I’m not clear if it is a singularly migrant experience to have a holiday festival whirling around the telephone and phone calls. A migrant nuclear family is too big an expectation to be met with just a sagging table of holiday cuisine. I don’t particularly like the telephone. I resist being reduced to small talk on the phone, the only way to be on the telephone and I can’t sit down while I’m on the phone so I keep standing and shifting weight from one leg to the other. I jangle with every phone ring the brrring vibration circles drawn in phone cartoons are a Bermuda vortex. I’d like the phone to be sans ring tones with only a light bulb that seeps a pomegranate light all over the house for notice. Which is not to say I have not had good conversations. I enjoy speaking with N (mostly because she is the only person who talks faster than myself and the speed is ticklish if nothing else) and S (who is the only guy I know who you can end a conversation with “I’m bored now” both ways and it’s not taken to heart). Am struck with memory of one phone call where I told me brother to tell child calling I can’t speak right now and he told her “She doesn’t want to talk to you”. A minute later I’m inundated with phone calls asking me why I made Child A cry and she is upset. Phone call etiquette is heavy responsibility limping without the crutch of empathetic body language. I’m all about body language-in completely non-tramp way of course. But compared to mean guls cabal perhaps sometimes tramp.
Watered plants today, was a filling experience, they are a-glinting and twinkling in the sun outside. Have high tea at family friends to go to abhi, told mama to pick between blue or yellow prat clothes so must get out of bathroom and see what she has chosen. I hope they insist we stay for dinner, I like the thought that other people cooked to please me. Am not sure if will be able to feast with wanton abandon as brother has developed failsafe mechanism to get out family oriented events (“No. Bus keh diya”) hence barreling me with immense responsibility as first born to uphold parents standing. Work tomorrow, blood flowing sluggishly in manner of Ganges polluted with all forms of food, must get caramel latte to pamper brain for tomorrow.
24 comments:
my worst telephone incident, picked up call that came for dad, dad wasnt around, told guy on the other line "so what can I do if he isnt around??"...
got shot by dad after that!
X: The point of interest is, how did your dad find out-did the guy snitch or are you one of the people who thinks points should be given for honesty?
Very Bridget Jonesque. I want you on orkut ... so get your butt there.
haha .. I like the way you put that: Phone call etiquette is heavy responsibility limping without the crutch of empathetic body language. I read somewhere that some people use more emphasis on body language to communicate than others. So I guess you'll have to wait until those 'Jetsons' (the cartoon) type video phones become more available :p
Sam: Talk about being in sync, I was just thinking of something along the Bridgetesque lines. Will post about it. Orkut gives me heebie jeebies. I started blog after much misgiving, virtual space makes me feel like a viper being haunted by Steve Irwin
Arfeen: Body language has so much utility- takes the sting out of words, adds stings to words, does not need word etcetera and Most Importantly bypasses the incident where-no-matter-what-you-say-recepient-will-only-hear/understand-what-he/she-wants-to from gestures. Speech is definitely overrated. Not with social mobilization because that's the only place where its vagueness and dogmatism actually works. (I had no idea till now I thought all that about speech. Thank you inadvertently increasing my self knowledge:P)
a kiss for using 'cabal'. and i hate phones because i need to use my hands to gesture and they don't show, and also because ajeeb lagta hai. disembodied voices and strange people who can hear you breath. blarhh. or you hear them. llwellyn coming to mind, how pretty, my brain synapses approve.
Minchka: It's winter and for the first time in years I'm not in Lahore. It upsets me.
You are so fucking brilliant you make me as green as the sweater we wore to school in winters (and since you aren't from lahore I wont bother telling you what school coz that will not help you visualize anything). I can only aid you by saying there's no other green sheen in the world quite like it.
Oh, the phone and its discontents.
Sabizak: *preens* When you enjoy someone's writing and can actually read it without a subtext of your brain crtiquing style/content/spelling then a profanity from them means much in my fascist state.
Saqi Namah: And that is just the beginning of my discontents with modernity. It is difficult to gripe about agents of modernity when they are your mental furniture. Unless you go the Beckett or Hitler way. I choose the latter.
You are turning into a Heiddeggerian it seems. Time to move to the Bavarian black forest!
Saqi Namah: Mayhaps.The postmodern morass of non-doing nauseates me. In contrast the whole Dasein (sp?) concept, the being-there is so life affirming. I'm plodding through the Shantaram (for most part not-quite-riveting despite being true life and all that laundry) in which at some part Roberts talks about how most of the times doing something makes things worse than not doing them. I'm not so sure. Tangentially one tends not to judge by the thought stream of a person/era; a byproduct of accidental nugget retained in psychology experiments demonstrative of the fact that attitudes are weak footed predictors of actual behavior.
Oh goodness. It seems that the whole world is going post-modern these days. Regarding you last point about attitudes and actual behavior I think brother Dostoevsky discerned something about the human condition quite well when he realized that many of our motivations are hidden"beneath" the surface and sometimes the unconscious behaves like the conscious.
"No. Bus keh diya." If that actually works, then WOW. :P
whoa!
intellectual debate in progress!
btw....was snitched!
learnt honesty later!
whoa!
intellectual debate in progress!
btw....was snitched!
learnt honesty later!
i hate the telephone too. i always keep the ringer off. i have never owned a cell phone in my life. i have one now because i am in a relationship and she wants to know of my whereabouts every possible minute of the day. hahaha
even then, i try to avoid it as much as i can, and it has been on silent since the day i got it.
:P
Fabric: If you have a sullen disposition and maintain silence in face of all pleas there comes a point where people are glad you don't want to go. My brother has many many tricks up his sleeve. Shameless really.
in2deep: I think it is Very Important that a girlfriend knows where you are but you should never know where she is. Keeps the mystique alive no?:P
@moizza: Not fair yaar....girlfriend should be trusting like in2deep himself!
u not think so????
X: Theoretically I can't say, I'm not very good at theorizing such relationships.I can dekonstruct if you want but its a dead end; like asking for closure.At the brass tacks I suppose reciprocity should not be screwed around with- you should only expect as much from me as I can from you/you should be ready to do as much for me as I do for you. Beyond and above that is fair game:P
moizza: though I did say "should" that is beyond what one may encompass in the realm of expectations. I, for one, believe in not expecting in a realtionship. Its only when one starts expecting things that one sets standards for reciprocity. which leads to a closure in its own self, because then, one is more intent on complying with standards, rather than feeling the essence of the relationship.
accept everything, expect nothing. keeps things beautiful that way?
do i make any sense at all????
X: You've thought this all the way through for yourself:P I disagree.Accept everything/expect nothing is alright for people you didn't choose to bring into your life and yes in phases for those you chose but usually is the approach taken to flings rather than serious opposite sex relationships nahi?
The only thing that has a pattern in relationships across all dimensions is that each pair of peaople have a pattern specific to them and only those two can judge the other,not their friends nor their self-help books.I'm feeling out of my depth here now, I loathe theorizing about relationships such as these, it can serve as a nice book of quotes but has really no functional value.You need to crash and burn to learn your dynamic.
about flings and all, i dont think so. its at times only an immaturity of thought that leads to a fling. when the l word truly comes into play, it only is supposed to be there, anything else, is a contaminant. It depends from person to person waisay and being humans, i admit its exteremly difficult to steer clear of standardization and/or comparisons.
about thinking through, what can i say :P
about the rest, well, i guess crash and burn it is then.....
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