A Stitch In Time...

I've been scrolling up and down. Feeling like my fingers are hovering over the concluding paragraph of a curious tale.. just like the golden snitch.

I've been 15 for a while now. Sometimes, that was too old. Sometimes, not old enough. I'm teaching people how to be... well, how to BE. I'm cautious..lest they turn into me. (It's so easy to BECOME. The rise of street theatre makes me panic. Deception is everywhere. The stage is all around me now. Who controls the make-up guy?)

Unbelievable. I just fooled myself into dreaming up an apocalypse.

I chant his name sometimes, like a sigh, like a gasp when I roll my eyes.

I believe I came back to school because my childhood has hurt me.. my school didn't see me.. and I've been denied my album of happy memories. This was part of the plan.

Paawani

Some days... you don't need to think of a title for your blog. The images give your memory a gentle nudge and you comply.

Paawani Trivedi is a Seventh Grade student. Well she's more than that. Paawani is literally the pure one. She is that flickering tongue of bonfire that sometimes leaps majestically in air and mesmerises us. Somewhere beyond her dreamy eyes, there is a warmth that draws close to me when I cross the threshold and enter the room. She glides and conjures many a charm bubble. They aren't gaudy, bejewelled ones. They are all faintly yellow, glowing dimly like the gentle, benign truth. We don't talk much. We don't need to.

The totem?

Well it started months ago when I read the first in the series of "The Diary of a Wimpy Kid". I liked it and asked for the sequel. It wasn't with her and I prepared myself for a long wait. Holidays came and went. A new term began. Somewhere, like every relationship, the insecurities crept into the one that I shared with them. I realised that I'm not new anymore. What if they got bored and didn't love me?

Why did they shout in class one day and why did I leave, broken and hollow? What snapped? I don't know. It felt like a break-up. They apologised, got punished and doodled for me. They wanted to be forgiven. I wasn't even sure they knew what they had done.

But the day I came back, there she stood with the sequel in her hand.

Some days ago, I missed out on classes for 3 days in a row. I wasn't well. I was depressed. And very, very preoccupied. When I came back, there she was again. Book in hand.

I took it this time. It's more than just a book. It's her secret... and it has healing powers.

The Gold Rush

So I was a little depressed because I missed out on watching Chaplin's "The Gold Rush" at the India Habitat Centre today. But when I went out for a walk... lo and behold! There he was... the Nilgai! The Nilgai isn't a "blue cow" is it? Don't know. The JNU Campus does boast a lot about its flora and fauna...and this one, right here, ambled across the road and into the bushes as a scooter, a cycle and I came to a halt, adjusting our pace to his. They said he's a loner. Doesn't come in your way if you let him be. Not a bad companion when you have a cup of hot ginger tea to get through and a parent-teacher's meeting the next day to worry about. Are there any proverbs that say anything about Nilgai sightings bringing you luck? There should be.

The Great Depression

Tonight, it was Chaplin's "Modern Times" at the India Habitat Centre and the turn of the gamine, Ellen Peterson, played by Paulette Goddard.

Paulette Goddard (June 3, 1910 – April 23, 1990) was an American film and theatre actress. A former child fashion model and in several Broadway productions as Ziegfeld Girl, she was a major star of the Paramount Studio in the 1940s. She was married to several notable men, including Charlie Chaplin, Burgess Meredith and Erich Maria Remarque. Goddard was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in So Proudly We Hail! (1943).

I don't like her. At all. Must be the unbearable lightness of being. Flaky, fickle, feisty, frivolous, pseudofeminine air sign.

"Yes, I Can See Now"

I saw her last night at the India Habitat Centre. Not in person. In the movie "City Lights". I liked her there so I ran a Google search on her and this is what Wikipedia had to say, among other things...

"Virginia Cherrill (April 12, 1908 - November 14, 1996) was an American actress best known for her role as the blind flower girl in Charlie Chaplin's City Lights (1931). Due to marrying an English earl in the 1940s, she is also known as Virginia Child-Villiers, Countess of Jersey.

Virginia Cherrill was born on a farm in rural Carthage, Illinois, to James E. and Blanche (née Wilcox) Cherrill. She was a Chicago society girl with no thoughts of a film career when she went to Hollywood for a visit and met Charlie Chaplin when he sat next to her at a boxing match. He had failed to find the girl he wanted for his film but decided she would do and cast her in City Lights in which she gave the performance for which she is remembered, although her working relationship with Chaplin on the film was often strained. As indicated in the documentary Unknown Chaplin, Cherrill was in fact fired from the film at one point and Chaplin planned to refilm all her scenes with Georgia Hale, but ultimately realized too much money had already been spent on the picture; as Cherrill recalls in the documentary, close friend Marion Davies suggested Cherrill hold out for more money when Chaplin asked her to return to the film, and she did."

There's a point in the movie at which Chaplin steals some money so that the girl can pay her rent and get her eyes operated on. When she eventually gets her eyesight back and recognizes Chaplin as her benefactor, she says, to an apprehensive Chaplin, "Yes, I Can See Now". Reading about her real life relationship with Chaplin, I felt so deflated. I don't know if they really had a strained relationship or if this helps in some way to heighten the curiosity about their chemistry. Does reading about it help me conclude that she looks bad-tempered in the photograph above? Is it the reason I chose this snap of hers from all the others on the internet?

And All The Things I Deserve...

...For being such a good girl... honey.

I don't like sardines. Just bought it for Mom. Fried it a bit, spilled it on my dress and then hastened to wash my hair. Sunflowers. The curse of happiness. Like people laughing at me. Slow learners like Voldemort. Wouldn't it have been better if they stripped him of his powers and forced him to live among muggles as one of them? A coughing doctor, living with germs. A troubled psychologist, living with people.

Keep Breathing

Some days, the geyser doesn't work. The sink is full of dirty dishes. Birds peck at the "plain rice" I ordered from the dhaba. Flies hover around the rim of my tea-cup. Cats claw at the garbage bag. The door can't be bolted and I struggle with security. Lizards poop on the mosquito net. The charger hangs loose from the plug-point. I can't switch off the lights and I can't get sleep.

But the smell of fresh laundry curled up like a lovable pet inside the LG Fabricare 3-Step Automatic Washing Machine makes all the bad go away. It's like running back home from the playground and burying my face in Mom.