Bubble...

It's going to be interesting to see how this turns out. I can see the same thing happening here in Mumbai. Big real estate developers building these big luxurious houses, some even come with their own private swimming pools, and although, Mumbai -the city of extremes- has that kind of money, there are also those who can't afford even an one room-kitchen in Mumbai. And so confused, I asked a friend what happens to those who can't afford multi-crore flats, and then she told me about Virar.

Anyway, back to China, knowing the Chinese, I shouldn't have been surprised:

The second, a Beijing municipal regulation restricting families to owning one apartment each has also failed because, as Chovanec said, “People got around [it] by getting divorced.”

Read, China’s Empty Apartments: Part1 and Part2.

And, Chinese hit by over-inflated house prices. 

Oohs and Moos...

Saturday was spent watching two alien movies-Smurfs and Cowboys & Aliens. Although the friend liked both, I liked neither, only because guys possess this awesome ability not to over-think, whereas I? I obsess about things that no one obsesses about. Like, why were smurfs so much like humans? Oh yea, so they had four fingers instead of five, yes, very wow, very original (clap clap)! Or then why did the aliens from some arbitrary planet look so much like humans? Only a grotesquer version. Watch these alien movies and you realise how unimaginative we humans really are. How shallow our creative abilities. How obsessed we are with our own image. How we have never really learnt to look beyond us, how we still think inside the box. I mean, seriously, if we can't even come up with decent monsters, what does that say about us? Our monsters and aliens drive the same machines, they desire the same things-gold, really? and they look pretty much like us humans-hands and feet and eyes and a brain and all that. Pfft!

Sorry for being such a nitpicker, but I am going to save my wow's for the real aliens.

P.S: If you must watch Cowboys & Aliens, watch it only for Daniel Craig. And then come back and tell me where I can find such a man. Not much fun being a woman these days I tell you. Deep sighs and a tub of icecream.

Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines...

This ruined my day.

Sigh. That delicate delicious ache when you love someone.

(Sometimes I feel I must have been a man in my previous life and I must have loved a woman with all my heart and maybe, I still love her, in this life.)

I could weep for days today. My soul is not satisfied.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered

and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms

I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.

How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.

And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.

The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.

My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.

My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.

We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.

My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.

Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms

my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer

and these the last verses that I write for her.

Promises...

From, Thought Catalog:

During the crystalline nights of winter, summer held an almost indecent promise. The kind of promise composed of hands resting lightly on bare shoulders, sliding off a thin slip of a strap from a cotton dress. A time of lying lazily in the grass hoping for a slight breeze to skim your face, of kisses in the kind of cold bars that had dark corners with wooden tables, and of picnics near-forgotten in a whiskey lemonade drenched haze. Afternoons of hazardously licking melting ice cream cones while riding bikes across bridges and nights of telling secrets on roof tops still steaming from the hot sun.

It was the kind of promise that keeps you sane, hopeful, and young.

But instead, summer became sad summer. The kind of a season where the thick, heavy air weighs you down—not with the heat from a storm about to break—but with the mistakes you’ve made, with harshly lingering regret. A time that feels full of significance you can’t come back from, of adulthood no longer pending but here. Gone is that childish wonder. Moments of almost incomprehensible glee find you fleetingly and slip quickly through your grasping fingers, disappearing.

Summer became a broken promise.

Now you sit, hours after midnight, chasing tumblers of whiskey with more whiskey, spinning sentences full of meaningful adjectives with your favorite companion in hyperbole. Each of you half in the moment, half inside your heads, claiming—wondering—if autumn turned to winter will hold a different promise you can reach for. If somehow once you stop running barefoot in the grass, unable to capture that same enthusiastic momentum you once had, you’ll be able to find some sense of peace in where you’ve stopped. That somehow months from now, your previous heartaches will be something contained only in memory instead of your everyday breath, constantly reminding you that your recovery time is no longer as fast.

But even to you that promise holds false.

You know winter holds gray days that take you to dark places, brief bits of laughter book-ended by melancholy. That you’ll find yourself silent, listening to the strains of the National on repeat, exile, vilify, wishing it was still summer because even if your heart was heavy, you felt light. That winter has stolen all the sunshine you once twirled beneath. And that snow will fall on your darkest day, burying you. But staring at that white perfection free of foot prints, you’ll smile. You’ll remember one magical night of stumbling, tumbling, falling tipsily through the drifts. And you’ll feel wistful for those icy days when the wind chills you to the bone and conversation brings you comforting warmth that no fire can provide.

Perhaps the promise of a promise is enough.

A Cheap & Easy Affair...

If tomorrow my kids ask me why I didn't marry that very rich and good-looking guy, I hope they'll understand when I tell them that he did not read. I hope they'll forgive.

Paul Bloom: The Origins Of Pleasure

Rain...

The earth, wrinkled, looks up at the sky
They are here, yesterday they weren't
but today they hover, full of promise, dark, heavy, lovely
The earth waits, expectant, eager, (so)ready to blossom
But they come and they go, unrelenting
A little thunder, a little lightning, a little teasing
A little show, but nothing yet again
And so the earth, full of yearning
Aches a little more, cracks a little more, begs a little more.

A Whore's Heart...

Suddenly this defeat.

This rain.

The blues gone gray

And the browns gone gray

And yellow

A terrible amber.

In the cold streets

Your warm body.

In whatever room

Your warm body.

Among all the people

Your absence

The people who are always

Not you.

I have been easy with trees

Too long.

Too familiar with mountains.

Joy has been a habit.

Now

Suddenly

This rain.

-Jack Gilbert  

Stray Words...

"What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don't want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don't want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you." — Jeanette Winterson

*****

"What a strange world this is when you can have as much sex as you like but love is taboo."

— Jeanette Winterson

***** 

"I think now that being free is not being powerful or rich or well regarded or without obligation but being able to love. To love someone else enough to forget about yourself even for one moment is to be free."
— Jeanette Winterson

Tears Dry On Their Own...

Someone Else's Garden...

Life will throw the weirdest revelations at you when you least expect any. So here I am, lying in bed, enjoying some good music, reading and I know, suddenly, know with a certainty that I will one day bring my own death. 

Maybe it will happen when I am old and bored, I'll consume a hundred sleeping pills. Maybe when I am in my forties, I'll throw myself in front of a fast train or maybe I'll jump in the Arabian sea one day I am strolling on Marine drive with a friend. I'll tell him I'll be right back, and I'll go surrender to the waves that have always called.

Maybe.

I'll be surprised if I don't.

The Greenness Of Your Grass...

"Chances are, you’re not going to be alone forever. You might joke about being a spinster—about getting cats with diamante collars or maybe an obnoxious Cockatoo you can teach dirty words—but inside you, somewhere deep in your bowel, nestled beneath your utmost fears and insecurities, there’s a little scrap of knowing that tells you that one day, somehow, you’ll have someone by your side...

...start spending more time with you. Laugh at your own jokes. Luxuriate in solitary silence. Walk. Read. Pamper yourself. Be as filthy and disgusting as you please. Learn the comfort of your own embrace. It’s a cliché but it’s true—you will love better once you’ve fallen in love with you. Sleep sprawled on the bed. Snore. When you wake up make eggs and bacon and eat them in bed on your own. Find things—big and small—that you love doing and do them everyday.

Focus on your job. Find a hobby. Do whatever the hell you want. Because when that day comes—the secret day you hold onto in the hidden recesses of your guts—you will have to compromise. You will have to think of someone else whenever you make a decision. You will have to share your bacon, and maybe they wont like it crispy besides, and you’ll have to adapt. You will have to sleep wedged between someone’s limbs. It wont be better and it wont be worse; it will be different, and you’ll have to learn to love it too."

From, Thought Catalog. 

The Weight Of Love...

“Sometimes we love people so much that we have to be numb to it. Because if we actually felt how much we love them, it would kill us. That doesn’t make you a bad person. It just means your heart’s too big.”
—Riding in Cars with Boys

Also, sometimes, they just take advantage of your love for them.

I'm All Right...

No guy will ever love you more or treat you with more care than your father. You'll be lucky if one treats you with as much. A girl might as well make peace with it. 

He made me laugh
He made me cry
He smoked his stogies in bed
But I'm all right
I'm all right
I've been lonely before
I asked the boy for a few kind words
He gave me a novel instead
But I'm all right
I'm all right
I've been lonely before
It's fine, it's OK
It was wrong either way
I just wanted to say
There isn't much fun when you're drinking wine
He got drunk, he fell down
He threw a few of my things around
But I'm all right
I'm all right
I've been lonely before

I'd like to believe that it's easy to leave
But I have to conceive that wherever you are
You're still driving my car
Sticks and stones break my bones
But tears don't leave any scars
So I'm all alright
I'm all alright
I've been lonely before

Mmm...
I'm all alright
I'm all alright
I'm all alright
Yeah
He played solitaire in bed
Used to blow bubbles in bed
He sang Christmas songs in bed

City Frogs...

Thanks to Garima, this song is now playing on a loop in my head too! :|

Jazbaat...

There will be that conversation you’ve been putting off for as long as you’ve known you’ve needed to have it. There will be those words that you’ve rehearsed over and over–in your car, in front of your mirror, in your bed in total darkness while staring at your ceiling–that tumble out of your mouth inelegantly, tripping over each other to make it out just so you can get this over with. There will be that ugly ball of thoughts that hangs in front of you, the thick, opaque cloud of words that formed in between you, through which you cannot breathe. There will be that moment where you try and scoot away, wanting to disown everything you’ve just said, ready to scream at the top of your lungs just to cut the silence.

And there will be that moment, that brutally delayed moment, where they respond with a shrug, a sigh, a casual dismissal of all that you just implied. They will demonstrate with unintentional precision just how uninvolved they are, how little they have emotionally invested, just how very little this has all mattered to them. There will be the moment you struggle to physically scoop up every humiliating statement you made and all their brutal implications and cram them, hurriedly, back in your mouth. You’ll fight back tears as your cheeks fill, blotchy and red, like a veteran alcoholic. You’ll linger on the cusp of wailing, of running in any direction until your lungs ache–but you won’t. You’ll shrug and vaguely shake your head, pitifully mumbling something along the lines of, “Oh, of course…right. No, no, that’s cool.”

But it will pass.

And everything else too...it always does.

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower...

"She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just takes time." — Stephen Chbosky

P.S: These were taken on the way to Dunnottar castle, Stonehaven, Scotland. I rarely, if ever, take photographs, but these, I love and treasure.

Strangers...

It's been a month already. And it's been awesome.

The thing I love about Mumbai, is its attitude and its people. Mumbai is what it is, because of its people. (And I know, this will be taken in totally the wrong way, but I like Mumbai girls, if I was a guy, I'd totally marry a Mumbai girl.) Sometimes, I just want to sit at some cafe, all by myself and absorb it all in, just look and hear and see. There's so much to look, hear and see. I wish I could turn into a fly(or erm, invisible), I would go and sit at each table and listen to them talk, and laugh, and take photographs. I would love that.

I like how Mumbaikars slog their asses the entire week and how they just chill on the weekend (in fact, even on the weekdays). People here don't give a damn about anything other than living life. I like this. I need more of this.

It's been a month so far in this new city, and I couldn't be happier about my decision.

Bombay (Mumbai), you are making me fall in love with you already.

(Slow baby, let's do this slow.)

And next time I crib about the traffic and the humidity, tell me to shut up, ok?

20 Years From Now...

What is it?

If You Knew...

At gate C22 in the Portland airport

a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed

a woman arriving from Orange County.

They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after

the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons

and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,

the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other

like he'd just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,

like she'd been released at last from ICU, snapped

out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down

from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.

She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine

her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish

kisses like the ocean in the early morning,

the way it gathers and swells, sucking

each rock under, swallowing it

again and again. We were all watching--

passengers waiting for the delayed flight

to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,

the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling

sunglasses. We couldn't look away. We could

taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face. When he drew back

and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost

as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,

as your mother must have looked at you, no matter

what happened after--if she beat you or left you or

you're lonely now--you once lay there, the vernix

not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you

as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.

The whole wing of the airport hushed,

all of us trying to slip into that woman's middle-aged body,

her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,

little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

-Ellen Bass