blame it on her

alana davis, who sings like she has marbles in her mouth-

you've got your home of the brave and i've got my land of the free
you conform to what society says and i conform to me
looking for light in the corners getting caught in the spider web
you look at me as if i'm giving a performance when i'm just feeding my head
and you know that i'm doing all right
and i won't explain myself to you just to avoid a fight
how i'm living ain't correct but for me it's just right
i'm not completely insane, i'm maybe just a little bit crazy
there's no one to blame, got no shame about game
don't want nobody to save me
i've got a pair of ruby slippers that i don't wear much anymore
and if i had the nerve i'd click my heels and return to the wonderland i knew before
i'm waiting to slow boat to china, want to sail away to the sun
i've been searching for myself and i know i'm gonna find her if i break away from everyone
so the way that i act may not fit in
just because i've got a mind of my own doesn't mean it's a sin
i don't ask you to give up; don't expect me to give in
'cause i'm not completely insane, i'm maybe just a little bit crazy
- crazy, blame it on me

padh bosedk

in a city where the most overused word has to be ‘behenchod’, comes a design label from designer duo jiten thukral and sumir thagra called ‘bosedk’. and if that doesn’t catch your attention, their work will. it’s like being drenched with a pail of ice cold water – deliciously fresh and aggressively in your face.

their t-shirts range from ones that declare ‘rose meri marlo’ and ‘bank ke lorry’ to ones that say ‘pen chor’ and ‘pee bosedk’. bright colours, wild graphics and their trademark glass jar packaging, makes you want to quickly run out and fill up your wardrobe with them.
at 1200 bucks a pop, they don’t come cheap, but they are completely worth it.

the designers themselves- they’re young, restless and focused. pretty much acknowledged by everyone i know in the industry as ‘sahi’. i went to catch an exhibition of theirs last year, and i found that along with being softly mad, they were also surprisingly sharp – bring the same passion and energy into their business venture (their store at 2MG, that was demolished by the MCD) as they put into their work.

check out their website at http://www.bosedkdesigns.com/ pick up a couple of tshirts or just revel in their crazy brand of humour.

i come in friendship

i come back into town after two months away. i'm having dinner with some acquaintances. a friend calls. where are you, he wants to know. having dinner with some friends, i say. ok, he replies, i’ll be right over.

no waiting for an invitation. no “are you free to meet up?”. no “is it okay if I join you?”. no questions. period.

and this is the most beautiful (and the most aggravating) thing about friendships. taking your friends for granted.

so you take calls at 4am in the morning. you be nice to their partner, who you might not like. you listen and dole out advice and tissues with equal elan. you invest time, energy and sometimes love into it. and on the whole take them as they come. because you know, they do the same.

not all of them, though. all of us have categories of friends. there are the sleep-over kinds, the drinking buddies, the ones who you have nothing in common with except the past, the childhood kinds, the ones you meet when they or you are passing through, the ones who listen and the ones who talk, the ones who you meet every single day, and ones, as Mr. Epstein describes in his book "friendship: an exposé", who play the role of best supporting friend.

some of them we definitely could live without. and some we have to live without. because they are traveling halfway across the world to be with their partner. or because they want to live by the sea and watch whales. or simply because they’ve gotta go.

yet I take solace in the fact, that friends, how ever far they go, they’ll just be one 4am phone call away.

and when they do call, there will be no questions.

how to get a visa to the states (from someone who’s never gotten one)

get your friend’s friend’s brother’s sister-in-law to put in a good word with her cousin who knows somebody that works in the embassy. (never mind he’s doing his summer internship)

wear your favourite wonderbra and furiously bat your eyelashes (note: it never seems to cut any ice with the women, but the men fall it every single time. EVERY SINGLE TIME.)

produce imaginary boyfriends/lovers/fiancées/husbands. as many of them as you can. most visa officials believe that their countrypeople are the most irresistible race on earth, and if you are going to go visit, rest assured that you are going to be enamored by them and absolutely crave to have their babies. any evidence to the contrary, will (strangely) earn you a certain no of brownie points. and in case you’ve forgotten, that’s what we are aiming at.

claim that your parents hit you. considering that most indian children live with their parents till they have grandchildren themselves, that should be entirely believable, whatever your age.

pretend to be yogi. the whole place is littered with them anyway. (hint: all you need are loose flowing robes and a stoned expression) thing is, even the slightest unspoken threat of being damned to the fires of hell, is not a chance any of the visa officials are willing to take. c’mon, no job pays that much.

spend the 148 days (yes, that’s how long it takes to get a visa appointment) brushing up on all the things that you dislike about the country. because chances are, the less you want to go, the more likely you are to.

if all of the above fail, walk down to your neighbourhood McDonalds and order the all american aloo tikki burger. to go.

the sound of the city

i like cities. all cities. well, most cities. they are like people- the most interesting ones are the ones with the maximum amount of layers. the confused ones. the ones heavy with history and ghosts of the past, yet young, exuberant and growing in ways they can’t fully understand. chaotic, beautiful and full of a strong sense of individuality.

when i’m feeling low and drained of energy, drowning in mundanity, i dream of standing by the side of a road, in the middle of a city (nada, no blue skies and green meadows for me). and when i close my eyes i can almost feel myself absorb the energy that surrounds me, like neon motion streaks. (maybe i’ve been watching too many movies that use that particular shot.) but whatever the reason, i like cities. especially delhi. it has a certain buzz. an energy that makes you hit the ground running. a pulse, that’s the same, for the rich and poor alike. something that brings together the stuffy babus enjoying their single malts in luytens delhi and the obnoxious jats getting sozzled in their cars at parking lots. something that binds the ones that have put their roots down and the ones that are just passing by.

some call it soul. but a band of musicians i know, call it rhythm.

they’ve compiled an album that captures and celebrates the spirit of delhi. i’ve heard it, and i like it. i like the sound. and i like the artwork on the cover. as much as i like the idea of it. the album is called “sahi bol”, which at the same time means so many different things. “sahi bol” literally means “say the right thing”. it’s also an expression that loosely translates into “for real???”. and in musical terms, “sahi bol” means the right lyric.

i like the way the musicians describe it – the music as well as themselves. they call themselves the kids of the 80’s (remember the time when rockstars were ROCKSTARS and everyone had a bad hairdo), who stumbled into the 90’s. sometimes making music. and sometimes noise. yet always holding on to the idea of independent expression. inextricability linked and strangely free from the city they live in.

the two cd compilation spans a great many genres (sufi, rock, blues, electronic, urban styles, dance, indo-fusion, folk and the undefined) and a great many artists (midival punditz, orange street, them clones, euphoria, mili bhagat, audio pervert, stargazer, mystique, radius, adhvaitaa, arjun sen, donn bhatt, da saaz). so when it hits your neighbourhood music store be sure to check it out. and in the meantime, as and when I learn to, i’ll put the demo’s up on the blog for you to download.

runners are a different breed

we’re a generation brought up on some sport shoe commercials. some really fantastic ones. we applaud the good ones. talk about the bad ones. and on the whole let them influence us enough to buy a pair every 6-8 months.
and that’s not all, we believe what they tell us. they tell us the road is free. they tell us to leave the couch. they tell us that there’s rhythm in our footsteps. they tell us to run.

and so we run. with a certain flair. a certain ease - a bearing - that comes from years of practice. we run from one day into the next. totally absorbed in ourselves. (and of course the tunes that our ipods belt out)

and so we all run. from the day we are born. some of us just do it better than others. take this girl i know, she’s run after this one man all her life. ever since she was fifteen, actually. and the man in question, well he’d run after anything in a skirt. he still does. last i heard, he met this girl in thailand, who ran away with all his belongings from his hotel room. (there has to be a moral in there somewhere)

so we’re all running. sometimes around in circles. sometimes from our potential. in search of that perfect job. in search of that to-die-for man. in search of home. in search of what’s around the next corner.
little realizing that, sometimes it’s worth it to stop for a drink at a bar on this one.

behind every blog, there's an ignored bored depraved blogger

why should one have a blog? why would one have a blog? i mean, they are not really the most convenient things in the world. pretty much like having a plant at home. something you have to water daily (or at least when you remember) and take out for a walk every once in a while.
it’s a lot like being in a relationship too. you have to invest time in it (quality time at that)…be honest with it…and stuff like that. only it’s better maybe, because it doesn’t talk back.

okay, so why should one have a blog? here’s what I think:

one, you have to be surrounded by friends (who love you and you love them…and all of that) who have completely stopped listening to what you say. not that they mean to tune you out, but chances are they are too busy eyeballing the cute young thing at the other end of the bar.

two, you have to be really bored at work. seriously, how good the blog is, is directly proportional to dissatisfied you are at work. (unless you are one of those lucky bastards who get paid to blog.) it’s like melancholic troubled people are just better at writing.

three, you have to not be getting any. or not nearly enough. (think about it, how many people do you know, who are doing like it like rabbits and still being able to or finding time to blog?)

four, you are suffering from a sensory overload. too much news, too many images and lots and lots of completely useless information is crammed into your brain. you are never able to say the right thing at the right time, mostly because by the time you sift through the data in your head, the moment has gone.

and five, you see yourself in the future, in a great big house surrounded by cats (while obviously, a cute young pool boy in his speedos is working outside) with your memory a little dim, and unless the world is taken over by aliens or AI and the www is down for ever, your blog will remind you that at one point, you didn’t need a life, since you were trying to lead half a dozen already.