Someone I know sent me an article the other day - about the weight of an employee being in inverse proportion to their career and remuneration growth. Instantly I felt myself filling up with hot rage, drowning in so much anger and outrage. Most of it was directed towards myself for associating with someone who would forward something like that to me. But I was admittedly shocked that a person's weight would affect their professional lives in such a significant manner. I don't buy that productivity BS about fat people being more prone to disease and therefore time away from work. Thats like justifying that women should be paid less because of the possibility that they will at some time avail themselves of their maternity leave. I don't think the productivity benefits based on an employee's potential health condition is a serious consideration with employers. However I do beleive one's appearance has a lot to do with opinions made on the so called dispassionate professional level. Being overweight is associated in most minds with a weak will, sloppiness, lack of personal pride and discipline. While I do not personally subscribe to that view, I can see why that opinion might exist and how it can influence a person's ability to make a favorable FIRST impression. But shouldn't someone's proven track record of hard work and talent be sufficient to overset the effect of the prejudice? But then that is the nature of prejudice - it is never reasonable and therefore can hardly be reasoned away with logic. If even a friend cannot see the forest for the trees, maybe reforming a close-minded associate from work is close to impossible. The sad part is that most likely the author of the article and the 'friend' that sent it would congratulate themselves if they knew that I went an extra half hour at the gym, skipped another meal - afterall its just tough love right? What it really translates into for me is another time I cry in the shower, another person I cannot trust to look at me and see any quality in me beyond my weight. What is boils down to is in all the planes you exist on - among friends, with a lover, in a boardroom - nothing can make up for an imperfect body.

January 24, 2007
Wednesday

I think I might have redeemed myself - atleast a little bit. Though I am still mortified at thinking I might have unwittingly led someone on. I wonder if it has to do with how I talk - the interest I take in the other person- that almost always gives the wrong impression about my intentions? I genuinely like people - I enjoy spending time with them, getting to know their stories, their personalities. Lately though I think I have been so frantic to engage my attentions anywhere but on certain other events that my enthusiasm is easily misunderstood. I have had one friend tell me its the way I look at someone fondly, another tells me its the way I smile. I hate to think my body language is unconsciously inviting people to think I am more interested in them than I really am. But the source of this problem is obviously me since this has re-ocurred often enough. Everything one does though is so open to interpretation and I am so impulsive that I don't stop think if my actions have an implication I am not prepared to deal with. Who would think always being ready to talk and listen to someone sends out a message of more than concerned friendship? I mean every moment of my work day I am chatting with Kavi - she doesn't assume that I am sending her secret signals of whatever. Excuses apart, I guess I am responsible for the impressions I make and now have to learn how to discern what subconscious messages I am sending and curb my impulses, be more controlled and less spontaneous. What a fun prospect!

Vampires
The beast is rearing its head again
In the pit of my stomach I feel
that familiar burning
I ready myself to take off running
Always one bare step ahead
Of my horrors nipping at my heels
The fear of being swallowed whole
Spurs me on - giving me another spurt of speed
I never know if this time
Will be the one where it outruns me.
Dust to dust - what really is there to fear?
That slow slide down to the belly of darkness
Oddly comforting to not fight any more
Afterall there is no defeating hopelessness
Finally in the silence
In that blessed last divine betrayal
There will be no further to fall
And at long last my soul will rest in peace.


Copyrights belong to Ambika Nair

Aftertaste
Unwittingly, even unwillingly
I have devoted my heart to memories
Of you.
I seek your face in all my new sorrows,
I fear the same ending
Of all my new hopes.
Unseen smiles reflect only you -
Ill-hidden longings to find my lost,
Mourn my un-dead love.
All the music my soul makes -
Sacrificial lambs at the feet of the man
That filled ten years of my story
With empty silences.
So many beginnings…
So meaningless unless you end
With beginnings of your own
What I never mean to start.
Only that which causes limitless joy
Can offer boundless pain -
I hear you smiling in your sleep
Your tongue wrapped around sweetness,
And rising from my charred insides
Is the bitter aftertaste of you.

Copyrights for 'Aftertaste' belong to Ambika Nair

I am dreaming of a hot week day afternoon in Chennai - the fan pointlessly stirring and unsettling the heat in the air as I lie on the freshly washed printed cotton sheets in Peetha's spare bedroom. I can almost feel the slow drag of my eyelids heavy with blissful siesta Zs that I am staving off simply to savor the anticipation. In the distance I hear a rickshaw put-putting along and I can smell the coals and the steam from the cart almost right outside my window where wrinkles are being ruthlessly ironed out of existence on a bright yellow churidar. My breath seems to be sighing out a song of absolute contentment and I fall asleep in the happy anticipation of waking up to hot tea and of vadas fished out of bubbling oil and cooling off on newspaper spread on the stone counter. There is almost nothing as enticing as that mental picture, especially as I sit at my desk in a gray cubicle looking out at snow coming down on Minneapolis. Its visions like these that get me through the loneliness, the cold, the mind-numbing lack of enthusiasm to live through another shivering, snivelling day of sub-zero depression.
Some nights I call and talk to my homie Srik who indulges me with Chennai-Tamil classes - has me in splits the entire time so much that I swear I giggle in my sleep. I love the Machis, Maamas, Sithappus that pepper the conversation. I love learning the correct inflection for saying Doddaaa :) or calling a hapless driver a Saavugirakki. I am equipped with all instances when I have to say "serippu pinjidum" - apparently any configuration of words ending in "--kattai" are worthy of this treatment. Harder to remember are the exact meanings of such marvels of the language as "Apeetu", "Dabaikeeriya", "Asalta", "Dumeel" - but all the more fascinating for its obscurity of meaning.
When I am praying with Hema, its an entirely different plane of the same language that soothes my senses and fills my heart with the golden light of God-love. I watch gazillions of Tamil movies and my untutored understanding is beginning to discern the dialects, the ways, the little mannerisms that differentiate say Madurai from Thirunalveli. In my enthusiasm for the language, I often attempt to stutter out a few sentences which are unfortunately mangled beyond all recognition by my strong mallu accent and ofcourse the unorthodox sources from which this entire knowledge base is culled.
I always think back fondly about staying at the YWCA in Egmore, walking the streets of 'Medras' with a borrowed Nokia in my sweaty fist and my I-card in its plastic sleeve hanging around my neck, hailing an auto and shocking the driver with my meager Tamil when he talks to me in his version of Hindi and tryies to fleece me of triple the fare. I remember being mortified that I was so visibly an out-of-towner, being elated when I drank a sathukudi juice and didn't spend the next day in the bathroom, being triumphant when I haggle down prices with vendors selling costume jewellery on Ranganathan street.
I have so many more little things I want to get the typical Chennai flavor of - hanging out with some cool Chennai folks at Spencer, going to a SuperStar movie at a theatre, loitering until dusk at one of Chennai's awesome beaches without having a little cousin or nephew to rescue from a dangerous tendency to throw themselves into the waves, ride pillion on a bike behind a tall,dark and handsome tamil man:) along ECR... I could go on forever. But I wont - instead I am going to go on dreaming my Chennai dreams.

Here and Now
Thursday, January 18 2007

Lethargy and shame are settling into my pores, weighing my eyelids down, making me drowsy with the inability to think about myself without regret. So much wisdom on hindsight - all the prayer in the world doesnt seem to keep me from making mistakes that clog up my senses and seep like a foul odour from my conscience. What I want, what I seek are so much more than what life is offering me right now. I can't make excuses without tripling my self-disgust, but all these dreams make it so difficult to turn away the little bits and peices that seem to be manifesting themselves in my day to day. I see now that the parts in isolation of each other don't add up to the whole. Hence the emptiness, the bitter silence of my inner judge - condemning my stupidity, my greed, my pitifulness. I can't keep grasping at straws that make my reflection in the mirror wane into a grotesque interpretation of the values I aspire to. I cannot survive more introspection if I can't dredge up more than the black refuse sticking to the walls of my mind. Too late, always too late, I see His greater wisdom at work and understand the very "cruelty" I had lamented had kept me safe from this very folly. I understand now why His approach to this thing has been all or nothing. Funny thing is, I had just been getting used to the nothing too and actually figuring out how to enjoy the anticipation. In my defense, I did think my time had come, my ship was setting sail. Premature - a tiny bit overeager and willfully blinded to consequences I knew were inevitable. Still only excuses that doesn't wash off the sorrow of having fallen down from my own estimation - again.

Here and Now:
Thursday, January 03, 2007
Saint Louis Park, MN

My heart is not broken. I am not even at an age where I can say that with feeling and not feel a blush of mortification color my neck. I have outpaced that state of perepetual emotional peaks and troughs - thank the stars! If I languish a little at the very end of my prayers and a few unbidden what-ifs run through my head - I write it down to the inability of the female mind to ever give up on its favorite fantasy. I don't know if I beleive in 'true love' anymore - I hate to sound cynical and embittered - but thats not why I dont beleive in that myth anymore. Its a bit like beleiving in Santa isnt it? - we all have to outgrow it at some time. Someone once told me a theory of chemistry, commitment and logic constituting what everyone wants to romanticize into love and I remember dismissing it as frigid and bloodless. But I begin to see the wisdom of detatchment - proof is in how we all love, lose, move on, 'love' again, marry, make babies and dismiss some of our strongest emotions as childish and fleeting. Its only my need to elevate human emotion above well thought out impulses and hormonal rushes that makes me balk at this definition of love. My own heart has managed to do this with consummate ease and as long as I dont dwell with the clarity of hindsight on what made me love the man I loved and why I took longer to get over him than him over me and why I have now managed to move on and want a new beginning, I can pretend that I loved, lost and my poor broken heart was healed in time and learned to want love again.