Sun-dried towel.

Nothing like a sun-dried towel
Crisp from soaking up the sun
Dry as baked earth
Smelling of the breeze
That ruffled it as it went past.

O sun-dried towel
As you touch my skin
And soak away the stress
In tired droplets of water
I smile.

I smile, as the roughness
Feels warm against my skin
Soft and exfoliant
Giving me fresh life
Nothing like a sun-dried towel.

Of New Year Resolutions.

Last year, after having spent a horrendous amount of time (3 years!!!) away from reading, or reading a maximum of a book a year, or even half a book a year, I decided at the start of 2011 that I would read, read, read this year. I managed to achieve that, albeit because I was caught off guard and thrown into a situation that I didn't anticipate. Still, it took conscious effort with all the traveling and work and other crazy events of the year. The books I read this year after zero reading in three years:

- To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
- Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach
- Lord of the Flies, William Goldberg
- White Fang, Jack London
- Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts
- Red, Irwin Allan Sealy
- Immortals of Meluha, Amish
- The secret of the Nagas, Amish
- DORK: The Incredible Adventures of Robin Einstein Verghese, Sidin Vadukut
- Cloud 9 Minus One, S.P. Kumar
- Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman
- A Passage to India, E. M. Forster
- Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: Twenty-four Stories, Haruki Murakami

Half read:

- Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray

Currently reading:

- On the Road, Jack Kerouac

That's approximately a book a month! Yay! :) I now have a bunch of books lined up for some good alone-time and I like the feeling of being back to reading so much, that I'm going to make it a habit.

I want to keep this up along with making 2012 the year of being the "Exercise Addict" once again. I suppose new year resolutions can work. :)

*The Dirty Picture* and the message I see

Many people I spoke to didn't like this film because of the layers of fat displayed by Vidya Balan.

"If you're on screen, you better have a perfect body!"

...was the common contention.

Apart from the fact that Vidya Balan was playing the role of a "fat South Indian (stereotype) heroine" perfectly, it surely took a lot of courage to show that much flab when the world balks and gawks at flab as though all people around are size zero. I, personally, am glad that for whatever it's worth, this movie has broken away from the stereotype in many ways. Particularly when the market that the film is catering to is the regular (and may I add, massive!) adult Bollywood audience, I'd say she has shown more guts than flab.

After all, isn't beauty in the eyes of the beholder? And, this perception changes with time too (remember voluptuous meant beautiful in the Victorian era?). I'd have been outcast as the ugliest thing alive if I'd been born then. :D I hope that with this movie begins a new generation of film that allows people to develop the sense to accept themselves the way they are and be comfortable in their own skin.

At the end of the day, it shouldn't matter if you're fat or thin, dark or fair, short or tall, as long as you are comfortable with yourself and you dress right - that is, pick colours and cuts to suit your body type.

Be comfortable!

I'm back.

Hi!

How are you doing today? I just wanted to let you know, I'm back. Back, stuck, getting unstuck, planning to get stuck. And "stuck" here doesn't always hold a negative connotation.

You know?

Haha, well I don't. But I'm waiting to find out!

P.S. - It has been more books, more inspiration and a little bit of looking from above. Cool will return. :)

The Return

I returned, refreshed. Very refreshed. And with a few new perspectives tucked up the sleeve. Grown up some? Yes. But the truth is, I am a lot more inspired now than ever before. Inspired to begin again, inspired to jump the gun, take the plunge, take a risk, get a life. Sort of the oxymoron to being grown up, in a sense.

I'd like to say just you watch. Wait and watch. Because I am done waiting. It is time for action, and action it shall be! I'm getting my act together, one brisk step at a time. Moving fast. A little falling here and there is bound to be. I'm all geared, with a first aid kit. I am ready to rock and roll, baby. This means more reading, more writing, more crazy "how the hell did you manage to do that???" stuff. Comin' up shortly.

I now also do believe, two heads are better than one! :)

Disconnected?

Someone I was having dinner with today, and was also away from home and in California and had been away for a week asked me how long I was going to be here. When I said until September, she gasped and said - OMG, I would hate to be you! Don't you miss home? I've been here for just a week, and I already want to go back!

I had to think about that one. I'd have to say no... I don't.

What I mean is, I miss my family, my dog, the boy, my friends and everyone back in India, sure. But... I also feel so disconnected, like I could be anywhere alone. For the social creature that I am, it's saying something. I guess I'm just that comfortable anywhere, and I'd probably much rather have company I want to have, no matter where it is.

But I can wear any skin and call it mine. Some people call it confused. I call it versatile. It's not that I don't care... it's simply that I can just be.

Coffee shop girl

Before.

You see her sitting near the window, in the filtered-in sunlight. Part of her hair is lighter from the sun, and when she looks up, her brown eyes, one of them looks hazel under the sun. Her chai sits a little distance from her at the table, and she takes an occasional sip. She looks down at the books she has in her lap and on the table, one that she was reading, but put down because something caught her attention. She's pulling out another book now, and a stub of a wooden pencil, and she starts to sketch. The sketch looks like nothing that meets your eye, yet it looks like she's enjoying what she's doing, and you can tell that the end product will look good.

After.

She sits alone at a restaurant now, in the sunlight near the window. Thinking. Picking the sushi from the plate in front of her with chopsticks and chewing it slowly as she keeps staring out of the window and at nothing. A part of her is inspired to be the same person, with the same freedom to express at will through any medium. Now all she has is her thoughts, and a hope that she will get back to being able to do all the things she used to do.

Before.

She finished the sketch. Maybe it was inspired by something she'd seen when she'd looked up. It was a sketch symbolic of how empty she might be if she hadn't had her freedom of expression.