I've had a couple of not-so-great days reader, and have been reminded of my unhealthy tendency to brood. I tried everything to get out of my funk, from gallons of coffee, to strenuous exercise, to reading poetry, but nothing worked for long.

Today when I was driving back from work, I realised that I felt uncomfortably warm. That hasn't happened in months. I shrugged off my sweater while I waited for a signal to change. It was only symbolic: I had to put the sweater back on half an hour later, but I still take this to mean that spring is here. I also noticed marigolds blooming along the pavement, and they're either new, or I've been too lost these past few days to notice gaudy yellow flowers sprouting everywhere.

When I reached home I tried something I haven't done in a long time. I sang. Oh, I'm always humming and I frequently sing to my mirror with a deodorant canister as a mike, but today I dusted off my electronic tanpura, dug out my music notes, and pretended I was singing on a stage to a large and enraptured audience. Panda came to enquiringly sniff the tanpura and stayed to listen for a while.

I was pleased with my voice today. I began with the most basic exercises, singing them off the music textbook amma bought me when I was seven. It's a photocopied book, since prints of  Karnatic music textbooks weren't easily available in Delhi in 1995. In several places the print was either unclear or non-existent, so the blanks were filled in by me. My writing from back then is remarkably similar to how I write today. Large, impatient letters, in multicoloured ink. (What? I like colour. I think it brightens up the page.) I remember how eager I was back then to finish with this book and graduate to the good stuff: the varnams and the keerthanas that the more advanced students were singing. I have a deplorable sense of rhythm and because of it was made to repeat a lesson once: I didn't get the alankaras right and my teacher said she wouldn't start me on geethams until I did.

I did eventually nail them though, and I think I nailed them again today, as I blazed through them, high speed. Then I sang a geetham, a swarajathi, a varnam, a kriti and finally a thillana. I imagined the audience cheering my every vocal flourish. I threw everything I had into my performance, and then some. I waved my arms in vigorous expression, made dramatic faces, grunted praise when I executed a tricky gamakam, and eventually closed my eyes in ecstasy. When I finally opened them, Panda was gone, but I did feel much better. I nodded and smiled graciously for the thunderous applause, and then went to see about dinner.

Gaslight

Panda just came in from his walk and shook raindrops all over me.

I was thinking about gaslighting today. The word is derived from the Ingrid Bergman movie Gaslight, in which her husband attempts to convince her that she is insane by altering little things around their house. However, when she notices, he insists that she is imagining it. Doesn't it seem sometimes like the whole world is gaslighting you? When the papers are filled with stories of rape and corruption and executions, and you can't hurl a brick out of your window without hitting a cynic? When you're made to feel as if any sort of idealism is foolish? But perhaps I'm being too dramatic. We don't discuss those things here. This is a place for poetry and music, dogs and books, joy and pain. Of course I have opinions: painstakingly wrought nascent ones about everything from feminism (I'm a feminist) to the death penalty (I'm against it). Maybe it is time to find a place for them.

I'm spending the eve of my twenty fifth birthday cleaning out the dog's ears. Then we'll argue, because he'll want to eat his earwax and I'll protest that he's being disgusting. He'll concede ungraciously by rolling on his back and pushing me away with his paws. And then we'll sit by the window and watch the rain together. It's a rum old world.

I have new curtains as part of my long-forgotten reorganisation drive. Dull gold with blue-green vines. I think they go with my walls. I like them. Panda likes them too. He comes barrelling through them several times a day, pointy nose first. I keep them parted for as long as I can though, in order to catch stray rays of sunshine. 

It's getting a little bit colder each day. This morning when Panda woke me up, he had to wait impatiently as I rooted in my cupboard for a sweater. It's his fault really. Sensible dogs wait for the sun to come out before they demand walks.

I miss the sun. It slipped away from right under our noses, and now it's gone all the way to the Southern Hemisphere. The rays it sends from the Indian Ocean really aren't the same thing. 

Panda was sitting in a stray ray of light from the window yesterday. It illuminated his chin and his white whiskers, turning them golden, like he'd guiltily swallowed sunshine.

He ate it up

Sometimes, reader, I worry if I'm spoiling my dog. He hasn't been eating, this past week. The vet says this often happens to dogs during mating season and that we aren't to worry. It's hard not to worry though, if your dog is visibly losing weight, doesn't drink milk, refuses all his treats and isn't tempted by even his favourite illicit cream-filled biscuits. Besides, I missed having him sitting at the kitchen door sniffing eagerly while I baked.

We tried everything. Liver stimulant tonics, exercise, the silent treatment, several attempts of me sticking my face into his bowl and pretending to eat its contents with audible relish. What finally worked was rice flour balls. On the day before yesterday, Patti was teaching me how to make kuzhakattais (which will show up in a blog post on Poppadom shortly) and we had a little leftover rice flour, which we rolled into balls to steam and season later. Panda sat up and took notice when I walked past holding a bowlful of kuzhakattais, so on an impulse I took out a ball and rolled it across the floor. Panda chased after it and ate it up. Overjoyed, we rolled ball after ball at him and he ate them all up.

Since then, egged on by Patti, I've been cooking freshly ground rice flour daily, kneading the resultant dough, rolling it into balls and steaming them. Then, once they cool sufficiently, I lob one at Panda's head, he runs after it, and then crawls under the bed to eat it. We this over and over again, till he loses interest. Luckily, his memory is very short, so we repeat performances several times a day. It has to be the most roundabout way of feeding a dog.

Last week, a girl committed suicide at the metro station I board the train from. I read about it in the papers the morning after she did it. When I went that day to catch my train I saw a small area of the pavement cordoned off by yellow tape and tried unsuccessfully to avoid looking at the dark red stain in the middle.

I tried to be nicer to the metro staff that day. When I stood waiting for my train, I stood at the point from which she must’ve jumped. The red stain was directly below. I thought of how she must’ve clambered over the railing and let go, taking care to fall head first. I pitied her, because to my thinking, suicide is a terrible way to waste a life and I couldn’t even imagine what horror in her existence drove her to it. I also resented her, for making me think about her at all. She was gone and yet we, who never knew her when she lived, we were now thinking of her. The people who were walking below when she landed before them. The paramedics who must’ve tried to revive her. The policemen who she’d left with yet another unsolved case and a great deal of paperwork. The metro guard who was now standing at the end of the platform and trying to be inconspicuous, but eyeing me warily. All of us asking “Why?” but wearily resigned to never knowing the answer.

The stain and the tape were there for a week, and I tried unsuccessfully to avoid looking at them each time I walked past. Today they were finally gone, the pavement was scrubbed clean, and people were walking over the spot, talking, hurrying, intent upon getting to wherever they were going. I circled around it, looking away, as I walked home. I looked at the pavement below my feet instead, and each pan stain on the concrete looked like a spatter of blood. 

I am Nithya, hear me roar

I'm very chuffed, reader. I fell to cleaning up my computer and I'm finding this organisation drive rather addictive. I've already created folders for all my docs (me!) and discarded any number of puzzlingly-titled notepad entries (some of them were downright cryptic). I've updated my software and even organised my thousands of Panda and food photos, updated my food blog, and finally started using Google Calendar. Now, I have SMS alerts coming to me every half-hour, worded with escalating levels of urgency depending upon how unlikely I am to do my scheduled tasks. I know you, reader, already do this and you're chuckling kindly at my excitement. I can't help it. I'm very hopeful right now that even someone as shatter-brained as me will eventually claw her way to the top of things, and maybe even hold on there for a little while.

Wish me luck reader.

I love ya tomorrow, you're always a day away

All my life I've been more or less harum-scarum, reader, and as I think back, it's rarely served me well. I push deadlines as far as they will go and then proceed to ignore them. I'm clean, but I've never been accused of being tidy. I write like I do everything else: haphazardly. I'm always pleasantly surprised when things fall into place despite me, and that's always nice, but that really doesn't cut it any more does it?

I want to be one of those people who has all her bills filed away in a drawer, and doesn't have to rescue her bank statement from being chewed up by the dog because it was lying on the floor and fair game. I want to use post-it notes for annotations while reading instead of for doodling on when I'm on the phone. The sort of person who, yes, plans her activities on Google Calendar every month and then sets daily reminders and actually follows them. I suppose I should start by flipping my wall calendar which still thinks it's March. It's all just... exhausting to think of.

Still, think of it I will. Tomorrow. We shall begin tomorrow, reader. It takes three weeks to form a habit, so just you see. By the fourteenth of September, I shall be a new, frighteningly efficient woman. I'll even buy those multicoloured highlighters and arrange them in my stationery drawer. Colour coded. First, I'll clear out a drawer for stationery.

Tomorrow.