he did have before Texas was purely oratorical. The advent of this new-look, bejewelled Barack only convinces me that he may not after all be what we thought he was. It is one thing to base the entire first half of your presidential campaign on an understated intellectuality, and it is quite another to sustain this sensibility through the no doubt hubris-heightening final stages. Whether Mr. O is a victim of the circumstances, or whether he is (and always has been) acting his part, is not clear. What is clear though, is that he is at heart just another politician; subject to the vagaries of public opinion, and swaying like a bent tree under its influence.