a life just beginning

We stand in the parking lot of a provincial park north of Toronto, looking to the north sky. We strain our necks and I imagine the greenish tinge, but the aurora never appears. Obnoxious laughter is in the air but I am rescued in the front seat. The lights shine on those beautiful faces, and a lip ring flashes in the dark as we chat about family and alcohol and auroras. I get a tight hug from a tall person (how I miss those) and I walk home alone and warm at 11.30 at night. Toronto is a privilege.

*

We are on the terrace and smoking up but we're just sober enough to say no, we're not going to make out, that would make things so weird. I don't remember how it goes after that, but it's an entirely different person who says later, ohmaigad you're so pretty in the light your lips are so saaaaaft. QPOC SUPREMACY! someone shouts into the night sky. We groove to desi music later, there's dappaan koothu involved, and then I am walking home drunk with anarchist drunks who make rainbows out of flowers and that's my amaanat.

*

The bhindi is loved, fried, crunched, loved, finished.

*

Her smile lights up the room and her voice rings out, her friends are my friends and my friends are her friends. I love her and love her.

*

We are in our warm kitchen, which swallows up the mornings into its many jars in its doorless cabinets. In the evening the rainbow flowers are in the centre of the table, surrounded by wine glasses and so much talking and so much giggling. They hold hands and they kiss, happy and certain and confident, and I ache for my lover, when will we cook and host dinners for our friends and cuddle in the tea-light?

*

I stand in front of my class and talk about home for an hour, how shitty it is for a dark skinned person, how shitty it is because the caste system still lives. And then 23 women blow me away with their candour, broken legs and friends with fatal cancer and family who loves them and family who is fierce and they are mixed and they don't know where they fit in, this is my culture and this is who I am and this is how I care and this is me this is me this is me. I hug the girl who cries and I walk out into the rain with my hair on end.

*

Back home, I heat up the rasam and drink it in a glass North Indian style, and share the garlic with my roommate. We chat, we drink and we go our separate ways.

I could live like this.

hi how are you please thank you have a good day nice to meet you! what a friendly citycountry

My first few days here people smiled at me, and spoke to me unbidden on the street, offered change and directions and advice on cellphone plans, and looked at my TShirt and said, "girl in glasses! you have 4 boyfriends?" [Troy and Abed, oh how I wish to be their Annie.]

Today I am a woman with purpose, I stride into the subway and walk past an eastern european accented woman who asks me where to drop the token. I show her, barely wait for her to mumble anything at me, and stride on. Should I have asked if she needed help? Maybe.

I stride on, making no eye contact, receiving no smiles, no chat, and consult my phone for directions. But the vending machine defeats me, and two people walk past, but someone stops to help and grins, I did nothing at all but there you go, and in my zeal to call out a 'thank you' I miss my packet of chips falling and punch at the machine some more before the bulb goes on.

~~

In the Bellevue park near Kensington market, people of all sorts and colours (skin and hair) gather in the sunshine, frisbee players, friends, families, musicians, weed dealers, starry eyed graduate students and acrobats. A black man strips off his shirt and stomps around in the mini amphitheatre area, throwing down blocks of wood to his beat, rapping and shouting, fuck police! fuck police! fuck you! stop shooting at me stop shooting at me stop shooting at me

moving

People say when they come back that Delhi smells different. I was told Toronto will smell different, right away, I will notice. Well, not yet. The air is cleaner, maybe? But it feels like I know that only on an intellectual sort of level. The sound levels aren't much lower where I live, where streetcars trundle past and go ting! and buses whoosh and cars zoom and fighter jets fly past in the sky for an exhibition, like no one in this fucking city knows the sinking feeling of impending war. [Most do, but they're not the ones who are consulted.] I can't help it, my house sits at an intersection. Maybe let the city envelop me at all time of the day, now when I can still look at it with starry eyes.

When I hugged my lover at the airport of this city I will forever thank for bringing us closer, I knew his smell immediately, I buried my face in him and nearly lost myself in the intensity of it. It was the only sensory thing of his that lingered on after he'd left, in the cotton tshirt that slowly became just a cotton tshirt so soon. Everything else was pixels and skype; the lovebites faded too soon.

I catch whiffs of it now, six days and one load of laundry [this is where you drop the coins, this is where you wait] later. It can't be from my clothes. It must be me, maybe my skin touching his skin soaked up as much as it could, still viscerally sure that this parting will be for a long time too. I meet new people and hug them but I don't get their smell, not like I have his. Or maybe it was me all along and Delhi didn't let me smell it. Maybe the patina of my old city is falling off of me and I will be naked to this city sooner than I knew. 

tangents

How does it feel to be made so transparent? The text message delays and cadences give him away. I wonder if I will see him in the flesh and see right through to the beating heart and want to pierce it. Feeling contrary.

Rendered transparent - right down to the 'true' 'authentic' 'self'. All these words have turned into poison words. You hear anyone using them and immediately they are suspect. As they should be, no doubt, but there aren't any concessions in the game for those who are in the know and use these words for their poisonous power. You can't get away with saying them.

*insert GIF of Max from Happy Endings saying 'mah niiiig-' while Brad nearly kills him dead with a look*

There's a book inside my head that's taking shape in bits and pieces. I don't want to force myself into writing it, because there's just so little time for anything anyway. I keep imagining that going away will solve all my problems, from the lack of time-to-myself to dandruff. Only actual going away will cure me of that.

But scenes come and go, and most of them will be forgotten when the final thing - if the final thing - comes to life. I am not worried.

No. There will be time, and there will be time.

Like there is time now, in the midst of goodbyes and frantic packing, to gaze at pictures, to Facebook stalk, to feel that strange unpleasant churning in your middle that heralds a crush. To think of witty things to say, to imagine meeting again, to dread the actual meeting-again, to look forward to the moment where it all breaks, or the much-farther moment where you think, him, really? He really had to grow into his looks. What a cartoon.

[the still farther moment where I read this and wonder who I was talking about. Perhaps J will remind me.]

beautiful things the boyfriend says

There were matchsticks inexplicably scattered in the yard in the morning.
Did you know fireflies in the night turn into matchsticks in the morning?

leaving

"You need to get away." "I need to get away." "No, you NEED to get away."

*

"What a loss to us." *silence*

*

"Ohho yeah, ab jaaogi to bas wahan pe settle. Pata hai pata hai. Kitne dekhe hai tere jaise." "But... but. JNU is full of foreign return people."

*

"Are you planning to come back? Oh good. Go, go, be refreshed and come back. We'll need new energy."

*

"I can't wait for you to come here darling, we're going to have so much fun and be together finally!"

*

"Live our dream life, Harshita."

*

"You'll be fine, you know. You're outgoing and friendly, and you have a solid political outlook, that can help actually. I mean, you have to be open to new stuff and all."

*

"I'm going to eat all the food!!!"

*

But actually I'm kinda scared.

postprotestmusings

1. It's definitely time for a new city.

2. I hate that going alone for protests is not a thing.

3. If I don't post about it on facebook am I less than political?