Rishi Valley

This is where I lived for 7 years.Im mighty lucky ..I know.When you went to the loo you could see the mountains;in the middle of the night you could go for a 4km trek and be lulled to sleep by the warmth of the 'slash and burn' that the farmers do on another hill.Fire on the hills on a winter night.Vehicles that are loud enough to sound a thousand miles away.wake up to the sun rising between the hills.poetry classes under trees.

Student

There is an amazing shamelessness and power that comes along with being a student.Whether it's having the privilege not to tip or making 'house' on the stairs in front of a bank for hours together being treated to the whiff of 'AC' when the door opens.
Wearing a saris for two hours and smiling will get you a thousand bucks..(not that my parents would approve) and free food..(and drinks) at these swank five star hotels. People find this mentally degrading. I think not , even with all my feminist talk and having read the first ten pages of Simone De beauvoir's 'The Second Sex'.For the uninitiated, she is a french feminist who redefined the concept of feminism.
It gives you some pocket money and is better than whiling away two hours at the college food court laughing about how Ms So and Mr SoSo are dating..honestly its better than sitting in English classes listening to a story that your seventh standard teacher taught so beautifully being m urdered.
Or creative writing classes where the teacher tells you the one and only format used for diary entries.What's so creative about that? I mean look at my blog entry..does it have a format, organization or one solid theme?
Not that it is creative but still.
Being a student also gives you an excuse to be a rebel with no cause, to steal 'saunf' from restaurants in tissue paper , eat dosas in the shack in some sewer lined alley and not worry about the details appearing on page three of the Bangalore Times. ..
I think I'll always be a student.

My mind is throbbing with words,
My world is brimming with stories,
I interview and each line that’s said,
To me (with the self importance of an intern)
throws in angles.
Human relations whirling around held together by words,
Pulsating in light and in dark,
With lasers and radars and outside lights flashing.
The lights blind us from the enormity of what’s beyond and we tread on,
Living relations ,
in a whirlpool of dynamism.
Three dimensional migraine even to a seemingly bland student and
In the electricity in her head,
Or the rapists,
Or the woman in whose head the thought of herself didn’t bother to strike,
Or the other who strayed from a loveless marriage to soothe her emptiness,
Or the student who cheated to get through ,
Or the student who didn’t cheat but was ‘caught’
The first bragged,
The second found no way,
The Tibetan woman with
the acid burns on her face ,
that a Chinese dissatisfied far away created,
won’t see her pain contorted smile.
will make a story that sells,
but to make her vomit those words that she wishes to digest,
It’ll make a good story.
It’ll make a good story but clichéd though it might sound,
We are all in a play that’s been planned,
The directors random
And there are no rehearsals dear.
When the air sags and the energy’s clammy,
It’s all there dear packed in a hanging bag,
It crawls away from the child’s face and is sealed up Or the clown at heart who sweeps movie halls
Or the ….
Suddenly the world falls into place.
Only the words don’t.
My mind is ablaze and the words are whirling but the sentences just don’t string themselves together and formless thoughts haunt me,
For want of shelter, a cocoon , a niche in a thick layered word,
Warm, secure and the meaning still fresh within the crevices of the word,