Dear SPai.

Stop seeking it. Stop seeking fluid for your words, eyes for the images you want to create. Stop searching for things, people, to complete you, for you are whole. Stop looking to fill the emptiness because your eyes are closed to the fullness of your life. Stop looking for love from others, because all the love you get won't matter if you have no love for yourself. Stop trying to be me and burning the bridges back to yourself. Stop seeking to be someone else, a shadow, a projection, for you have nothing to be ashamed of or to hide. Stop shutting away your joys and your tears, your smiles and your fears.
Just stop.
Stop. Let everything be still, and look forward into the wind and the waves and everything will be better than just okay.
And as long as you have me, you'll never be alone.
Love, Myst.

It's been an insanely happy day. Very balanced. Just. I *studied*. And I had a Double Chocolate from CBTL and a Bachelor's Special on the same day. Yay!

Playing with Mr Brightside

I'm coming out of my cage and I've been doing just fine gotta gotta be down because I want it all

Sitting on the parapet under a light drizzle, flicking an old lighter on and off. The sound soothes me, the flame keeps dying. Waiting for someone who’ll never come back; not everyone holds on to old flames like I do.

It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this, it was only a kiss, it was only a kiss

I see lips. Parted lips. Soft lips. Pretty lips. They’re the last thing I see before I close my eyes and smile.

Now I'm falling asleep and she's calling a cab while he's having a smoke and she's taking a drag

I taught you how to smoke. You tried to smoke one of my cigs and dissolved into a coughing mess. Somehow, smoking someone else’s lights makes you more unfaithful than actually sleeping with him.

Now they're going to bed and my stomach is sick and it's all in my head

Watching a cab pull up on the street below me, giggles, high-heels clacking. A window lights up opposite me.

But she's touching his-chest now, he takes off her dress now, letting me go

The sheets on my bed are still rumpled, but the candles have burned out. Rose petals on the floor, a pretty pout. You don’t remember any of this, it’s a wisp of smoke in your head, now gone. I light my last cig of the day.

And I just can't look, its killing me…and taking control

Some cigarette ash falls onto my arm, I gasp and then surrender the small mark on my arm to the drizzle outside my balcony. In the window, there are shadows. Silhouettes. Now the light goes off. I lean my head back and blow out smoke.

Jealousy, turning saints into the sea
Swimming through sick lullabies

I used to watch you while you slept sometimes. Hogging the covers, your mouth all pouty, curled up in a little feline ball. I’d stroke your hair once, and then go to sleep with you fitting close against me like the last piece of the puzzle.

Choking on your alibis
But it's just the price I pay
Destiny is calling me
Open up my eager eyes
'Cause I'm Mr Brightside

Somehow, this song always manages to remind me of someone or the other.

It's weird, sometimes, that's the song I listen to when I'm sad, so I can be sadder, and then I listen to the words, But when I'm happy I listen to the tune and how the same few notes roll round and round.

Such a strange song.

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Playing with the lyrics of one of my favourite songs. I heard the song, I thought of you, I thought I should write. I reaffirm that I do not smoke.

There's no real reason that photo's in here, it's one of the murals at Lasalle college of the arts, Singapore.

Yes, I'm back in Muscat.

Yes, I'm fine.

Yes, I do indeed have only two more weeks left to the end of my glorious vacation.

Back to Bombay and the rain and the early-morning wake up alarms.

Maybe there's a reason that particular photo's there, I guess. It drips with...lightbulbs. Signifying ideas. And I want to create. I haven't written anything decent in forever, drawing, well. And I might have taken some good photos, but that's more...capturing than creating, isn't it?

Our thirst for approval is what's going to kill us one day.

This is my 350th post.

In five years, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be that girl who goes to her friend's weddings stag and hangs out sipping Cuba Libres (assuming my tastes don't change for a while) and hitting on hot guys.

Either that, or I'd be burning up the dance floor ( If there is one. NONE of the weddings I've been to have had dance floors. We're a boring family when it comes to weddings) because I love any excuse to dance.

Give us five years, we'll find out which.

Vouloir

I ache to write. I long to get the spark of an idea, it doesn't have to be phenomenal, any idea, and I want to catch it and trap it down on paper even as it struggles to escape me, pin in down with the lines and curves that form my near-illegible handwriting. I will write about people I know, and the people that come out of the depths of my head. I will...create.

I long to do random dance steps everywhere, but I don't. I'm waiting for the moment when I realise that my body is finally one with the beat.

I want to click. To capture light and shade. To freeze time into millions of pixels. To see the unusual in the ordinary. To frame life as it passes me by.

But I'll never get any of it done if all I do is want and wait.

Myst needs a modus operandum.

Situation: 'Tis my 18th birthday in a week. Unfortunately, my exams start 3 days after the aforementioned birthday. My best friend (okay, Rushi, ONE of them) is gonna be in town, so I need a plan.

My original plan was to gift myself something. I was going to get tattooed on my 18th, but i'd rather do it with mom's permission.

I currently have no plan. I know I want to be OUT the whole day, which involves me waking up in the morning and not the afternoon, yes. I know I'd like it to be memorable.

And I know I'm on a budget. Kinda.

It doesn't help that I'm relatively new to Bombay and don't always know were to take people out...

I have a beautiful new dress. I don't want to waste it.

So, to the universal forces, and to you people...I say HELP.

Offer your valuable advice. And I will tell you whether it has been followed.

I wish

I wish I were older than the stars

I wish I had seen the beginning of time

The slow evolution

The first tool

The rise of a civilisation

Antony's speech

Helen of Sparta

The tayu courtesans

India's golden age

The newly built Taj.

If I wasn't Indian...

I'd want to be Japanese.

Petite sexy schoolgirl in tiny skirt uniform.

White face, tiny beautiful eyes, fair legs in knee socks

Land of bullet trains and geisha and sushi and karaoke.

(Maybe it's the book I was reading that makes me say this)

I want to live in Miami, wear hot shorts and lounge on the beach. Perfect weather too.

I want to live in New York, be street smart, know my way up and down Manhattan and the subway.

I want to be a chic Parisienne and have the lust for love, cheese and good food in my soul.

But yeah. Bombay works for now. Live in a city with the driving rain and local trains.

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Whimsy crap whimsy crap whimsy crap.

Oh gods of writing or whatever, strike me with inspiration. Please. Thank you.

Now REreading: Neil Gaiman - American Gods.

Aloneness, solitude and a skewed concept of Home.

Mom left yesterday so now it's just me.

Left here in solitude, aloneness and despondency.

I woke up at noon today, even then I had to drag myself out of bed because I really see no reason to wake up...I mean, what do I DO?

I don't know where to go, and I'm VERY lethargic. I guess I'll end up spending another day, laptop on stomach, reading Transmetropolitan.

Being alone is fine when I'm at home.

This doesn't feel like home.

Home is...

Home is where the heart is? Home is where you hang your hat?

With this whole city changem I'm a bit confused. See, I can call almost anyplace 'home'. I've called my classroom 'home' sometimes. I've used the words 'Let's go home' to refer to hotels over India, and once, I'm sure, even a tent in Manali was 'home' last year.

In Bombay, 'home' can be anywhere. Home is wherever I'm staying the night. We don't have a house in Bombay. When on vacation here, my parents and I shuttle between my paternal family home in Sion and my maternal home in Kandivili. Now that mom's left, I'm staying with my aunt, in Matunga.

Still, Even if I call it 'home', even if the aunt keeps saying 'treat it like home', it's not. Sure, I won't ask for permission before I raid the fridge or turn on the TV or anything, but it doesn't feel like home (yet) somehow.

Home is...I guess home is where I'm comfortable. WHere I can live like I want to, where I can be angry or sad, maybe scream or cry and not feel bad about it. Where there's someone to rant to.

Where my cats are.

I think I'm losing how it feels to live with two cats in the house, and I hate that. I don't want to forget what that's like, living with (albiet emo-tyrant) cats.

All I want...i guess, is a sense of home, something that says, I belong here. In this house. With these people who understand me.

That's gonna take a while.

Voices in my head

They have no names, after all I'm not schizophrenic.
They come out when I'm alone, in mind and body, and they talk.
Monologues, Dialogues.
A running commentary on how I look and what I'm doing.
Like parallel mirrors. On and on and on.
Sometimes they drive me crazy.
Look at her, they say. Walking along the shore with the water caressing her bare toes.
They're talking about me, the voices.
Sometimes they make my mouth move.
It looks like I'm talking to myself.
Like parallel mirrors, they reflect themselves.
Talk about themselves. Narcissist voices.
They have no names, say the voices, after all I'm not schizophrenic.
They disappear like wisps of smoke when I meet a group of friends.
And they creep back into me when I'm alone to think.
Sometimes they drive me crazy.

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This is literally what happened the other day. Sometimes my head is so full of voices, it feels like it'll burst. What I've written above...came to me almost verbatim the other day, while I was on the beach. The voices, I tell ya. Then as I got onto the road off the beach, I met a whole bunch of the ex-10th graders, and all the voices fell silent. Almost as if they were never there.

Oh how i hate when this happens.

I had some pretty good thoughts in school. all very good. i remember thinking i'd write them down when i got home.

but somewhere on my way back home, the thoughts lost their way. and now i can't find them.

i hate this.

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meanwhile. athletics season is back, the meet's on thursday.

shudder.

I've run out of titles. Hmph.

And here we are again.
What does one do the day before the chem exam? One studies. But Mystique does not.
Oh, no....Mystique is fed up. So she does NOT study.
ah whatever.....I'm passing....I don't care....
These exams tres abominable are beginning to irritate me to no end....the only intelligence they really judge is wheter one is smart enough to study.
I have one paper left, that's math, on Saturday. I'm literally gonna be camping out at my tutor's I guess, if she has much to do about it......

Hmm....it's funny what happens to me when I'm in the shower....ideas come up....floating through the mind, but they disapper before I can catch them. Funny, but it always happens. A lot comes through my mind when I'm in the shower. Must be all the hot water.....

Anyway. After my exams, I'm gonna be spontaneous. I'm hopefully going to get permission to get out of the house on my own....To those my age who live in India, this is already granted, nay, necessary, but girls here don't use public transport, they just don't. Mothers don't think it's safe. I don't know why, all the guys tell me that the taxi drvers are gay. Huh, I guess I'll find out for myself.....
So It's gonna be me gallivanting, very much looking forward to this.....
Hmm....I had a lot to write.....
Bhool Gayi.

Oh, I got my phone back! Funnily now, I feel I can live without it......
For the first few days, It was like how druggies feel when they don't get their daily dose. That's how attached I was to the thing, I guess.....So I suppose this phone confiscation has been for the better, in a way....It was like a liberation, an OCD taken away.......
What actually got me down?
I've been rather angry these days, and I needed music. And it was all on the phone. So the music was what I was actually missing.
Still. I must re-learn how to live with silence. Walking the roads with music on nearly got me run down....I'm lucky I'm in Muscat, I wouldn't survive ten minutes in Mumbai like that.

Out!

So sick, I tell ya.....
So here we are, back again, being that girl I hate. I'm so Sick snd Tired of this state of mind I tell ya....
Sick of not knowing what or who I am....I've lost it I say...
I thought I was doing pretty okay, you know? I thought I was reasonably happy, but no-oo, it's back, all the crappy feelings, all the uncertainty, all the......the.....word, dunno what to call it, it's all back.
She's right, I think, I need to grow up, in every way.
She's right, I shouldn't lose my level.
She's right, my thoughts are scattered and sometimes it's downright irritating.
Oh god, these mentors of mine, I find them everywhere, but they speak so much and it makes so much sense but then it all melts away, somewhere. I'm lucky to have them. I'm lucky to have everything I need.
Damn my back hurts.
I wish I could put into words what I'm thinking, but I can't.

Live your last Day.

Yeah, my phone's gone.
For what?
for receiving a message which can be classified as 'tres tres personal question' or 'unnecessary shit' or 'how can you get messages like this??'
yeah, from a guy.
Dear Lord almighty. They read everything.
Breach of trust, know your limits, that kinda thing.
Not good.
Not happy. At all.
The heck, he's my best friend, I gotta be that open with one person, just one....
Not right, shouldn't be thinking like this, they say....
Huge argument.
Something happened again today morning, went a bit overboard again.....A bit over the lines again....It wasn't about the phone anymore, it was everything else, it was the way I am...
Why can't I just be happy huh? I have everything. Why not happiness?
I told mom today in the car, after I'm 20 I'm gonna live each day like it's my last....
Why after 20, she said?
Ok, but how can I do it now? there's something in me.....just not happy.
How would you do it if you were in Mumbai, in Dharavi? No phone, nothing.....
I dunno.....I'd find a broken water pipe and dance in it I suppose....
Then why can't you be happy now? It's just a state of mind you know....it just takes something small...
Phine, then. I'm gonna change. No more psychogiri...Live happy, turn the little sad switch off.
Find something to be happy about, every day.
Live like you're gonna die in an hour.
Sodden mess, I tell ya.
Question: How do you release your anger?