People and Things.

Things have no control over people. People have control over other people. Things only embody relationships- of power. True that Marx.

It's when people cannot distinguish between people and things that things get unholy. Because only people make people, well people

If your relationship is only with things. You are a thing.

Disclaimer- this is not meant to by a limerick :P

Tightening Screws and other lessons

Today as I sat legs spread wide, screwdriver in hand, little one eyed screws rolling about me in my room, mustering patience one rotation at a time -this lesson drilled itself into my head. And to tell you the truth I had it coming. It all began one very pleasant afternoon in May, pleasant only because I sat bobbing up and and down in a raft full of friends as waves rushed about us in gay abandon.

But there was a certain smugness I felt then, that I can smell on me again. I admit I was smug then, because as a second time rafter I assumed I knew so much more about it than anyone else there. Turned out the waves were as tough on me as they were to my fellow rafters. And I did not want to admit it. I was as green a rafter the second time as I was the first. how on earth?

Then instead of floating about in the bubble of presumed knowledge of the world and its ways I looked at what I was doing. And I mean really looked. I was very simply beating down my paddle as hard as I possible could against the bosom of the mighty river. I mean I was literally using all the strength I had to do this. And sadly proud of it as well. Proud of  the sheer labor I was putting into it. Now sheer labor is nothing to proud of. It is also a sheer waste of time.

And doing this I had mentally made a note to myself that I could never become the best rafter in the raft, river, sea or world simply because I did not have the strength in my arms to pull of a master stroke.*

Those people who are aware of my physicality are also the most prone to make me the subject of "size zero" and "malnutrition jokes." :P

But sitting there in the raft, paddle in my hand I began to grasp something that is screwing my head right now ( and if you are reading this probably yours as well) There was no way to beat the water. No way and NO POINT!

Delhi 100: Glimpses

Material Girl

It surprises me sometimes now why people are wont to make more of feelings and memories, when the only things that are actually left behind are the most material, photographs, things, places, you and me. Memories come to replace that which can no longer manifest materially. "Things" are not devoid of life, life lives through them and is lived through them. 

Companionship

I always thought that the highest form of companionship was when you could share your loneliness with someone, of being a little thing alone in this big big world. Till it struck me today that if you could share that one feeling with anyone you wouldn't really be alone would you? So much for the quest for impossibilities...

I judge.

I should not judge, yet I succumb to the unholy indulgence now and then. It bothers me not, in what finery you clad that which lies between your limbs, it is their culmination that calls out to me. For, with your hands and feet I measure my regard for you as a being of action. 

waving on

Sometimes you feel like you have been in the same place forever, that the little things keep happening, and the big ones, those big changes, those life changing events are just are not coming on.

And then for a moment you raise your head from these mundane tides and realise that those little things like small gentle waves have been taking you with them to entirely different seas, away from old shores and suns.

People.

Much of what I have learnt about people, I have learnt from the pigeons on my rooftop.

Someday.

Someday, I am going to muster up so much anger at being a woman, I will tear the world asunder.