Have so many of these pictures.. this one from the lovely toor niwas.. never thought i'd miss that house so much!

Teething Troubles

Everytime i start a blog i think its going to be for me ... evrytime i delete it, i realise its not serving that purpose anymore. When i begin, it is with the idea that i'm going to have a record of my own thoughs and ideas... my pictures...i take so many pictures of myself that people think i'm obsssed and narcissistic.. Don't know why i take so many pictures of myself.. maybe because no one else will take them.. maybe because i'm always the only one with the camera clicking everyone ..

But when i sit down to type ..everytime, half way through a post i realise that even though i hope no one else is reading this, i find myself writing for that one stranger who might stumble upon my blog and read it.

So many people tell me that with all the things i keep doing i should start a blog...and so many times i sit down to type and realise that i have nothing to say.. i guess thats why they have so much free internet space..for people like me who have nothing to say and so keep rambling about mothing at all.. I guess its always the people who have nothing to say who take the longest time to say it!

Don't know what will come off this blog... a journal..a self obsessed monologue, will i give in to my activism and start lecturing based on my own half baked information .. don't know yet...but thats half of the fun of it .. to not know and see as you go along..

A Song Flung Up To Heaven

The free bird leaps

on the back of the win

and floats downstream

till the current ends

and dips his wings

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks

his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged Bird sings

with a fearful trill

of the things unknown

but longer for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

an the trade wind soft through the sighing trees

an the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn

and he naes the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on a grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown but longer for still

and his tune is heard on a distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.

-- Maya Angelou.

Island Affairs

Today is my one year aniversary of being in the islands...Came to Port Blair on february 17th exactly a year ago.. And for some reason whatever work i might be doing, i'd like to be doing it here. .. When i went home for a few months i missed things i never thought about when i was in Port Blair. Its a sleepy, small town feeling that you get while walking down the main bazar as the gongs of the ghantaghar waft into your ears through the general murmur and sounds of the market place. Tanas, my favourite T shirt shop, where almost everyday i'd stop and look if they had something new on offer. The Tirupur Garments mela where you'd get cheap international brands..all export rejects i guess, but great stuff.. These were the places we depended on when sweaty clothes had to be changed twice a day and there was no water to wash them.. just buy new clothes! Of course there was dhobi uncle who curiously enough never ran out of water to mentain the flourishing laundry service.. last i heard he'd gone to mainland to get more boys.. i always did suspect him of human trafficking!

The "Mainland" occupies a near mystical space in teh island imagination. Going to the mainland and coming from the mainland, all terribly exciting events. Food, clothes, ration, even people all come here from the mainland.. Never thought i'd get used to the idea of "mainland" and find a certain reassurance in the fact that mainland would always be far away and never come in contact with the islands apart from sending all those wonderfully exciting things that I would keep buying at rahmat and the hallmark store.

I came here from the mainland a year ago, and fell so in love with the beaches, the sights, the sounds and most importantly the people. I fell in love with the fact that i'd bump into someone or the other i know everytime i walk through the bazar. Nod to the shopkeepers wher i've become a regular and smile at random tourists who'd assume i'm also a random tourist just like them . I fell in love with how the waiter at Punjabi Dhaba would put chana masala, dahi and roti's on the table even before i'd order them because that was obviously what i was going to eat. In love with how walking home and picking up juice on the way from Milan was an everyday routine that became so familiar that i'd just go open their fridge and help myself.

The blog space is hardly enough to describe all that has happened over the past year and i'm not even going to try. Just that on my Island Aniversary all of it came rushing back, fresh into my mind. People who havn't been here at all wouldn;t know the feeling of completing a year here. But all my friends who've been here and done this can read this and feel so terribly terribly nostalgic about their own island aniversaries.

Smitha, Junuka, Divya, Liz and most of all Kranti.. its lonely here without you guys.. So quit feeling nostalgic and bring your asses right back!!