Noorbhi

Noorbhi. Thats her name. When I met her, something told me - she's the one.

She's fifteen. She's married and she looks after a kid sister who is all of five.

She lost her mother to AIDS a few days ago. Yet, she has a smile on her face. She seems to have dealt with her loss.

Two years back, her father too died of AIDS related illnesses. He was a labourer in a cotton mill in Guntur, a small dusty town in a state in South India called Andhra. To keep the family afloat, and to supplement her mother's tiny income from her sweeper's job at a hotel, she took over her father's job.

At that stage, the neighbours weren't kind to her and her family. They were treated pretty much as untouchables. Then with a sensitisation program by a Non Govermental Organisation there, the stigmatization thankfully stopped. And the community actually came around to help out a great deal.

At work, she had to fight off an attempted rape and that was the end of her days as a child labourer.

A distant relative has married her and given her (and her sister) shelter.

And another relative has taken them into their home. The shack she lived in earlier just blew down in a storm (the big cyclone on the East Coast) the day I met her first.

She's the one. I'm planning to tell her story in my next documentary. So everyone can see first hand what happens to children who are affected by AIDS. They may or may not be infected with HIV themselves. But as orphans they take a huge hit.

I miss friends who have moved to different cities and other parts of the world. It times when you are organising a party that this becomes more apparent than usual. During usual times, the pace of life that I lead (life-in-speed-search mode) leaves little time to even think of much else. I work, come home and then I have enough energy only to spend a little time with N and N.

I try and make it a point to connect with the larger family and friends on weekends on the phone, but somehow, it isn't the same thing as times spent together earlier. But I also feel aware that to actually get together with these people in most instances is not the answer to what I miss. They and I are different people. Being apart makes people grow differently. You process experiences differently than when those same experiences happen if you are in closer contact with friends and get to talk about these experiences as they happen.

Even so, I feel like a vital bit somewhere to the experience of living on planet Earth and of being a part of a community gets lost out.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, not too deep in my consciousness is a wish that someday, we could all buy a place on a hill somewhere and live near each other. And handle the rest of the world from there.

Is that me?

I read my blog over. And there's a lot of angst there. That's not me really. In some part, maybe, but not entirely. I don't take myself all that seriously!

Intentions and Results

Isn't it crazy how events often get a twisted life of their own? You do something. Say something. With some end in view. Others interact in that process. You are going along a path. Then suddenly, without warning, you find things hurtling along a tangent. And things have acquired a twisted life of their own. Ideas and opinions are formed which may have little to do with reality. At least little to do with YOUR reality.

It's not that I feel frustated at an inablility to have a sane relationship with people at work. It's when I try to be honest with a core group at work that I see this weirdness unfold. Then I think - should I need to be a part of the madness? The madness of deceit and dishonesty? I'm told by others that I'm honest. While that works well in gaining trust with people, it goes fundamentally against "handling" people. Peers and opinionated superiors mostly.

Isn't it deeply pissing off when someone gives you that "Yeah, I know" look when you know that you could fool this person if I choose to be dishonest?

Words

I like the way people use words. So often they aren't meant as they are said. And there's so much grammar in the pauses, the inflexions and timing. So little honesty. I'm not being naive. Just a little pissed off with some people.

Games

A loaded kind of line
Dropped in at the right point of time
A seemingly simple remark
That provides an inflammatory spark
“Did you know what he said-she said”?
Full of meaning, thoughts that are led
Who means what, when they say what they say?
How much is true? What is just word play?

Mind games. Can you look beyond
Shadow play, as you walk a field of mines
Want a simple life? You’ll be left behind
No double speak, one day you’ll find you are lost
And lonely, in a place of your own
All that you built, somehow has blown
Away

Pluck the strings, watch your puppets jerk
Throw a line, see how it works
A comment maybe? A “silly” joke perhaps?
Plenty unsaid. Upto you to fill in the gaps
There’s lots that can be done with a sadist’s ploy
People, feelings, thoughts, emotions, plaything, toy
Words, inflexions, pauses potent as weapons
That load down your soul like a million tons

Mind games. Can you look beyond
Shadow play, as you walk a field of mines
Want a simple life? You’ll be left behind
No double speak, one day you’ll find you are lost
And lonely, in a place of your own
All that you built, somehow has blown
Away

No Begining

There's no begining really.. Just a long past and then you stand and try to peer into the future.

So we take a random point and say this is it. Lets cock a snoot at linearity and put things as they come and worry about structured approaches later.

Thats so me. Call it "chaotic lack of planning ability". Or creativity (yeah sure!)

There will be thoughts. Opinions. Prose that will make sense (maybe) and verse that most likely not - don't worry. The idea is to have your own take on it. What you connect to isn't the same for everyone, you see.

Enjoy (said with a weird accent that's supposedly French. Why? Well, just.)

Getting Started

Hi!

I'm just getting started....

More later.