another year rolls by

I haven't done this in a long while i.e., take out my computer and start blogging. I have a topic in mind, to chronicle my recent India trip which was unbelievably great, but more importantly the desire to simply 'blog it out' and see where it takes me seems to be coming back. Probably it's a product of being in a good mental space compounded by a sense of new-year-new-beginnings. 

I now realise I've hardly mentioned our Fiji trip on the blog which, again, at the risk of sounding cloyingly cheesy, was very good. Just to be able to bask in the sunlight all day, and keep jumping into the pool next to the ocean at the slightest pretext with a bottle of wine always handy - what's not to like. One of the themes I've been thinking of quite recently, instigated by people around me who helplessly exaggerate, is if it's possible to put into words the exact tone and tempo of our feelings. Maybe that's what really great writers do, spend their days chipping away at the superfluous cliches and cheaply available adjectives, analogies and registers to find the language closest to emotion. But most of us seem to, either wilfully or otherwise, be too loud in expressing both our pleasure and consternation. To back to where we digressed from, ofcourse Fiji wasn't perfect, it wasn't like a bloody hotel commercial, there were still other emotions than just banal, advertisement-like joy (incidental but apt companion piece), but it was a great mental space to be in all in all, and something I was able to appreciate and be grateful for not just now but also when I was going through it. Vinaka Fiji.

The trip started off with Sravani and I doing the Satyanarayana Vratam at home and while I'm not a big fan of poojas and stuff, it was heartening to see Amma enjoying herself and hosting over 150 people who came. I'm really happy for the community she found in the new house and am thankful for their support. The next day I met Meheranna, Rajanna and Chaitanya Medi and that sitting turned out to be an absolute hoot. Sravani and I also visited Golconda Fort, like tourists with a guide and all, and it was lovely to accord the respect I do to other cities to my own city. The next week/ ten days was spent around Kittu's wedding and it was great fun meeting and talking to all these people, most importantly Uday anna and Nagesh babai. It was also lovely to see the affection Aparna's mother received from all her colleagues in the special reception and to put it together from what I'd heard about her from Aparna when we first met her. I met Chaitanya Kondapi and Kishore that night, and things were going well until the director of their film came over and forcefully steered the conversation into a boring, ranty realm. Then off to Bangalore where it was wonderful to meet Sravya, Purnima garu, Sandeep, Hareesh, TP/ Ranjitha, Ragini atha, Purna atha folks. The long conversation with Purnima garu was a special treat for she's been exceedingly kind and gracious on this trip (thank you especially for Tejo Tungabhadra; hope to read it soon). Once we came back, more dinners at various houses- Kiran, Anuradha atha, Sarada aunty, Shouri's Akka/ Bawa, Hemakka, Madhu atha interspersed with a visit to the bookfair (where Amma and I had a ball, for once I picked more books I felt like reading than the ones I thought I should- lots of వచన కవిత్వం, and where I spotted Siva Reddy garu and professed my admiration) and our trip to వెయ్యి స్తంభాల గుడి and రామప్ప (Ramappa was stunning). I also had a useful conversation with Srinivas Parimi garu, who I met during Vishnu Sahasranama parayanam in Sarada aunty's house, about a career switch into Bioinformatics. On the fourth, Sravani took me to this gorgeous indie bookshop in Jubilee Hills, Luna Books, and it was wonderful chatting with the owner- especially since the previous day we'd met Gattu, and I spoke to him about the future of Navodaya (with vague, rosy dreams of myself as a bookseller). So, yeah, to reiterate, its been an absolutely terrific trip (I'm sure I've forgotten to mention a few more highlights and not expanded on most of this stuff, not least because these are more shortcuts for me to jog my memory later than a detailed travelogue) and I can't wait to start working on my two new year resolutions.

Earlier today, at four in the morning when I was twisting and turning in bed, I figured that a large part of the reason we choose to write is to impose our presence onto the larger, impersonal world of events. It is our resistance against the transience of everydayness, our attempt to hold onto atleast remnants of all that we see, feel and think, to placate ourselves that all this isn't in vain, a hope that someone in the future might stumble across this and exclaim, "there was once someone like this". 

A few weeks back, instigated by a heated conversation about my Australian citizenship, I proclaimed, somewhat rhetorically, that we are defined more by what we choose to resist and refrain from, than we what we permit and allow ourselves to do. I've got to think more deeply of that statement's import.